A school dance. A wedding. A birthday party. A New Year’s Resolution. Whatever the reason is, dieting makes its way into people’s lives at one point or another. However, some people pick diets that have more risks than benefits. Dieting should be a way to improve your health, not hurt it.

Some diets are targeted toward people who want to lose weight fast without exercise, and often involves them cutting off essential macromolecules like proteins and carbohydrates. These bad diets are called fad diets. These are the diets you should NOT try:

• High-protein diets
  This diet is typically used when one wants to build muscle (think about all those movie tropes where the big buff guy eats raw eggs). While eating a lot of protein does help with muscle building, if you exceed the amount of proteins in your body from other nutrients, it can put strain on your kidneys and liver.

• Liquid diets
  The consequences of this are pretty self explanatory. By only drinking liquids, you aren’t getting the nutrients your body needs. Also, once you go back to eating food you’ll just gain all the weight you “lost.”

• Alkaline diets
  Any diet that requires you to cut out nutrients is not healthy. The alkaline diet requires you to cut out any processed foods, as well as meats, dairy, caffeine, and sweets, and instead replace them with fruits and veggies. This is an attempt to balance out your body’s pH levels; however, your body is already pretty efficient at balancing pH on its own.

• Blood type diet
  If you actually know your blood type, that’s pretty lucky of you. Some people claim that eating foods that react with your blood type will help you lose weight. There isn’t scientific proof to this, and according to your blood type, you might not be able to eat certain foods anyway.

There are countless more fad diets that a quick Google search can direct you to, but the bottomline is that these diets are unhealthy and won’t help you get to your goal. A healthy diet is essentially limiting the portions you take in, picking healthier foods, and avoiding saturated fats. Also, don’t forget that no weight loss is permanent or effective without exercising; start at 30 minutes a day and increase gradually. Try things that you find fun like zumba, kickboxing, or running. Dieting shouldn’t be something you feel pressured to do, but something you choose to do for yourself, and with the right diet, you might stay motivated to continue it for as long as you need.