Baby Food Diet.

It can be tempting to try an ‘instant results’ celebrity diet to get yourself back on course. But they’re not all what they seem – you have been warned

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With so many diet books and celebrity-endorsed fitness DVDs on the market, who’s cashing in and who’s worth checking out?

The British Dietetic Association (BDA) receives literally hundreds of calls every year on this subject and they come across a huge range of weird and wacky diets and diet claims.

Sian Porter, consultant dietitian and Spokesperson for the BDA, says, ‘Sadly, there is no magic wand you can wave. There is no wonder diet you can follow without some nutritional or health risk and most are offering a short-term fix to a long term problem. It may be obvious, but if you want to lose weight you need to eat a nutritionally balanced and varied diet with appropriately sized portions and burn off more calories that you consume. In short speak, eat fewer calories, make better choices and move a bit more!’

Here are the top five dodgy diets the BDA has spoken out against, and their reported celebrity fans.

The Blood Group Diet

Celebrity Fan: Cheryl Cole is reportedly a fan of this diet.

What’s it all about?

This diet is completely based on pseudo-science. It claims that different nutrients are broken down in the body based on the body’s blood type.

Blood Group A – No dairy products allowed and a vegetarian-based diet

Blood Group B – A more varied intake of food and the only blood group able to ‘manage’ dairy products

Blood Group AB – Combination of diets A and B (Confused yet? Yes or no to dairy?)

Blood Group O – High meat intake, no dairy, no wheat, no grains (Think Atkins)

BDA Verdict: Bloody awful! Cutting out food groups is never a good idea (unless medically advised to do so and with help making substitutions from a dietitian). This diet could lead to significant deficiencies such as calcium. You lose weight on this diet because when you strip away all the hype, you calorie intake is very restricted.

Maple Syrup Diet

Celebrity Fan: Naomi Campbell is reportedly a fan of this diet.

What’s it all about?

Maple syrup is mixed with lemon juice, water and cayenne pepper (which supposedly ‘boosts’ your metabolism) and is supposed to be drunk in half pint measures up to nine times per day. Based on this, the daily calorie intake would fall below 600 calories per day.

BDA Verdict: Dangerous and boring! This diet has no nutritional value as far as protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals are concerned. A diet with so few calories should never be followed without medical supervision. Not only that, this diet is so mind numbingly boring, socially isolating and deficient of substance, you would find it extremely difficult to function on a day to day basis.

Cabbage Soup / Fat Burning Soup Diet

Celebrity Fan: Sarah Michelle Gellar (aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is reportedly a fan of this diet.

What’s it all about?

Firstly, no food can ‘burn’ fat, so that is a complete myth. This diet is based on faux-science and overall involves living on a diet largely consisting of homemade cabbage soup.

BDA Verdict: Nutritionally deficient and not sustainable. Weight loss from this diet is largely down to water loss and our old faithful – restricted calories. Also, this diet will make you begin to detest ‘meal’ times and it will also give you wind. Mmm! You and your house will smell divine!

Baby Food Diet

Celebrity Fan: Jennifer Aniston is reportedly a fan of this diet.

What’s it all about?

This diet calls for eating just up to 14 jars of baby food every day or mostly baby food and one adult meal or baby food instead of snacks.

BDA Verdict: Grow up! This diet works on portion control and guess what? Yes, restricted calories, as a jar of baby food has very few. Although fruit and veg are included they are pureed so have much less fibre and texture. Chewing food is associated with feelings of fullness and satiety, so reach for an apple or a carrot rather than a jar.

Dukan Diet

Celebrity Fan: Katherine Jenkins is reportedly a fan of this diet.

What’s it all about?

A complicated four-phase diet that starts off with a protein only approach that promotes weight loss of around 7lb per week.

BDA Verdict: Dukan not be serious! There is absolutely no solid science behind this at all. This works on restricting foods, calories and portion control again. Once again, cutting out food groups is not advisable. This diet is so confusing that many followers could be mistaken and follow an almost protein diet approach, similar to that of the Atkins Diet, with the associated dangers, not to mention the bad breath.

‘On a serious note, glamorous images of celebrities saturate our daily media in all forms,’ says Sian. ‘These celebs have an army of people to help them to keep looking good, which is essential to their livelihood and plenty of money to do whatever they think it takes. You need to remember, too, a lot of these images are airbrushed and retouched to give celebrities an unachievable body image that does not exist in real life, yet many aspire to. Some people look at these images and will try anything they think will help them achieve the “perfect” body.

‘If you have some weight you need to lose, then do it in a healthy, enjoyable and sustainable way. In the long term this will achieve the results you are after.’

For more information and tips about healthy weight loss, visit bdaweightwise.com