There’s no one size fits all for choosing to lose weight by making changes to your diet. What works for your close friend or family might not work for you. But some diets can help you lose weight, combined with a healthy lifestyle.
Read on to see all types of popular diet plans, and choose the one that will likely work perfectly for you.
Popular Diet Plans Explained
1. Paleo Diet
This diet involves focusing on lean meats, fish, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. You’ll need to avoid dairy, sugar, legumes, and grains. The paleo diet is effective for weight loss, appetite control, and lowering blood pressure. But removing dairy, grains, and legumes from one’s diet can reduce the amount of calcium, fiber, and other nutrients that are considered vital to health.
2. Atkins Diet
This involves a four-phase plan. The Atkins diet starts by severely restricting carbohydrates consumption and gradually increasing the amount allowed. It stresses nutrient-rich foods and is useful for weight loss. However, it requires tracking carbs, fairly restrictive, especially in the first phases. Some may find the diet difficult to follow for a long time and may gain back lost weight as they reintroduce carbs, which means this diet might not work for everyone.
3. Dubrow Diet
This involves low carb and intermittent fasting. Stresses nutrient-rich foods and discourages processed foods.
The Dubrow Diet focuses on appearance over health, which is the motivating force for the diet in the first place. One disadvantage to this diet is that the calorie counts for some forms of the diet may be too low for health improvement or weight loss.
4. Whole 30
You’ll have to eat whole foods only; foods that are not processed or refined for 30 days. It encourages followers to connect food choice to how they feel, so that even after the 30 days they may continue to focus on nutrient-rich, non-processed foods. But it is restrictive, so it may be difficult to stick with for 30 days.
5. Carb Cycling
To follow this diet plan, you’ll be required to eat more carbs on days when you are physically active, fewer rest days. What this means is that you’ll eat carbs when you need them for fuel and your body will burn them up. Otherwise, all you are doing is storing up extra calories. One advantage to this diet is that it includes complex carbs; whole grains, fruits, and vegetables that most dietitians consider vital.
Remember that carb cycling usually gets associated with serious athletes. This approach to diet works best for people who engage in sporting activities or those who engage in an intense workout.
6. 17-Day Diet
Eat lean proteins and low glycemic-index fruits and vegetables. That’s all. It is flexible, balanced, and perfect for weight loss. Also, the 17-day diet includes regular exercise as part of the plan. The downside is in the process of meal preparation which may be time-consuming.
7. Mediterranean Diet
Reduce the intake of red meat, increase the consumption of fish, and use healthy fats like olive oil. This diet has been proven to be effective for heart health with no calorie counting, and food tracking.
It doesn’t work for weight loss, though many people can lose extra pounds if they focus on the foods listed on the diet avoiding empty-calorie processed foods and sugary drinks.
9. DASH Diet
This requires you to consume less sodium and be conscious of your nutrient intake. Though originally designed to prevent high blood pressure, DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) focuses on healthy choices in all food groups. It can also have a positive effect on people with other health conditions. Those who want to follow this diet will have to eliminate beef and bacon, which may not be convenient.
10. Keto Diet
The Keto diet majorly involves consuming a high fat, moderate protein, and very low carbohydrates. The diet gets rid of processed, empty-calorie staples like white bread, white rice, and carbonated drinks. Most keto diet followers experience fast weight loss, without having to give up foods like bacon and butter. But it eliminates many nutritious fruits and vegetables with a high carb count. Consuming too much fat or too much protein can harm overall health.
Note that the list of foods you can eat on keto is limited, and following the diet requires meticulously tracking every meal to keep to a 5% carbohydrate, 10% protein, and 75% fat ratio for weight loss. There’s a possibility that you’ll experience fatigue due to a lack of carbs, especially in the first weeks of transitioning to the diet.
11. Vegan Diet
While following the vegan diet, you’ll consume only plant-based foods, including eliminating anything that has any connection to animals, including eggs, milk, or gelatin. Studies show the diet can improve cholesterol, blood glucose levels, and lower blood pressure. Many followers prefer the vegan diet because they see it as more humane or environmentally conscious than other diets. The disadvantage of the vegan diet is that followers may not get adequate levels of iron, calcium, vitamin B12, and omega-3 fatty acids that are considered important to health. Many vegans don’t use clothes, furniture, and other goods made from animal byproducts.
12. 1200 Calories
Consume no more than 1200 calories a day to follow this diet. It is effective for weight loss and has no food restrictions. But focusing on calories alone may encourage unhealthy eating habits. Many people will feel like eating more food while on a 1200 calorie diet.
13. Intermittent Fasting
Rather than restricting the foods you eat, intermittent fasting helps to control when you eat them. This means it’s more of an eating pattern than a diet. The most popular ways to do intermittent fasting are the 16/8 method, the Eat-stop-eat method, the 5:2 diet, and the Warrior Diet. Intermittent fasting is commonly used to achieve weight loss because it leads to relatively easy calorie restriction. It can make you eat fewer calories overall, as long as you don’t overcompensate by eating much more during the eating periods. Although intermittent fasting is safe for well-nourished and healthy people, it does not work for everyone.
14. HCG Diet
Unlike the other diet plans, the HCG diet is an extreme diet that causes very fast weight loss of up to 1 to 2 pounds per day.
The human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is a hormone present at high levels during early pregnancy. It signals a woman’s body during pregnancy and maintains the production of hormones that are essential for fetal development.
Aside from weight loss, there are no known benefits of the HCG diet. Like most other ultra-low-calorie diets, the diet may cause muscle loss, which results in a reduced ability to burn calories.
Also, the diet has many side effects, including headaches, fatigue, and depression. Weigh your options before following the HCG diet.
HCG products are sold in various forms, including oral drops, pellets, and sprays.
15. Ultra-Low Fat Diet
This diet limits your consumption of fat to under 10% of daily calories. Usually, a low-fat diet provides around 30% of its calories as fat.
An ultra-low-fat diet contains 10% or fewer calories from fat. The diet is mostly plant-based and has a limited intake of animal products. Therefore, it’s generally very high in carbohydrates and low in protein.
This diet has proven very successful for weight loss among obese individuals. Furthermore, studies suggest that ultra-low-fat diets can improve several risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and markers of inflammation. But constant fat restriction may cause problems, as fat plays several roles in your body. These include helping build cell membranes and hormones, as well as helping your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins.
These are some of the popular diet plans that people like to follow these days. Choose and pick the one that suits your health and lifestyle to make the best of it.