Ask five questions about your weight loss diet.
There are probably thousands of diets out there, from Atkins to the Zone. Each player in this dizzying crowd of choices promises to by "the one," that elusive weight loss program that will melt your pounds away. How can you decide which one to try, without jeopardizing your health, exhausting your wallet and doing more harm than good? Here are some questions that can help you measure up a diet to see if it is healthy and safe.
- Does the diet eliminate all or most of an entire food group? If a diet asks you to stop eating all (or most) carbs, or all (or most) fats, you will miss out on a major group of nutrients. For example if you follow an extremely low fat diet you are not getting the essential fatty acids, and you will not be able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins as well as you should. Low carb diets eliminate a good source of fiber, especially the soluble fiber that you don't find in vegetables, B vitamins, and a long list of minerals.
- Does the diet limit you to eating only a few foods for a long period of time? Now you will be missing important nutrients on an even bigger scale. A good diet has a variety of foods, because there are many nutrients out there that are necessary for good health and there is not a small group of foods that has them all. A very restricted diet is also hard to follow for a long period of time, and doesn't teach you good lifelong eating habits. So when you get thoroughly sick of those foods and start eating normally again, you will gain the weight right back.
- Does the diet promise you weight loss without the need to exercise? Exercise is am important part of weight loss, and indeed of general health. It kick starts your metabolism and keeps it running faster. It builds muscle so that you can look trim and toned as you slim down. If you diet without exercising you will need to be a lot more restrictive with your calories, as you are not burning as much energy, and you are in more danger of losing muscle mass instead of fat. Exercising preserves and builds your muscle, and aerobic exercise burns fat faster.
- Does the diet require you to purchase special foods or supplements? Not only are these types of diet expensive, but they are difficult to maintain in the long run, unless you keep purchasing that food for the rest of your life. Eventually you will go back to eating real food or stop taking the supplements, and most likely your weight will come back, since you didn't learn how to eat sensibly with real foods.
- Does the diet sound too good to be true? The reality is that weight loss is not a fast, easy process. It requires discipline for the long term, and any diet that promises "you can eat whatever you want" or "fast, easy and painless" is not going to be a sustainable, healthy eating plan. You got into this situation by eating whatever you want, do you really think you will lose weight by continuing that? If it was that easy, obesity would not be such a problem.
Web MD evaluates an extensive list of the popular weight loss diets out there.
Everydiet is another good resource with detailed information about the popular, and even some more obscure diets.
>Mohr Results is chock full of sensible and healthy advice for dieters.