At any given time, more than 100 million Americans are on a diet. That’s close to one-third of the entire U.S population. Best-selling diet books continue to be released and Americans spend more than $60 billion in attempts to lose weight. Every newly released diet seems to have its own group of ardent followers and outspoken opponents and despite their best efforts to get it right, permanent weight loss continues to be elusive. Many people who decide to go on a diet don’t choose any particularly branded diet, although there are so many branded diets in existence, they may be following one of them without realizing it. When the average person goes on a custom diet, they usually choose to omit their opinion of unhealthy foods and replace them with lower calorie alternatives. For example, making less trips to Burger King and replacing it with a homemade stir-fry.
Al though there are so many branded diets in existence, they all seem to have two traits in common. They all cut calories and they offer their own rule on the right proportion of the macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat). In relation to macronutrients, most diets usually fall into one of three categories. They’re either low in fat, low in carbohydrates or recommend a percentage ratio between all 3. For example, the percentage ratio for the zone diet is 40% carbohydrates, 30% fat and 30% protein. Diets have their own methods of helping you meet their calorie and macronutrient requirements. Some are harder than others and the easier methods tend to be more expensive. The harder methods give you the freedom to choose your own meals which not only require learning how to cook but taking the time to do food research and learn their health profile.
Some of the easier and more expensive diets like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem’s take away all the guess work by simply having you by their pre-packaged meals and having it delivered to your home. Most supermarkets also sell meals from these companies in the frozen dinner section. Other diets fall in the middle of not being too hard and not being too expensive by simply telling you what foods you must restrict and certain foods you must eat more of and by simply following this rule you’ll automatically cut calories and meet macronutrient requirements. These diet books usually have their own recipe recommendations to help you get started. Examples of these diets are The Atkin’s diet, The Ornish Diet and the Paleo Diet.
Some diets, like the DASH (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) diet, gluten-free and the Mediterranean diet are better described as “eating plans” because everything is allowed in moderation, they don’t set specific caloric parameters and they focus on other factors to promote weight loss. Advocates of diets tend to have their own nutrition-based explanation to why their diet is superior. For example, higher protein intake promotes fullness, satisfies hunger for longer periods of time and helps prevent muscle loss, or a lower fat diet promotes cardiovascular health. The common problem with most branded diets is that diet authors usually can’t give concrete evidence of weight being maintained even for as long as one year after the diet ends.
There have been many comprehensive diet studies on some of the most popular branded diets and one of their randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that results seem to always be the same. All diets seem to cause weight gain after the diet ends. Low carbohydrate diets seem to offer a higher rate of weight loss than low fat diets but in an average of one year after each diet ends, the total amount of weight lost seems to be about the same.
In my opinion, diets are not the answer. The first 3 letters in the word “diet” is “die” and I think that’s a more accurate assessment, but based on their popularity, it seems that they’re here to stay, so here are some important factors to consider if you plan on going on a diet. The first and most important factor is nutrition density. Any diet that results in a sacrifice in nutrition to lose weight should be avoided, so be mindful of food quality in relation to the diet. Hunger is usually caused when your body is malnourished which means two things will happen if you’re diet sacrifices nutrition. You’ll always be feeling hungry and miserable due to malnutrition and once the diet ends, you’ll gain the weight back and possibly more than before due to damage caused to your metabolism from weeks of malnutrition.
Choose a diet that offers good adherence. A diet easier to adhere to is usually a diet offering the right balance of nutrition density and a comfortable maintainable calorie deficit. You won’t be on the diet forever, so a good adherable diet should be easy to convert to a lifestyle after the diet ends so that you’re not regaining the weight. There are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if the diet is right for you. What is it about this diet that most appeals to you? Based on your research, what changes do you think you’d need to make to follow this diet? On a scale from 0-10 with 0 being “not at all” and 10 being “absolutely”, how ready are you to make those changes right now? On the same 0-10 scale, how confident are you that you can sustain these changes for at least the next year? Each year, the U.S News and World Report considers scientific evidence and expert feedback to rank 32 of the world’s most popular diets.
Here are the ranking criteria used to conduct this study:
- Best diets overall
- Best diets for weight loss
- Best commercial diets
- Best diabetes diets
- Best heart healthy diets
- Best diets for healthy eating
- Easiest diets to follow
- Best plant-based diets
If you need help choosing the right diet that meets your needs, you can view these rankings by going to
http://health.usnews.com/best-diet
