With Thanksgiving right around the corner, many people will indulge in holiday favorites and then start worrying about their waistlines. So we have the dish on a diet that could be on your to-do list.

Plastered on magazine covers, fad diets and quick fixes are all around us. 

"The Zone, going with no carbs," says Stephanie Williams. "I think there's just a lot of really crazy diets out there."

"There's a grapefruit diet, there's Atkins diet, the low-carb diet," says Hy-Vee Registered Dietitian Sarah Nelson. "They hear the weight loss and that is what they zone in on."    

"In our world today, it's all about the bigger the better," says Four Seasons personal trainer Teresa Mohwinkle.

In a country plagued by obesity and ruled by convenience, we got the skinny on one way people are dropping the pounds: alternate day fasting. Research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition studied the short-term effects of ADF in mice and humans. The key: feasting one day and fasting the next, only consuming water, calorie-free drinks, and gum. Subjects lost weight, but are the side effects worth it?
    
"You may become really irritable, you may not be able to focus, you might get dizzy because your blood sugars are low," says Nelson.

"I just think if people are sluggish it's going to be even harder for them to come in and work out after a long day at work," says Mohwinkle.

And the studies don't mention the other half of the weight-loss equation.
 
"You need to eat a variety of healthy foods and exercise in order to burn off extra calories and to get that weight loss you're looking for," says Nelson.
  
"You need every component to lead a healthy lifestyle in my opinion," says Mohwinkle.    

The biggest concern -- longterm sustainability. And experts on both sides agree:

"I would be really cautious as to who i would recommend this diet to, even if there was research, further research that proved this diet was acceptable," says Nelson.

"I wouldn't recommend it to anybody myself, especially not knowing long term research on it," says Mohwinkle.    

They say forget the fads and focus on your future, one day at a time.

"People are looking for a quick fix and with diet and exercise it's a lifelong commitment," says Mohwinkle.

Nelson says 95 % of people who diet gain back the weight and then some, after they stop dieting. The studies we looked into concluded ADF would be difficult to sustain for long periods of time. Researchers suggested adding one small meal on the fasting day.

To read the research yourself, check out these studies:

Alternate-day fasting in nonobese subjects: effects on body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/81/1/69)

Alternate-day fasting and chronic disease prevention: a review of human and animal trials (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/86/1/7)

Reported by Erika Thomas. You can contact her at ethomas@kmeg.com.