Spotting Sensible Diets
One week you're stuffing your face with protein. The next week, a new diet urges you to dump the protein and load up with carbohydrates. Talk about redefining yo-yo dieting.

So do you continue with your current diet? Or will friends who have lost dozens of pounds on this new diet sway you over? All you know is that you're desperate to lose weight. If that new diet works, then it's worth a try.

Before you dig into another diet, step back and evaluate it. Just as you wouldn't buy a car without knowing anything about it, you shouldn't jump into a diet without scrutinizing its claims. And before you continue your string of yo-yo dieting, you should learn what successful weight loss is all about.

The Keys to Successful Weight Loss
Why Diets Fail
How to Spot a Healthy Diet

The Keys to Successful Weight Loss
Weight loss doesn't happen overnight. Nor should it happen to the tune of 10 pounds a week. Instead, successful weight loss means losing one to two pounds per week. When you lose more than that, you start losing part of your lean body mass, including muscle — the mainstay of your metabolism. Muscle, after all, uses more calories than fat and is a major contributor to helping increase metabolism.

For weight loss to be successful, you also have to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.

In addition, you have to change some of your behaviors about eating. For example, are you always eating in front of the television without realizing how much you've eaten? Do you eat when you're depressed, sad or angry?

Why Diets Fail
Inevitably, though, diets do — and most likely will — fail. Consider, after all, how many times you've been in this situation. You go gangbusters on one diet only to fizzle out after a few weeks. Then slowly but surely, the weight you've lost creeps back onto your body. What went wrong?

Diets often don't work because they're simply temporary interventions. Most diets, for instance, prescribe certain eating habits that you follow for a specific period. Yet once that period ends, you're left to battle with your old eating patterns. Although you may have lost weight, you didn't learn anything about nutrition, nor were you taught how to modify your old eating habits to maintain the weight you've achieved.

Many diets are also too restrictive or unrealistic. Or the diet may require giving up going out to eat with friends or even eating certain food groups.

How to Spot a Healthy Diet
So how can you choose a diet that will help you lose weight sensibly and keep it off? By taking the time to evaluate diets and not believing every claim you read or hear. Before you start a diet, talk to your doctor about your intentions. Then ask these questions when analyzing a diet:

1. Who is the author of the diet?
Make sure that the author has credentials to back his or her expertise. Even if a diet book is written by a doctor, find out that doctor's area of interest and look for motivating factors that might have prompted him or her to write the book.

2. Are the diet's claims backed by research?
Do some digging to find out whether research has been performed, preferably at the university level.

3. What are the health risks associated with this diet?

4. Are all food groups represented in the diet?
If you cut out a food group,you miss out on valuable nutrients. Without the right balance of nutrients, you'll feel sluggish and will perform poorly throughout the day.

5. Does the diet severely restrict calories?
Severe caloric restriction should send up a red flag. Women who are exercising regularly require a minimum of 1,600 daily calories. Active men require at least 2,000 calories every day.

6. Does the diet recommend something other than high carbohydrate, moderate protein, and low fat intake?
Carbohydrates have received a bad rap lately for no reason. Our bodies and brain rely on carbohydrates for energy. Take in too few carbohydrates and you'll feel drained. On the other hand, eat too much protein and you'll wind up fighting dehydration, exhaustion, calcium excretion, and other health problems.

7. Does the diet claim that weight loss will be immediate?
Remember that slow and steady sheds the weight; focus on losing only one to two pounds per week.

8. Does the diet reveal how many pounds the average person loses?
Before and after photographs can be enticing but deceiving. Most of these appealing photographs don't represent average weight loss.

9. Does the diet encourage exercise?
Exercise is a vital part of weight loss and management and should at least be recommended.

10. Does the diet propose a maintenance plan once you've lost weight?
Without a weight maintenance plan, there's a greater chance that you'll gain the weight back.