As the nutritionist for "The Biggest Loser," Cheryl Forberg, RD,[1] knows dieters are looking for a quick fix. But she also knows that the limited ingredients, very small number of calories and strange fads marketed to people looking to shed pounds just aren't going to cut it.


In a recent appearance on HuffPost Live, Forberg dished on why fad diets just don't work, starting with the word itself. "I don't like to use the word diet," she says in the clip above, "because a diet is temporary."


With her clients, she says she focuses on eating calories, so options like juicing are out, as well as the quality of calories. "The quality of your calories is just as important as the quantity," she says, "if not more so."


Watch the clip above for more of Forberg's thoughts, plus her top picks for the foods you should keep in your pantry for weight loss success in 2014.



Also on HuffPost:




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  • Liz Taylor: Saturated Fat Galore


    Liz Taylor's diet reportedly consisted of <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/08/the-liz-taylor-diet.html" target="_hplink">such unimaginable dishes</a> as cottage cheese mixed with sour cream, steak and peanut butter sandwiches, and breakfasts made up solely of dry toast.

    Not only would such a diet have an unhealthy amount of saturated fat, it also inverts the way we should be eating: studies show that a hearty breakfast helps dieters consume <a href="http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/lose-weight-eat-breakfast" target="_hplink">fewer calories over the course of the day</a>.




  • Audrey Hepburn: Eschew Protein


    Hepburn reportedly <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1053246/What-happened-I-spent-week-living-like-Audrey-Hepburn.html" target="_hplink">kept her famous figure gamine-like</a> with a steady diet of fruits and vegetables, occasional pasta and dark chocolate, but sources of protein were nowhere to be found on her menu.




  • Lord Byron: Restrict To Excess


    The Victorian writer was famous for more than <em>Don Juan</em> and his outlandish love affairs with nobility. In his time, due to a horror of growing overweight, Byron lived on "biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar," <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16351761" target="_hplink">according to a story in BBC Magazine</a>.




  • Marilyn Monroe: Start With Raw Eggs


    "I've been told that my eating habits are absolutely bizarre, but I don't think so," the actress <a href="http://glamournet.com/legends/Marilyn/monthly/shape4.html" target="_hplink">told <em>Pageant</em> Magazine</a> in 1952.

    She went on to describe her typical breakfast: a glass of heated milk with two raw eggs stirred into it. Besides the nutritional imbalance and heightened cholesterol of such a first meal, there's also a risk of bacterial contamination.




  • Karl Lagerfeld: Yes To Diet Soda, No To Exercise


    In his book, <em>The Karl Lagerfeld Diet</em>, the fashion designer extols the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/fashion/2005/06/fashion_plates.html" target="_hplink">virtues of Diet Coke to stave off hunger</a>. Of course, we know that diet soda has a range of ill health effects, including <em>weight gain</em>, but that doesn't stop Lagerfeld, who admits his main objective is to fit into slim-tailored clothing.

    Meanwhile the designer and his co-author, a doctor, eschew exercise, claiming that it increases appetite and prevents weight loss.




  • Maria Callas: Experimental Iodine Treatment


    Legend has it that the famed opera singer swallowed a tapeworm to lose about 100 pounds, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/24/italy.arts" target="_hplink">but her biographer insists</a> that she didn't do so. Instead, she sought treatment for worms that she may have picked up eating on of her favorite dishes -- steak tartar.

    But the diva did try an experimental and dangerous weight loss system, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/04/image/la-ig-callas-20100404" target="_hplink">according to sister-in-law Pia Meneghini, speaking to the Los Angeles <em>Times</em></a>:

    <blockquote>She underwent a dangerous treatment from a group of Swiss doctors. She was administered large doses of dry thyroid extract and hormones speeding up her metabolism, eliminating excess fat. Impatient with the results...she had iodine applied directly into the thyroid...It gave her an enviable figure but altered her metabolism, her nervous system, and also damaged her voice.</blockquote>