What Are Some Guidelines To Evaluate The Safety & Efficacy Of A New Diet Plan?

A diet plan can help facilitate weight loss if it provides a safe and sustainable approach. No magical fast or easy weight loss plans exist. To lose weight, you simply must burn more calories than you consume. A diet plan can help give you strategies and guidelines to make mastering this equation easier, but it cannot change the fundamentals of weight loss.

Promised Rate of Loss

Diet plans promising drastic results, like a loss of 20 pounds in a week, are unlikely to be safe or realistic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend sticking to a rate of weight loss that does not exceed 2 pounds per week. If you assume this gradual rate of weight loss, you are more likely to keep off the weight long term.

Adequate Calories

A safe and effective diet plan allows for enough calories to support daily functioning and nutritional needs. Eating fewer than 1,200 calories per day may cause nutritional deficiencies, low energy and an inability to adhere to the plan, notes Joanne Larson, R.D., on Ask the Dietitian.

Balanced Nutrition

Many diet schemes overemphasize a specific "super food" or nutrient or ban complete food groups. As noted by the American Heart Association, this kind of guidance goes against the basics of good nutrition, which call for a balanced diet filled with a variety of foods. Look for a diet plan that permits you to include, in moderation, everything you enjoy eating. You may need to cut back on some foods that lack nutrition and contain a high number of calories, such as soda, candy and sweets, but you are much more likely to stick with a diet plan if it does not put your favorite foods off limits.

Works for Your Lifestyle

Researchers from Tufts University in Massachusetts reported in a 2005 article in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" that dieters' adherence to their chosen plan is the main determining factor in the diet's effectiveness regardless of the configuration of macronutrients in a plan---low fat, high protein or point based. Make sure that the diet plan you choose fits into your lifestyle and permits you to enjoy your favorite foods. A diet that involves complex recipes when you hate to cook or that banishes complete food groups may discourage adherence and prevent the diet from being effective.

Long-Term Changes

An effective diet plan offers you tools to help you maintain your weight for the rest of your life. Diet plans that require you to drink a specific meal-replacement shake for weeks on end or direct you to make short-term drastic changes to your eating habits usually result in a quick regain of any weight lost as soon as you return to your regular eating style. Seek out a diet plan that offers strategies for choosing healthier foods, controlling portion sizes, making lower-calorie meals and increasing physical activity.