With fad diets like the notorious Cabbage Soup Diet competing for your attention, it can be easy to forget that losing weight using a balanced and healthy diet is the way to go. The results you get from fad diets are often temporary, and these diets can be dangerous to your health. Following balanced and healthy diets can help you achieve a healthy body weight and reduce your risk of chronic disease.
Weight Watchers
Weight Watchers is a well-known balanced diet plan. The basic tenets of Weight Watchers is portion control. It allows you to eat many treats, like brownies and cupcakes, but gives you tools to limit consumption. Additionally, Weight Watchers meetings and its website allows you to connect with other people trying to lose weight. Having social support can help you stick to your diet for the long term.
Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet is a balanced eating plan that's based on the diets of those in Mediterranean countries, like Portugal and Greece. The basics of the Mediterranean include staying physically active, limiting fast food and following a plant based diet. The traditional Mediterranean diet includes large amounts of healthy foods, like nuts, olive oil and lean meats. Switching to from a typical Western diet to the the Mediterranean diet may reduce your risk of heart disease, MayoClinic.com notes.
DASH Diet
The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet was initially designed to help people lower their blood pressure. However, following this balanced eating plan may also reduce your risk of diabetes, stroke and certain types of cancer, MayoClinic.com reports. The pillars of the DASH diet include limiting sodium intake, consuming large amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables, and eating three servings of fat-free dairy per day.
The Zone Diet
The Zone Diet is a moderate-carbohydrate eating plan designed by nutrition scientist Barry Sears. Although lower in carbohydrates than some other diets, it contains more carbohydrates than the low-carb Atkins or South Beach diets. Sears advises Zone dieters to consume healthy carbohydrates from sources like beans, vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Following the Zone Diet can reduce inflammation, an underlying cause of obesity and heart disease, Zonediet.com states.
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