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What Diet is for You? Diet Comparisons
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.
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