Intermittent fasting or apple diet? On social networks, influencers in search of visibility are becoming guinea pigs for the most popular slimming diets of the moment to lose 5, 10 or 30 kilos: a “deadly” and risky trend according to the specialists interviewed by AFP.
“You wake up, and you eat absolutely nothing, then it’s finally dinner time, and then you can go crazy and eat whatever you want!”, assures a young woman in a TikTok video in English “ liked” more than 45,000 times, stuffing himself with cold meats, potatoes and sandwiches after a morning of total fasting.
A French influencer recommends the same technique, accompanied by an “appetite suppressant” capsule for which she gives a “promo code”. A few months earlier, she claimed to have lost 3 kilos in three days by eating only apples.
Often extreme diets designed to attract attention, deplores nutritionist Pierre Azam, founder of the obesity observatory. The algorithms complete this already perverse system, taking the Internet user “from regime X to regime Y”, he notes.
“People, and particularly young people who want to lose weight, find themselves caught in a dilemma with information that is sometimes contradictory or cumulative,” believes the doctor.
The practice of nighttime intermittent fasting, for example, which consists of respecting a 16-hour break between dinner and the first meal of the following day, “can be interesting” according to nutritionist doctor Arnaud Cocaul, of the AP-HP, “ but is not for everyone.
“We cannot copy and paste the same stereotypical diet to people who are overweight due to stress, others who take medication…”, he notes.
95% of diets fail
Dr Cocaul receives patients every day “who pile on the pounds and diets” and recalls that “95% of diets are doomed to failure over five years according to an ANSES study”. “People regain all the weight they lost.”
“Most diets are based on prohibition and frustration, and the body hates being violated,” he explains. The nutritionist prefers the American Weight Watchers program, based on a food rebalancing approach rather than on bans.
Dr Azam warns against the “deadly” injunctions of certain Internet users, focused solely on “quick and easy, effortless” weight loss, in the image of the consumer society, outside of any public health concerns. “.
“Our body is alive, it is full of proteins. If we wean ourselves too much, we risk losing lean mass, therefore attacking the constitution of the organs and developing hormonal disorders, digestive disorders, long-term pathologies,” he warns.
He is also concerned about the effect of these discourses on fragile people, who can fall into “somewhat anorexic or bulimic tendencies, with tendencies towards eating disorders”.
In the event of overweight, he reminds us, the first contact is the attending physician, or even a specialist if necessary. But above all, doctors are pleading for “better dietary education, which takes place from the first 1,000 days of life, and even begins in utero”.
