Top Diet Plans

Out of the hundreds of diet plans available and are endorsed by doctors, celebrities, friends and family, how does one know which one to try?  If you are new to the diet arena, you may get completely overwhelmed by all the suggestions and information you’ll find and all of the diet plans seem to work.  But the real question is will it work for you?  Here is a shortlist of diet plans to help narrow down your search.

After searching the internet for top ten weight loss/diet plans, I have discovered that there are only a few that keeps recurring.

Weight Watchers

Yes, it’s a classic, which proves that this celebrity endorsed diet plan works.  Weight Watchers is basically a calorie-controlled diet where a dieter gets a daily points allowance.  You can eat anything you want as long as you keep within the given allowance. Probably the best feature of this diet is its flexibility, availability of the recommended meals and support.

The DASH Diet

This diet was designed to the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the main goal was to help people find a healthy and natural way to lower blood pressure and reverse heart disease.  The diet features calorie counting, exercise regimen and a set of Health Food and a Low Sodium Diet.  The reason why it works it that it is based on health sciences.  The diet is highly recommended for people dealing with heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

The PALEO Diet

It can be a little restrictive but it works, especially for men.  The Paleolithic Diet simply encourages people to avoid any kind of food that is processed in any form, which include cooking oils.  The diet also encourages that food be cooked in open fire.  The general idea is to revert back to the ways of the caveman.  Though people find it very restrictive, it is also simple enough to follow.  What makes it work is the community that it has created where recipes are being shared and passed around.

The Volumetrics Diet

This diet is all about soups and large salads and other kinds of food that is low calorie but has “high-volume” - The kind that keeps you full for hours. The Volumetrics Diet offers recipes that are healthy and fiber-packed. The idea is to keep your body from gaining too much weight by stopping the constant craving that you get when you feed on calorie packed foods or simple carbs.

The Jenny Craig

The reason why it works is because it is a highly personalized plan. The one to one consultations provide support and help dieters keep their goals on track.  The meal delivery service is a big plus of course, especially for people who have very little time to plan meals let alone cook them.  The only set-back is the tag price that goes with it.

The Newest Diet Fad – Fasting and Feasting

In the book The Fast Diet, Mr. Mosley speaks of dividing your week into feasting days and fasting days and apparently it works!  Well, not everyone is convinced and despite the growing number of total weight lost thanks to the “5:2” diet, the skeptics are not too thrilled.  Intermittent diet is nothing new and people in the health and weight loss community have been doing research to understand it and why it works.

The concept or basic science behind the theory is to teach the body to use its stored fats during the fasting days.  The body derives its energy from glucose and they are found in our blood, glycogen and fat stores (fat cells).  When the body is deprived of the glucose from a meal, it turns to the glucose which is already in the blood.  Once that is depleted, the body turns to the glucose stored in glycogen and finally on to fat cells.   Well, it does make sense and may make even more sense if you read the book.  Endorsers of the 5:2 diet goes on to say that this lifestyle increases lifespan, improves brain function and may help prevent dementia and Alzheimers.  This is because the intermittent fasting changes how the body functions and in a way that prevents glucose related diseases.  Fasting also shrinks the size of the stomach which is why subjects do not “pig-out” during the “feast” days.

On the other side of the fence are doctors and people who say that there is not enough scientific evidence to support the diet’s health claims.  They are concerned about the psychological implications of such a diet.  They consider the Fast Diet an extreme diet and may be abused by certain people.  Some even say it is akin to bulimia.  However, proponents of the book does not endorse going on a fasting diet for more than 24 hours because the body cannot sustain the loss of nutrients.  And on fasting days, you do not completely go without food, just extremely lowered to about 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men. And for feast days, there is no limit to what you want to eat and how much.

Intermittent dieting has proved itself to get positive results but since the diet itself is fairly new, there is no way of telling how it affects the human body in the long term.  There have been studies conducted since 1945, but they are done on mice. 

The diet has worked for a lot of people and whether it is the diet plan that may work for you, it is still considered a health decision you need to make with your doctor. 

References:

The Fast Diet :  By Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer

http://beforeitsnews.com/health/2013/03/the-fast-diet-get-thin-quick-by-starving-yourself-two-days-a-week-2476050.html

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/people-are-lining-up-to-starve-themselves-52/story-e6frezz0-1226597618586

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3511220/