If you're looking for a great proven diet, you're not alone. About 50 million Americans -- one in six -- start a weight-loss program each year, according to Colorado State University. However, most people don't keep the weight off permanently -- in fact, 19 out of 20 eventually regain all the weight they lost. Fortunately, you have some options when it comes to great proven diets.
Diet Basics
You probably know the drill: to lose weight, you need to eat less and exercise more often. Weight loss and permanent weight maintenance involves expending more calories than you consume and then preventing yourself from reverting back to your old habits, according to Colorado State University. Many people can diet for a few months, only to resume unhealthy eating and regain all their weight. Great proven diets involve permanent lifestyle changes.
Low-Fat Diets
Low-fat diets help you lose weight by encouraging you to focus on lower-calorie fruits, vegetables and whole grains instead of on high-calorie fats, meats and fatty junk food, according to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The trick to making a low-fat diet work for you appears to be moving at a slow and steady pace, rather than trying to drop a lot of weight quickly, the medical school says. That encourages you to make permanent low-fat lifestyle changes that enable you to keep the weight off.
Low-Carb Diets
Low-carb diets can offer you quick results: low carb dieters tend to lose weight more quickly than low-fat dieters, according to Harvard Medical School. However, they can maintain their weight loss if they follow the maintenance plans typically provided with low-carb great proven diets. Problems arise, however, if you follow a low-carb diet for quick weight loss and then revert to your high-carb former habits as soon as you've lost the weight. In order to make low-carb work for you long-term, many of the great proven low-carb diets dictate how many grams of carbs you can eat to avoid gaining weight again.
Considerations
When searching for a great proven diet to follow, you should compare long-term success rates in addition to short-term success rates, according to Colorado State University. You also should consider which diet you're most likely to follow. You can get good results on both low-fat diets and low-carb diets, but if you're addicted to red meat, you might want to consider a low-carb diet, and if you'd rather have a salad than a steak, you're probably better-suited to follow a low-fat diet. No matter which diet you choose, you should consult your doctor before you start for a complete checkup.
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