5 TikTok diet trends that will harm your body. Dieting is a never ending homework for all of us. We are always looking for the simplest and easiest way to loss weight and social media is the solutions.

Social media especially TikTok provide a fast and short information rather than reading through articles. TikTok diet trend like “What I eat in a day” videos gain a lot of likes and shares due to audiences can use it as a reference. BUT there are hidden dangers behind every trending diet trends.

Diet Juicing or Smoothies

Ah yes. Drinking juice or smoothies that helps with your diet journey. Especially with the advice of drink the juice first thing in the morning or 30 minutes before consuming any food. Or claims that it can help in lose weight or detox.

Drinking juice is harmless as the trend has took root in social media but as far as sciences goes there aren’t any magical benefits from drinking juice. It helps provide some vitamins that you may not get in a day but dieting is a no go. Why?

JUCING HARMS YOUR BODY! Juicing is not the best weight loss strategy due to the fact that it can cause diabetes which add more sugar (fructose) to your diet.

Some influencers will ask that you drink the juice for the whole day which cause you to have severe calories deficit and fast weight loss. Your juice only has around 200 calories while for female needs 2000 calories while male needs 2500. This only last for a few days since it is hard to continues practice it. Even you have manage to do it, your body will be severe lacking of other vitamin, minerals and proteins.

This cause you to binge eating or consume much more food than the recommended quantity when the diet is over. Since your body is screaming for nutrition. You will ended up with weight gain once more.

Eat fruits as it is. You will feel fuller since fiber make your stomach feels full. You also will intake less calories as well.

“What I eat in a day”

” What I eat in a day ” videos should not be your permeant guide to diet. Each and everyone has a different need for nutrients and calories. Influencers understands THEIR OWN BODY NOT YOURS. What healthy for them may not be healthy for another.

Fail to address individual nutritional needs

Influencers fail to tell you that you need to consider your activity levels, health conditions, how much water you drink, your stress level, and your environment.

For example if you are living at a cold temperature place, you will eat much more to let your body to burn fat to keep yourself warm. While in warmer countries, you don’t need to eat much but need to drink more water to keep yourself hydrate all day.

Plus, it will cause more problems to your digestive system. Like irritable bowel syndromes. The trigger is the food that you are consume. For example, if the influencer said that chili could help you to loss weight which will help with your metabolism but you don’t have chili often as a part of your diet. In the end, it will cause you to have diarrhea. Consequently, you might fail to meet your nutrition needs and calories that you need to function in a day.

2. Food comparison traps

Whenever you scroll TikTok and you saw a video that the person is skinny and healthy. The food that they eating is full of greens, low carbs and no fried food. You will start to compare yourself how you eat and what are you curranty having.

Having a delicious fried chicken for your lunch is not a sin. All you need is to control how much you are going to eat. Eating one or two fried chicken per day is fine as it is but if you are eating 5 to 10 fried chicken in a day then cut your portions down.

Additionally, food connects people, our families and culture which gets ignored or minimized in these videos. Plus, it will trigger eating disorder. It is not worth to sacrifice your enjoyment towards food just to slim down a few extra weight.

Cutting out carbs and healthy snacks

Cutting Out Carbs

There is a reasons why carbs are part of the food pyramid. It help provide energy that you need through out the day. Cutting them out fully through diet will not solve your weight gain problems.

Look and reflect what foods that you are choosing to eat during diet. As an example, if your daily diet consist of drinking boba tea (38 g) and a lot of sweet snacks. You intake a lot more sugar than the recommended amount, 50 g per day. If you are active, then you have been using it as a energy source if not the excess sugar that you consume will turn into fat (glycogen).

Or even your meals consists of a lot of fried foods in one sitting or even regularly eating fast food even eating huge amount of food cause the excess calories. The high oil and sugar content cause you to gain those few extra kg.

Healthy Snacks

There’s a lot of TikTok recipe claims that they are healthy. As an example dark chocolate dip with almond or granola, They are full of hidden sugar. You may not even know what cause you to gain more weight and not losing it.

Another popular diet snack or meal is overnight oats. According to Lindsey (2022), overnight oats are healthy but in the end it depends on a person’s eating habits. Most overnight oats recipes has 215 calories but it is not enough to keep an adult to feel full for a meal. In the end, it will cause you to feel hungry and looking for snacks.

Plus, they don’t contain enough protein. An adult need 20 – 30 grams of protein in a meal and a lot of overnight oats recipes don’t even meet the minimum requirement of 20g of protein.

Pick up on snacks like almond, greek yogurt, edamame and more. BUT eat them individually rather than mix and match.

Sliming Products are dangerous!

Sliming products that are marketed in Malaysia are not regulated by all means. Most of them did not disclose about their ingredients as well. Without knowing the ingredients being used in a product, you are being at risk of health.

There are Malaysians who died/hospitalized due to unregulated slimming products produce by social media influencers like Aliff Syukri Kamarzaman, founder of D’Herbs Holdings and Hasmiza Othman, better known as Dato Vida alike. According to CNA Insider (2022), anonymous interviewer, Fauzi who has problems with his weight bought Choco FIT in the hopes to solve his weight problems. As he consume the Choco FIT, he start to has problems.

He start to feel the side effects including chronic headaches and gastric problems. The influencer who sold him the product ask him to continue taking it. He start to feel a “sharp pain” in his chest and went to the hospital to check up. In the end, doctor diagnosed him as having a severe case of acid reflux. One of Choco FIT ingredients, Guarana. It contains caffeine, which can cause acid reflux, or heartburn when consume too much. Choco FIT got ban in the mid-2019 but the products still on sale on LAZADA, Facebook and TIKTOK.