If you are currently following a diet to lose weight, there are a few important things to think about. While many fat loss diets will work quite well, there are some that throw up some major red flags. While the promises it offers you in terms of weight loss may be tempting, if the overall diet lacks certain requirements, the results you experience will be short-lived.

Here are the major weight loss diet red flags that you should be aware of and avoid at all costs.

Eliminate all foods you enjoy

First of all, and this is important in terms of adherence to the weight loss diet, if you cut out all the foods you enjoy, you won’t be successful.

Let’s be real: deprivation sucks. Period. If you can’t eat any of the foods you enjoy, or even find something tasty, you’ll have a hard time following this diet as designed.

Either you will cheat from time to time or you will just give it up completely and regain the weight you already had.

Unless that diet contains foods that you feel satisfied eating, it is best to skip it.

Diets that eliminate entire food groups

Next on our list of problems when it comes to your diet is a diet that eliminates entire food groups.

This goes hand in hand with the above, but consider a more nutritional side of things.

Even though you’re trying to lose weight, if your weight-loss diet cuts out an entire food group, chances are you’re not getting the nutrition you need.

While losing those ten pounds is obviously something you want to happen, if it’s a long-term sacrifice to your health, you might want to rethink this.

Diets that do not offer enough protein

Third, if you don’t get enough protein in your diet, it’s best to stop right away.

When we diet, we are at much greater risk of losing precious muscle mass; muscle mass which will cause your basal metabolic rate to increase, allowing you to eat more calories every day and still maintain your weight.

Ideally, you should be getting 1.5 grams of protein for every pound of lean body weight you have, but at a minimum, I would recommend one gram per pound. If you’re not getting this, you’d better make some changes, quick.

Diets that do not allow ‘life’

Finally, the last thing needed for a diet to be effective is simply the granting of a few occasional indulgences. If you can never go out for a fancy meal with your partner or eat a piece of birthday cake on your best friend’s birthday, this really isn’t all that healthy of a diet.

Sure, there will be people who choose not to and are perfectly fine with that, but any good diet will only require you to be ‘in’ 90% of the time, leaving the other 10% of the time for ‘fun’ foods.

If you can’t get results without 100% adherence at all times, the diet isn’t quite right.

So take a look at your current diet, does it meet the bar?