More then 60% of all adults in the united states are overweight. That’s 127 million people, who weigh too much. I know you don’t want to be one of them, and probably most people would like to lose some weight, so why don’t they do it?

I think they try, and follow diet after diet, only to have none of them work out. That’s because there’s something essentially wrong with all of these diets. They focus on making you lose as much weight as fast as possible, and give no thought to proper health or nutrition – the result? They work great for a week, and then you gain more weight then ever.

However, there is a solution. A small number of tell-tale signs can let you know whether the diet you’re looking at is the real deal, or just another fad. Here, I’m going to show you what to look for, and how to know if a diet will really work – before you spend a penny on it!

The very first thing to take a look at is the guarantee they provide. If there isn’t any guarantee, or they only offer you a very short one, don’t take it. However long they promise it will take for you to notice the effects, I suggest you make sure the guarantee is for double that long. You don’t want to have the diet fail you right after the guarantee expires.

Besides that, take a look at how long they say it will take to lose weight. Surprisingly, the longer is better here, because it means the diet is more likely to be real. If they tell you that you can take of 5lb in the first week, then that’s believable. 10lb and I’d raise an eyebrow. Anything more then that is very suspicious.

It’s just not safe to lose weight fast, and even if you did manage to drop, say, 20 pounds in a week you could never hold yourself there. The very methods that got rid of all that weight would either cause you to put it all on again afterwards, or make you very sick. But hey, as long as that happens after you’ve bought their product, what do they care? They can just sell you a new book on how to get healthy again after dieting, which will probably work just as well.

Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, I know one person who was 60lb overweight. She made the effort to go to the gym every day for three hours, and lose 20lb in a week. So I know it can be done, but these diets programs are not telling you to go work out for hours every day, they are telling you to eat, and often to eat more then you normally would. Does that seem smart to you? No, of course not. And it isn’t.

Any diet telling you not to worry about the amount you eat is either straight out lying to you, or they want you to eat food so unhealthy that your body can’t use any of it, and it just gets passed straight through. You’ll certainly lose weight then, but you’ll be starving, and if you keep going you’ll eventually kill yourself with it.

If any dieting scheme promises slow constant weight loss, with a reasonable timeframe, then it’s probably real. If they offer a good mix of workouts and recipes, then it just might be worth giving a try. Just make sure you stay clear of anything telling you to avoid a food group, no god can come of that. There’s no magic bullet for weight loss.