Milk and Cereal Diets Marketing Campaigns Claim Weight Loss for Women

We just stopped seeing Jared promoting the Subway diet on every set of television commercials, and now we have cereal diet commercials and milk weight loss ads in Jared's place. You've probably seen these promotional commercials and magazine ads on how you can achieve weight loss by replacing two meals per day with Special K cereal on the Special K Diet. You've probably also seen the ads on how drinking several glasses of milk per day stimulates weight loss in women. It's not all a lie; meal replacement diets do work, but it isn't because of the brand of cereal you choose or because you drink cow's milk rather than soy.

What's Really Going On?
It is rather sad that such large corporations have chosen to stoop to this level of marketing, but since diets and weight loss are such big markets to cash in on, I guess we shouldn't blame them. After all, Milk is trying to compensate for the loss of healthy customers who have switched to soy and other cow-free milk substitutes, while the cereal companies are trying to gain back some of customers lost to the low-carb diet boom. Thus, the milk for weight loss and cereal diet campaigns were born, and we are digging in.

The Simple Secret of Diets That Work vs Diets That Fail
The secret to weight loss? Eat fewer calories and burn more energy. This is the concept behind any successful diet plan, and this is the very basis of these cereal and milk diets. What the companies behind these latest diets aren't telling you, because the entire point of their diet campaign is to increase sales and make more money, is that their product is not the key ingredient to weight loss. You could replace two meals per day with a piece of wheat toast spread with peanut butter, or with an apple and a bowl of oatmeal, or anything at all with the same amount of calories and fat as a bowl of cereal and glass of milk, and reap the same rewards. No special "diet" is necessary to achieve this weight loss.

The main problem with these type of diets is that they are not a long term weight loss solution. Unless you stick to their plan of eating only one real meal and replacing the rest with cereal and milk for the rest of your life, you will gain the weight back. Even if you do stick to their diet for the rest of your life, your metabolism will likely slow down to compensate for the lack of calories, and you will probably put the weight back on.

What Can You Do to Experience Lasting Weight Loss?
To achieve lasting weight loss, adjust your diet to cut out excess calories and fat without limiting yourself to an extreme diet that you will not be able to continue in the long-term. Make changes slowly enough that your mind, body and metabolism do not go into shock. Gradual weight loss makes for a much better chance to succeed. This sounds like common sense, doesn't it?

So, why are so many people jumping on the latest fad diet band wagon? The same reason the diet pill industry is doing so well. We want weight loss, but we don't want to work for it. We want instant gratification. The majority of us want to eat what we want and be as lazy as possible, but at the same time, we want to look like the anorexic looking girls on America's Top Model. The exceptions are the truly overweight people who really do want a real solution to weight loss and who are ready to work for it. However, I highly doubt that these people will find long-term weight loss solutions at the bottom of a milk carton or cereal box.