Every huckster out there has got a sure-fire way to lose weight. There are good diets and bad diets. Here are the top six worst ways to lose weight.

6. Hold the Exercise!

Want to lose weight? Go on a diet. Seems simple enough. However if you do not combine exercise with the diet, your scale will lie to you. Sure, you’ll lose weight, but you’ll be losing muscle mass. Your body holds onto fat because it is a rich source of stored calories. So if you’re dieting without exercising, your body becomes convinced you can do without the muscles you aren’t using and converts this tissue to sustain body functions first. Combining exercise with the diet tells your body you need the muscles to handle the daily demands you are putting on it so the body reluctantly burns more fat instead.

5. Welcome to Niagara Fat

Water is essential to losing weight because fat is water soluble. Your body needs water to burn fat. Period. So if you’re taking water pills or some other diuretic to flush vast amounts of fluid out of your system in the hope of flushing out fat, you are not only risking your overall health through dehydration but you are actually making it harder for your body to burn fat.

4. Two Exits, No Waiting

Why take a pill for something your body does naturally? If you eat a balanced diet, your body will rid itself of what it doesn’t need and do it naturally. Plus the laxatives will move food through you so quickly your body won’t be able to absorb nutrients, affecting your overall health.

3. Diet Poppers

Pop a diet pill, eat a large all-dressed pizza and lose weight. Nope. Not going to happen. Diet pills might suppress your appetite for a while but as soon as the pill wears off you’ll be twice as hungry, causing you to eat more. Also, if these really worked, we’d all look like models.

2. Cutting Calories Off At The Bypass

This is a prime example of attacking a problem from the wrong end. Re-routing your plumbing so your body doesn’t absorb fat is a drastic measure, which won’t work if the cause of overeating is not first dealt with.

1. Desert Dining, Reservation For None

Not only will a starvation diet not work but you’ll actually gain weight! The idea here is to simply not eat. No calories in, nothing to be stored as fat. Also, because there are no new calories, the body will begin converting fat into energy producing weight gain. Right? Wrong! Fat is the body’s emergency reserves, this is why unwanted or excess fat is so hard to get rid of. Starving yourself kicks your body into survival mode and it begins burning up the low fat tissues like muscles first, saving the calorie-filled, energy-rich fat for when things get really bad. By not eating, you are telling your body to hold onto the fat. You need to trick the body into burning a little of the fat daily as you take in slightly less than calories than you need.

Andrew Salmon is a freelance writer that contributes guest posts on a variety of subjects including IVAs.

To many people, food is a drug. Try telling those who have a food addiction that losing weight or kicking any other kind of compulsive habit, is simply an issue of “mind over matter”, and you would likely be answered with varying degrees of incredulity and even anger. Most people who have ever suffered with an addiction, whether it be to food, heroin or pornography, would retort you are, at best misinformed, mistaken. At worst you would be considered cruel or crazy.

US Diet Industry

The diet industry is one of the most prolific industries in the United States. While most of the rest of the world does not have the same outlook on body size and eating habits, close neighbor Canada shares many of the same health problems. The Stratford Beacon-Hearld.com of Ontario, Canada featured an article by Dr. Gifford-Jones about sensible dieting habits which make dieting less miserable.

One key area Jones concentrates on is caloric intake. The calorie craze that saw its peak in the era of Weight Watchers and “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” has been rendered nearly obsolete in the wake of sugar-busters, trans fats, carbs and water diets. However, the research on calories and caloric intake is virtually accepted as medical gospel today. Every retail food item sold in the United States is required to have the standardized “Nutrition Facts” label somewhere on its packaging, or information about where you can get such information. Gifford-Jones offers a series of tips about how to maintain healthy eating habits, while still enjoying what you eat. He advises those trying to stick to a diet to provide themselves with some kind of motivation. He offers saving money on clothes as one incentive to stay fit.

Calorie Counting

As significant as calorie-counting is in its own right, self-control is another key ingredient for a successful diet. Without the capability to discipline oneself to eat the correct foods and make wise eating habits While most adults find the self-control factor to be the single-most difficult area to maintain, setting short Gifford-Jones points out his amazement at the way Americans “super-size” everything, especially fast food.

Most other societies do not encourage the type of gluttonous engorgement Americans routinely practice. Jones points to gluttonous over-eating and gorging habits as key factors in the phenomenal weight-gain Americans have experienced. He advises Americans to limit the sheer amount of food they are consuming.

Other Ways

Jones suggests make dinner conversation to stall between courses. This allows the stomach time to tell the brain it is full, which signals the brain to stop being hungry and making the stomach hungry. Gifford-Jones asserts following his tips will allow otherwise healthy people to get in shape and not be miserable while they are doing it. He culminates his article with age-old advice such as walking and drinking water.