We are now officially in spring, which means summer is around the corner. The shorts and tank tops you’ve tucked away will soon see the light, and with less than two months until summer break, some may feel the pressure is on to lose weight.

Let me warn you now that if you’re looking to drop some pounds, fad diets like detoxes and cleanses can actually be quite ineffective and even counterproductive. A fad diet to help the body get clean is completely unnecessary.

For detoxes, there’s little to no evidence that the diet eliminates any toxins from the body. Kidneys and livers effectively eliminate ingested toxins on their own.

The weight loss people may experience on detoxes mainly comes from avoiding high-calorie and low-nutrition foods the diet eliminates.

People should avoid these types of foods in their everyday life anyway, and fasting or doing a juicing diet doesn’t deserve credit for the human body’s hard work.

Another popular fad for quick weight loss is avoiding carbs on programs like the Atkins diet. People typically get excited about new diets and commit for some weeks and often see the weight loss they wanted.

However, more often than not, people revert back to their typical eating habits once they step on the scale and see their goal weight. The weight loss is ultimately ineffective in the long run because once normal eating patterns return, the weight comes right back.

Jane Burrell Uzcategui, an associate teaching professor of public health and food studies and nutrition at Syracuse University’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, said any weight loss that occurs too quickly is mainly fluid loss. This will eliminate the few pounds people wanted, but the weight comes back when normal eating habits resume.

Low-carb intake or cleansing can put the body in starvation mode, which slows the metabolism. Over time, an individual’s body will not need as many calories to maintain their goal weight since they reached the weight on a low-calorie intake and their body adjusted, Uzcategui said.

Upon returning to normal calorie intake, the weight comes back, and people may end up weighing more than their starting point since they gave their body no time to adjust back to a greater amount of calories, she said.

Get-skinny-quick plans prove ineffective to last. Luckily, there are some solutions for college students looking to eat healthier.

Uzcategui said college students have the tools for healthier eating right in front of them. Dining halls have options like fruit, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy and lean protein. The issue is the dining hall also has pasta bars and ice cream machines, so it comes down to a matter of choice.

Uzcategui also finds that students who are either too busy to find time to eat or trying to lose weight suffer from a similar trend in their eating habits.

“Low-calorie stuff is not always filling, so later at nights students find they are hungry and turn to the limited late-night food options, which are often unhealthy,” she said. “People restrict too much during the day and then they feel like crap during the night, and biology is pretty strong. If you need food, your body is going to drive you to eat. If you wait until late at night you don’t have great choices.”

Uzcategui added that poor nutrition comes from what she refers to as “recreational calories.” Take students who don’t eat throughout the day but then go out at night with their friends: alcoholic beverages mixed with sugary drinks have lots of calories, which end up replacing the nutritious calories students should have had during the day with empty calories.

The body then has to use valuable saved nutrients to burn the empty calories, which drains useful nutrients and winds up leaving people even hungrier than before. The solution? Planning and choices.

Students should plan to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day. If they can slot a time to go to the dining hall and choose a balanced meal while avoiding the temptation of chicken tender Thursday, they’ll see lasting health results.

Without the dining hall, students can also plan their meals at home and bring them to campus. Many of the cafes on campus also have healthy options, but students must have the willpower to choose them.

Fitting in the required meals of the day so you do not have to resort to the vending machines and late-night binging will not only get you feeling healthy for summer, it will also give you more energy and focus to have a successful day.

Caroline Maguire is a sophomore television, radio and film and psychology double major. Her column appears biweekly. Contact her at cpmaguir@syr.edu or on twitter at @carolinemags22.

Published on March 21, 2018 at 10:46 pm