When it comes to weight loss, you often have two choices: diets that work, but are hard to do every day and diets that are easy, but don't work in the long run. When looking at various diets, choose those based on sound health principles that you can live with.
Diets That Work
Your weight depends on calories. The calories you consume have to be less than the calories your body needs, so that your body will use the energy you have been storing as fat. This can be done by increasing exercise, which causes your body to use more calories, or it can be done by consuming less calories through your diet. According to the "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010," most people lose weight because of a reduction in calories consumed. Therefore, a diet can work if it significantly reduces your caloric intake.
Diets You Can Live With
Some diets advocate for you to reduce calories in food groups that your body needs for nutrition. Others encourage you to lose weight by just eating one or two foods. Severely limiting your diet may severely limit your nutrition. Diets that you can live with need to follow the recommended dietary guidelines. Not only can you suffer from nutritional deficiencies, but your body may crave more calories in an effort to obtain the nutrition it's lacking.
Mayo Clinic Diet
The Mayo Clinic Diet is a weight-loss method is based on research and clinical experience. It is based on the principal of focusing your diet on low-energy-density food. These types of foods are low in calories yet high in volume and tend to also have high water and fiber content. This diet has two phases. The first phases is designed to jump-start your weight loss by helping you lose about 6 to 10 lbs. The second phase is the life-long phase of changing your lifestyle to lose a healthy 1 to 2 lbs. a week.
Full Plate Diet
The book, "Full Plate Diet," was featured on the bestsellers list of "The New York Times" and "USA Today." It focuses on foods that have a high fiber content. It is broken into three phases. In phase 1, you eat foods high in fiber, stop eating when you are no longer hungry and increase water intake to at least six glasses a day. In phase 2, you increase fiber and eat it at the beginning of the meal, try a wider variety of high-fiber foods and increase your water intake to eight to 10 glasses. In phase 3, you eat 40 g or more of fiber per day while decreasing high calorie foods like meat and dairy.
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