There are several weight loss diets available.
Some diets concentrate on weight loss, while others limit calories, carbohydrates, or fat.
Because they all promise to be better, deciding which ones are worth trying may be challenging.
The fact is that no one diet is ideal for everyone, and what works for you may not work for someone else.
This article examines the eight most popular weight loss programs and their science.
1. The Paleo Diet
According to the paleo diet, you should consume the same foods your hunter-gatherer ancestors ate before cultivation.
According to the notion, most contemporary ailments may be traced back to the Western diet and the intake of cereals, dairy, and processed foods.
While it’s questionable if this diet contains the same items your ancestors had, it has been connected to many outstanding health advantages.
The paleo diet promotes whole foods, lean protein, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds while avoiding processed foods, sugar, dairy, and grains.
Some more adaptable paleo diets include dairy products like cheese and butter and tubers like potatoes and sweet potatoes.
Weight loss: Several studies have shown that the paleo diet may result in weight loss and a smaller waist circumference.
According to research, paleo dieters consume much fewer carbohydrates, more protein, and 300–900 fewer calories daily. (1, 2)
Other advantages: The diet seems to be successful in lowering risk factors for heart disease such as cholesterol, blood sugar, triglycerides, and blood pressure. (3, 4)
The downside is that the paleo diet excludes entire grains, legumes, and dairy, which are healthful and nutritious.
2. The Vegan Diet
Vegans avoid all animal products for ethical, environmental, and health reasons.
Veganism is also linked to opposition to animal exploitation and suffering.
Veganism is the most stringent type of vegetarianism.
It forbids meat, dairy, eggs, and animal-derived items such as gelatin, honey, albumin, whey, casein, and several types of vitamin D3.
Weight loss: A vegan diet seems to be particularly helpful in assisting people in losing weight — frequently without the use of calorie restriction — because its low fat and high fiber content may make you feel satiated for longer.
Vegan diets are consistently associated with decreased body weight and BMI compared to other diets. (5, 6)
According to one 18-week research, those on a vegan diet dropped 9.3 pounds (4.2 kg) more than those on a control diet. The vegan group was permitted to eat until satisfied, but the control group had to limit their calories. (7)
Vegan diets, on the other hand, are not more successful in weight loss than conventional diets, calorie for calorie. (8)
Weight loss on vegan diets is mainly connected with calorie restriction.
Other advantages: Plant-based diets have also been associated with a lower risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and early mortality. (9, 10)
Limiting your consumption of processed meat may also lower your chances of Alzheimer’s disease and death from heart disease or cancer. (11, 12)
The downside: Because vegan diets exclude all animal foods, they may be deficient in various minerals, including vitamin B12, vitamin D, iodine, iron, calcium, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. (13, 14)
3. Low-Carb Diets
For decades, low-carb diets have been widespread, particularly for weight loss.
There are several low-carb diets, but they all require restricting carbohydrate consumption to 20–150 grams per day.
The diet’s primary goal is to drive your body to utilize more fats for fuel rather than carbohydrates as the primary energy source.
How it works: Low-carb diets emphasize unrestricted protein and fat consumption while drastically restricting carb intake.
When you eat relatively little carbohydrates, fatty acids enter your bloodstream and are delivered to your liver, where some of them are converted into ketones.
Without carbohydrates, your body may utilize fatty acids and ketones as its primary energy source.
Weight loss: Numerous studies show that low-carb diets are exceptionally beneficial for weight loss, particularly in overweight and obese people. (15, 16)
They seem to be quite helpful in reducing harmful belly fat that may get trapped around your organs. (17)
People who follow highly low-carb diets often enter a condition known as ketosis. According to several studies, ketogenic diets result in more than double the weight loss of a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet. (18, 19)
Other advantages: Low-carb diets suppress your appetite and make you feel less hungry, resulting in an immediate decrease in calorie consumption. (20)
Furthermore, low-carb diets may improve a variety of significant disease risk variables, including blood triglycerides, cholesterol levels, blood sugar levels, insulin levels, and blood pressure. (21, 22)
The downside: is that low-carb diets are not for everyone. Some look amazing on them, while others look terrible.
A rise in “bad” LDL cholesterol may occur in certain persons. (23)
Exceedingly low-carb diets may produce a dangerous illness known as nondiabetic ketoacidosis in scarce circumstances. This illness seems more frequent among nursing mothers and, if left untreated, may be deadly. (24, 25)
Low-carb diets, on the other hand, are safe for the vast majority of individuals.
4. The Dukan Diet
The Dukan diet is a high-protein, low-carb weight loss plan divided into four phases: two for weight loss and two for maintenance.
The time you spend in each phase determines how much weight you need to lose. Each step has a distinct food pattern.
How it works: The weight loss stages are mostly centered on eating an unrestricted amount of high-protein meals and using oat bran.
Other stages include the addition of non-starchy veggies, followed by carbohydrates and fat. Later, you’ll need fewer and fewer pure protein days to maintain your new weight.
Weight loss: In one research, women who followed the Dukan diet ate roughly 1,000 calories and 100 grams of protein per day for 8–10 weeks and lost an average of 33 pounds (15 kg). (26)
Moreover, additional research indicates that high-protein, low-carb diets may have significant weight loss advantages.
These include an increase in metabolic rate, a reduction in the hunger hormone ghrelin, and a rise in the number of satiety hormones.
Other benefits: Aside from weight loss, there are no other documented advantages of the Dukan diet in scientific literature.
The downside: is that there is relatively little high-quality research on the Dukan diet.
The Dukan diet restricts fat and carbohydrates, an unscientific technique. On the other hand, consuming fat as part of a high-protein diet seems to enhance metabolic rate when compared to both low-carb and low-fat diets.
Furthermore, rapid weight loss caused by acute calorie restriction tends to result in considerable muscle loss.
Loss of muscle mass and extreme calorie restriction may also lead your body to save energy, making it relatively simple to recover lost weight.
5. The Ultra-Low-Fat Diet
An ultra-low-fat diet limits your fat intake to less than 10% of your daily calories.
A low-fat diet typically contains roughly 30% of its calories as fat.
According to research, this diet is inefficient for long-term weight loss.
Proponents of the ultra-low-fat diet argue that typical low-fat diets do not include enough fat and that fat consumption should be less than 10% of total calories to generate health advantages and weight loss.
How it works: An ultra-low-fat diet has 10% or fewer fat calories. The diet is mainly plant-based, with just a few animal items. (27)
As a result, it’s typically heavy in carbohydrates (about 80% of calories) and low in protein (around 10% of calories).
Weight loss: This diet is particularly effective for weight loss in obese people. Obese people dropped an average of 140 pounds (63 kg) on an ultra-low-fat diet in one research.
Another 8-week research with a 7–14 percent fat diet resulted in an average weight reduction of 14.8 pounds (6.7 kg).
Other advantages: Research indicates that ultra-low-fat diets may reduce various risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and inflammatory markers. (28, 29)
Surprisingly, this high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet has significantly treated type 2 diabetes.
It may also reduce the course of multiple sclerosis, an inflammatory illness that affects the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves in the eyes.
The downside is that the fat restriction may produce long-term issues since fat plays several critical jobs in your body. These include aiding in the formation of cell membranes and hormones and assisting your body in absorbing fat-soluble vitamins.
Furthermore, an ultra-low-fat diet restricts the consumption of many healthful foods, lacks variety, and is exceedingly difficult to maintain.
6. The Atkins Diet
The most well-known low-carb weight loss regimen is the Atkins diet.
Its supporters argue that you can lose weight by eating as much protein and fat as you want as long as you avoid carbohydrates.
The fundamental reason why low-carb diets work so well for weight loss is that they suppress your hunger.
This leads you to consume fewer calories without even realizing it.
The Atkins diet is broken down into four parts. It begins with an induction phase in which you consume less than 20 grams of carbohydrates daily for two weeks.
As you reach your desired weight, the other stages entail gradually bringing nutritious carbohydrates into your diet.
Weight loss: The Atkins diet has been widely researched and proven more effective than low-fat diets in weight loss. (30)
Other studies have shown that low-carb diets are particularly effective for weight loss. They are particularly effective in reducing belly fat, the most hazardous fat that accumulates in your abdominal cavity.
Other advantages: Numerous studies demonstrate that low-carb diets, such as the Atkins diet, may lower a variety of disease risk variables, including blood triglycerides, cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin, and blood pressure. (31, 32)
Low-carb diets increase blood sugar, “good” HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and other health indicators better than different weight loss regimens.
The downside: Like other highly low-carb diets, the Atkins diet is safe and healthful for most individuals but may create issues in rare circumstances.
7. The HCG Diet
The HCG diet is an extreme diet designed to produce rapid weight reduction of up to 12 pounds (0.45 kg) daily.
Its supporters believe that it increases metabolism and fat reduction without causing hunger.
HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is a hormone that is abundant in early pregnancy.
It informs a woman’s body that she is pregnant and maintains the production of hormones necessary for fetal growth. It’s also been used to treat infertility.
The diet is broken down into three stages. You begin using HCG pills during the first phase.
During the second phase, you consume just 500 calories daily while taking HCG supplement drops, pellets, injections, or sprays. Weight loss is suggested for 3–6 weeks at a time.
In the third phase, you discontinue HCG use and gradually increase your food consumption.
Weight loss: The HCG diet does result in weight loss. However, several studies find this is attributable to the ultra-low-calorie diet alone, not the HCG hormone. (33, 34)
Furthermore, HCG was shown not to affect appetite.
Other benefits: Aside from weight loss, there are no other acknowledged advantages of the HCG diet.
The downside: The HCG diet, like most other ultra-low-calorie diets, may induce muscle loss, resulting in a decreased capacity to burn calories. (35)
Such extreme calorie restriction limits the number of calories your body burns even more. This is because your body believes it is famished and strives to save energy.
Furthermore, most HCG items on the market are frauds with no HCG. Only injections can enhance this hormone’s levels in the blood.
Furthermore, the diet has many adverse side effects, such as headaches, lethargy, and depression. There has also been one instance of a lady suffering blood clots due to the diet.
The FDA opposes this diet, calling it harmful, unlawful, and deceptive.
8. The Zone Diet
The Zone Diet is a low-glycemic-load diet in which carbohydrates are limited to 35–45 percent of daily calories, and protein and fat are limited to 30 percent each.
It advises consuming carbohydrates solely with a low glycemic index (GI).
A food’s GI estimates how much it boosts blood glucose levels after intake.
The Zone Diet was created to prevent diet-induced inflammation, promote weight loss, and lower your risk of chronic illnesses.
The Zone Diet advocates balancing each meal with 1/3 protein, 2/3 colorful fruits and vegetables, and a dash of fat — specifically, monounsaturated oil, such as olive oil, avocado, or almonds.
It also restricts high-GI carbohydrates like bananas, rice, and potatoes.
Weight loss: Research on low-GI diets has been inconsistent. While some claim that the diet improves weight loss and lowers hunger, others argue that it results in very little weight loss compared to other diets. (36, 37)
Other advantages: The most significant advantage of this diet is a decrease in risk factors for heart diseases, such as lower cholesterol and triglycerides. (38, 39)
According to one research, the Zone Diet may improve blood sugar management, decrease waist circumference, and minimize chronic inflammation in type 2 diabetics who are overweight or obese.
The downside: One of the few disadvantages of this diet is that it restricts using some good carb sources, such as bananas and potatoes.
Result in Bottom Line
There is no such thing as a perfect diet for losing weight.
Different diets work for other individuals, so choose one that fits your lifestyle and preferences.
The optimal diet for you is one that you can maintain over time.
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