You know fad diets don't work when it comes to reaching long-term weight loss goals. But did you also know they can actually make you fatter?

Doctors now warn that celebrity diets are contributing to the obesity epidemic. Think Lemonade, Grapefruit, Tiger, Mayo Clinic, Apple and Cabbage Soup. All of these so-called diets may help you lose weight in the beginning, but can you really stick with them? Only if you don't like food.

Most of these diets have the same thing in common -- they place heavy restrictions on what you can eat. Take the Lemonade Diet (also known as the Master Cleanse) for instance. You mix up a batch of "lemonade" with lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water. With six to 12 glasses allowed each day (no other food), this diet is likely to leave you a little sour. The Cabbage Soup Diet allows you to eat as much of its soup that you want each day along with fruits and vegetables, but it neglects other important food groups which can lead to nutritional deficiencies.

Late the other night, I was watching a re-run of Denise Richard's show on TV. I caught the episode Jacki told us about -- where Denise was discussing the lemonade diet with her friends.

The lemonade diet isn't the only ridiculous plan out there. DivineCaroline counts down what they consider to be the top 10 most ridiculous diets out there. Some of their picks include the Cookie Diet, the Subway Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, and the Apple Cider Vinegar Diet.

Personally, I think that if you want to lose weight you should go old school. Eat healthfully, exercise, and get plenty of rest. There's a reason that advice like that has been around for years and years -- it works. It may take time to lose weight, but in the long run that's the best way to do it. Fads come and go. They rarely have lasting power and while many of them give you quick results, it's often difficult to maintain the loss.

If you're considering a diet plan, take a look at AOL Health's Diets A-Z.

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Though she only gave birth a few months ago, gorgeous TV star Jaime Pressly has been dazzling the red carpet with her svelte post-baby body. The secret to her success? The Cabbage Soup Diet. The My Name is Earl star has done it twice since giving birth. The diet is a long-standing favourite among people trying to lose weight fast, and it seems to work quite well ... if you can follow it, that is.

But for those who think you can get Jaime's shape by simply eating cabbage soup, consider this. She worked out a lot. As in two hours a day, five days a week. So I think she certainly deserves her physique. What do you think?

(via the Skinny Website.)

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Brian's post from a few days ago on the Martha's Vineyard Diet and the promise that you can lose 21 Pounds in 21 Days has been one of ur more popular pages, and rightly so -- who wouldn't be curious at the idea of losing 21 pounds in 3 weeks? As for whether it's legit, well, that's another story.

AOL's fitness team has put together a review of the Martha's Vineyard Diet. In a nutshell, here's what they have to say about it:

• It's not healthy -- the diet doesn't include adequate amounts of protein and fat
• The book makes many false claims -- including the claim that you can build muscle on the diet, which, without protein or resistance training, isn't possible. And anyway, who would have the energy to go to the gym on this type of eating plan?
• The author also makes outrageous and frankly bizarre claims that have nutritionists and doctors confused. An example? She suggests jumping on a trampoline to relieve pressure to your lymphatic system
• The 'science' behind the diet is unsubstantiated
  
• My favourite part of the review: "Take the Cabbage Soup Diet, substitute cabbage with a variety of other veggies and fruits, then throw in an uncomfortable enema and you have the Martha's Vineyard Diet"
  

Hmph. That's definitely some food (or juice) for thought. Do you agree? Disagree?

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Ah, diets. We try them on and throw them off like clothing. They are as disposable and transient as this season's MUST HAVE hand bag or shoes. Research has shown over and over again how often diets fail, how many of them are only designed to work in the short term if they do at all. Yet we keep coming back to them like two people in a bad relationship who just can't let go, setting ourselves up for even more of the same disappointment we've already encountered.

Remember the cabbage soup diet? It was the diet that prescribed making cabbage soup from a specific recipe and eating it at least twice a day for at least a month if not forever. As you can imagine, even for those of us who like cabbage soup, it got old really fast.

Or, how about the high-protein diet, the Atkins Diet, or as some colleagues refer to it, the Diet of Doom? It's the one where you eat relatively little else other than meat--at least, that's how most users of the diet interpreted it. My mom was one such user. Being on the Atkins Diet was her excuse to have bacon--yes, bacon, fried, artery-clogging, bacon--at every meal. Gross. Results? Well, she did initially lose some weight, most of which she appears to have gained back. Miraculously none of her other health issues were resolved and she got really tired of eating so much darned meat. Although she's still obsessed by bacon.

She, and most others who try dieting, "fell off" the diet sooner rather than later. I've been subject to this phenomenon myself. I went in for the whole low-carb thing. I remember sitting at lunch over a bunless veggie burger lamenting the death of my tastebuds. Sure, I lost some weight, but it was more because the food I ate totally lacked in appeal rather than through some miraculous chemical process in my system. Turns out I also wasn't eating enough. I ate probably half the calories I was supposed to be eating, so I was tired and cranky all the time. The low-carb diet should have been named the "thinner but meaner" diet. And naturally I fell off. I think it was around the time I reignited my love affair with Little Italy.

There are many reasons why dieters fall off the dieting wagon. Those can be found here. So what's a person to do? If dieting is an endless cycle of withholding and disappointment, how can we resolve to get back on the wagon to stay, to break the cycle of falling off? My answer is a simple one: we're on the WRONG wagon.

Several years ago I left the dieting wagon for the fitness wagon. It lurks nearby the diet wagon, seemingly in its shadow. The fitness wagon is an oasis in the desert of the diet wagon, able to be seen only by those who are willing to take on the LIFETIME COMMITMENT to being healthy. I found the oasis when I got tired of not being able to eat anything I really enjoyed eating, when rewarding myself for a dieting job done well made me feel guilty. I'd eat "right"--which is to say cabbage soup or basically NO carbs--all week, then treat myself with a scoop of ice cream on Saturday night and feel miserable for having given in. That was just irrational thinking, probably born of having not eaten enough!

I stopped reading about the latest fad diets, or whatever it was Jennifer Aniston was doing to keep so skeletally thin, and started reading about nutrition. I stopped looking at supermodels as my role models and considered how healthy, active and happy all the people running around the park by my house looked. They seemed to truly ENJOY huffing it around those 3.3 miles every day. Yes, they were out there nearly every day. I, feeling miserable, wanted what they had, and realized it was all within my grasp, if only I'd get on the right wagon.

You, too can find the fitness wagon. Start by promising yourself to never, ever, EVER go on a fad diet again. Stop thinking about how you compare to celebrities and whether or not you can run--or even walk--a mile. Stop telling yourself it's a good idea to eat cabbage soup or anything more than once a week and start hunting for healthy recipes you can make yourself. Most importantly, come to grips with the reality that fitness is not something that comes in a week, but is the cumulative work of a lifetime. Commit to fitness, not diets, and experience the oasis for yourself.

Do you remember the cabbage soup diet? Well, it's baaaack -- this time in pill form. The makers of said pill are claiming that the pill is "seven times more effective, three times more affordable, and 100 times more hunger-proof" than the original version of the diet, though how they came up with these numbers is beyond me. The original diet has been regarded as effective but hard to stick to because it limits what you eat quite a bit and gets boring quickly.

So how does it work? Basically, you have a glass of water and two pills 30 minutes before every meal. Supposedly, that will fill you up quite a bit and you will eat less, or nothing at all. Apparently, the capsules equal six bowls of soup. Their website doesn't seem to specify what you can eat besides the pills and frankly, I'm not convinced that two pills and a glass of water is going to fill me up.

What do you think?

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