What is the best diet program?
The best diet program is very much dependent upon your own personal goals. Searching for a diet program is likely to result in many programs saying they are the best. You need to understand what you’re looking for, and then go and find the right one. This article details how you might do that.
People fail to complete their diets due to several reasons including; chronic hunger due to restrictive calorie counting, choosing the wrong diet for their particular circumstances and social pressure.
People also break their diets due to physical effects such as:
- headaches
- fatigue
- brain fog
- food cravings
- emotional eating
Pick the right diet to achieve your goals. Make your diet fit your lifestyle goals, not the other way around. If you pick extreme goals, you will have to endure extreme dieting strategies. Be realistic.
You should pick diets that contain foods that you enjoy, if possible. Definitely do not pick the sort of diet that you don’t think you can stick to.
A 2019 ranking by US News and other polls by nutritionists around the globe ranked the best:
The Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean Diet consistently ranks as the best diet overall. If has many health benefits and a wide variety of food choices available on the diet.
People from Greece, Italy ate this before the 1960s. It includes a wide range of vegetables, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, seafood, olive oil.
A typical Mediterranean weight loss plan contains 1200 calories and helps you lose up to 2 pounds a week.
The Mediterranean diet is heart healthy, and lowers the risk of diabetes. If you like a little bit of wine, this might be the diet for you.
DASH Diet
DASH is an acronym for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The program was developer to lower blood pressure and reduce their risk for heart disease without using medication. The program emphasize:
- portion control
- restriction of sodium intake (no more than 1 teaspoon per day)
- largely vegetarian/vegan diet
- lean protein sources such as chicken and beans.
Food allowed on the DASH diet include:
- grains such as rice
- pasta
- bread
- vegetables such as leafy greens
- tomatoes
- carrots
- lean protein including fish and chicken
- legumes
- fruits
- dairy
- nuts
- seeds
You can eat up to 2000 calories daily on the DASH diet. You will need to eat lower calories if you are trying to lose weight.
The DASH diet is high in Vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other nutrients that keep your body healthy and functioning optimally. It helps to reduce hypertension and your risk for heart disease, improves bone health, regulates insulin and prevents diabetes.
The diet works by raising your metabolism, reducing you intake of high carb food and sugars.
Intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting is an eating plan that emphasizes fasting for a certain period during the day and eating all your meals or calories within a restricted time window. There are several types of intermittent fasting including 16:8, 5:2 (where you eat normally for 5 days and eat only 500 calories for 2 days) and alternate-day fasting (where you fast on alternate days). The most common type of intermittent fasting is 16:8, which involves fasting for 16 hours and eating during an 8-hour window. Intermittent fasting works on the premise that metabolic activity is boosted during fasting. Besides, since you are eating during a limited time window, you are less likely to overeat which reduces your calorie intake and leads to weight loss.
You are allowed to eat regular, healthy meals during Intermittent fasting but you can choose to pair it with calorie restriction or low carb diets for faster weight loss.
Intermittent fasting has several health benefits including; quicker weight loss (up to 13 pounds in 8 weeks if you are obese), cellular repair, increase in high growth hormone which aids weight loss and has anti-aging benefits, reduction in insulin and inflammation and prevention of neurogenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.
Dukan diet
The Dukan diet is a 4 phase, low carb and high protein diet which has two weight loss phases and two maintenance phases. During the first phase of the diet, you focus on eating lean protein and a limited amount of oat bran for 5 days. The second phase reintroduces vegetables into the diet while the third and fourth phases allow for the consumption of low sugar fruits and some bread. Phase four specifically deals with maintenance and allows you to eat whatever you want as long as you follow a few simple guidelines such as having one all protein day a week and exercise for 20 minutes every day.
You are allowed different types of foods during different phases of the diet: For instance, during the first phase, you can choose from 72 types of lean protein including beef, chicken, fish, dairy and vegetarian options like soy and tempeh as well as small amounts of oat bran. During the second phase, you add non-starchy vegetables like leafy greens, onions, mushrooms, and others as well as some salad dressing and alcohol if you drink. The third phase sees the reintroduction of low sugar fruits, some grains, and a few treats. Finally, you can eat what you like during the fourth phase as long as you follow a few basic guidelines.
The Dukan diet has many health benefits including quicker weight loss (up to 33 pounds in ten weeks), higher metabolism and reduced hunger pangs.
Vegan Diet
While it is more of a way of life than a diet, the Vegan plan does have weight loss benefits while allowing people following the program to be kinder to animals and the environment overall. It eliminates all animal products, including meat, milk, eggs, gelatin, whey, casein, honey, and other animal byproducts and replaces them with plant options such as vegetables, pulses, seaweed, and others.
The vegan diet has several health benefits including weight loss because it is extremely low in fat and high in fiber which leaves you feeling fuller for longer, reduced riks for diabetes and heart disease and prevention of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
I’m biased, but this is the best diet program for me so far.
It does so much more than allow you to lose weight.
If you’re interested to know more, look here, and here.
And a healthy vegan based diet is also described here.
How to choose the best diet program for you
Choosing the right diet is essential for ensuring success and enjoying the benefits that come with different diet plans choosing the wrong diet, on the other hand, will mean that you take longer to achieve your goals and you may even find that you gain weight instead of losing it. Below are a few tips to help you choose the right diet for you:
- Choose a plan that allows you to eat a variety of foods: Avoid extremely low-calorie diet plans, as well as those that eliminate whole food groups like these, can leave you feeling ravenous and make you more likely to binge on the wrong foods. Instead, choose one that allows you to eat a variety of healthy but low-calorie foods that fill you up while helping you lose weight.
- Select one that fits your budget: Choose an affordable diet as well as one that allows you to eat locally available foods to avoid overspending. Feeling that you are spending too much on a diet can affect your motivation to stick to your plan and it may even cause you to abandon your efforts halfway if you run out of money.
- Look for something you can use in the long term: Eating healthy is a lifestyle and you should, therefore, look for a plan that allows you to lose weight and keep it off without having to take drastic steps such as dropping your daily calories to 500 or having to exercise for hours on end.
- Find a plan that allows you to eat your favorite foods: Avoid plans with long lists of forbidden foods that restrict your favorite treats such as a glass of wine or a piece of chocolate. This is because these plans can trigger binges because you feel you are being denied and your brain thinks you will never be allowed to have food that you love again.
Best Diet Program Conclusion
With so many diets on the market, it can be difficult to find the best diet program for you. However, there is plenty of information on and offline to help you make the right decision and ensure that you choose a plan that allows you to lose weight safely, effectively and into the long term. By using a few simple tips and strategies, you can find a plan that fits your particular situation and ensure that you lose weight and keep it off for good.
Additional Information
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1900510