If you want to lose weight your in the right
place.
Probably the most important things
people want to know when they think the time has come (again) to
cut some of the daily food intake is which diet is the best.
Although we are all different beings, we all share the same goal:
a diet that can make us thin in no time at all. Some sort of
miracle pill or eating plan that makes fat go away and never ever
return. That’s actually the second part of the big wish:
how to make sure that all the weight lost through dieting stays
lost through the years.
 The
more diets published in magazines and on the Internet, the more
people are confused about what dieting really means and about the
right way of bringing your body back in shape. The growing number
of overweight people has turned weight loss into an industry like
never before and the market is growing every year. It seems that
nowadays all one needs is a fashionable idea and a flair for
marketing in order to make a lot of money or garner a lot of
popularity by proposing some sort of weird diet, despite the lack
of professional expertise in this field.
And there is a LOT of diets out there. We’re
going to go here only through the best-known diets, since a
review of all the diets floating around the industry would be
beyond the scope of this article.
So let’s start with one
of the latest fads of the dieting world: the Atkins diet.
Pretty much everybody’s head of the Atkins
diet, largely due to the flood of articles praising the
extraordinary results, not to mention the loads of good mail from
satisfied customers. The biggest thing in favor of this diet is
that it lets you eat high fat dairy products like cheese and
butter. However, the Atkins diet has fallen from its lofty perch
over suspicions of increasing the risk of heart diseases, not to
mention the proved fact that bigger number of followers complain
of diarrhea, weakness, muscle cramps and rashes. The debate over
the scientific fundamentals of this diet is still raging.
Next comes the Zone diet;
another well-known eating plan.
This diet is the brainchild of Barry Sears and
it’s all about eating the right mix of foods in order to
reach the proper hormonal balance. This state of balance, which
is called the “Zone”, lets the body take in calories
and use them through the day without putting anything aside as
fat. Unfortunately, this diet does some serious discrimination
among foods without any scientific basis. Starchy vegetables,
whole grains and beans are banned, although these foods are not
in conflict with the principles of the diet. The American Heart
Association says the Zone diet lacks essential nutrients while
promoting high-protein foods.
The Jenny Craig diet is next on
the list.
One of the longest running diets, Jenny Craig
started this business in the early 1980s and it’s still
around. The basic idea of this diet is a trade off: you don’t
have to choose recipes, do the shopping and the cooking, but you
have to buy the Jenny Craig prepackaged food. And that runs to
some $100 per week. Plus the membership costs. Plus the
vegetables and fruits which are not included in the prepackaged
food. If you can afford it and if you can stick to it, the diet
is pretty good. However, similar low-calorie foods can be bought
at the grocery store and you don’t have to discuss this
with a Jenny Craig expert that insists on your eating the
prepackaged food because he gets a percentage of the sale price.
From sunny Florida comes the
South Beach diet.
This one has the right idea and wrong approach
combination down pat. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people
have managed to lose weight with this diet and it actually works.
But the question is: can you really stick to it? The first phase
of the diet will eliminate most foods containing carbohydrates
from your daily consumption. Fortunately, this phase lasts two
weeks. Unfortunately, second phase focuses on a half-hearted
return of whole grains and fruits and lasts… as long as
necessary. If reaching the desired weight takes you one year,
then that’s exactly how long this phase is going to last.
And if you don’t like the foods allowed by this diet then
you’re out of luck. There are no alternatives.
And yet another veteran dieting
program around is Weight Watchers.
This is actually one of the best diets around
because it puts all the management tools in the hands of the
user. If you are really committed to losing weight, you have all
the information you need to do it. And a lot of people who are
going through the same thing are going to be there to help you.
If having company during difficult times helps your willpower,
then you are probably going to lose all that extra weight. If, on
the other hand, you don’t like the idea of being constantly
under peer pressure, then this diet is not for you.
As you can see from this short review, there are
a lot of diets out there, dozens more than we’ve been able
to cover here. The best thing to do when choosing a diet is to do
as much research about it as possible. See what people who tried
it have to say. Then see what doctors and dietitians have to say
about it. Between those singing praises and those trying to prove
the diet wrong you can probably get the truth yourself. Still,
pay special attention to what the doctors have to say. If they
tell you a certain diet will put your body to risk then think
twice before trying it.
|
