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Top 10 Diets To Lose Weight: What Is A Diet For Weight Loss?
In its classic usage, the word ‘diet’ simply meant what you ate on a regular basis. Over the years, and because of this constant need for people to lose weight, ‘dieting’ has now come to mean an eating plan that helps you lose weight and inches. ‘To be on a diet’ means that you are following a set routine and plan for consuming your lunch, dinner, and breakfast to achieve a specific target weight. It is a fact that foods that make up a ‘diet’ are everyday foods, that you simply don’t in the proper manner. These are foods full of protein, fiber, whole grains, essential fatty acids, and all the vitamins and minerals needed to keep the body healthy and active, but are either ignored or underutilized in the way you eat.
Diet plans for weight loss specifically means that these are low-calorie diets, that encourage you to eat all the right foods with no junk food and to stay away from calorie-dense foods that that nutritionally deficient. Any diet plan for weight loss means that you are following a healthy eating plan along with regular physical workouts.
Some people may end up ‘dieting’ quite frequently and harm their health. Dieting does not mean starving, or cutting off important nutrients from your food. Restricting yourself to eating raw, unprocessed, seasonal foods, gives your body all the essential nutrients.
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There are many diet plans around the world that work in different ways. Some are high in protein and others cut out carbohydrates and encourage followers to eat more healthy fats. Whatever be the diet, it is important to find one that suits you. There are 10 best diets that you can follow to lose weight, read on to find about each diet.
Top 10 Diets To Lose Weight
1. 3-Day Military Diet
The 3-day military diet is simply a diet plan for only 3 days. It is an extreme diet that claims that you can lose a few pounds just within 3 days. It is not an expensive diet and needs you to eat only foods that you eat in your regular diet. It is an extremely restrictive diet in which the calorie intake of your meal is reduced by large numbers.
Some claim that this diet was founded by the soldiers of the US military to keep soldiers fit. But the US military has declined such reports. There are certain things that you must keep in mind while following this diet:
It is a strict diet which should not be repeated too often as then it may harm your health.
This diet must be followed by those who don’t have any health concerns. This is a diet plan to lose weight in the short term. In the long term, you must not follow such diets.
The reason these diets don’t work for the long term is that this type of diets help you to lose weight in a short span of time but it doesn’t provide you with any method to maintain that lost weight.
You simply have to fight hunger in this diet and if you can’t do that, then this is not the diet for you. The 3-day military diet has its pros and cons as well. Read all about the 3-Day Military Diet here.
2. Dieting By Intermittent Fasting
This method of dieting allows you to eat foods that you like, but only for a set number of hours during the day. This method of dieting has helped a large number of people to get the desired body weight and shape. Intermittent Fasting essentially means you swing back and forth between periods of eating and fasting. There is an eating window and you can’t eat outside of that window; during the eating window, you are allowed to eat normally. Till now, it is believed to be the best diet that shows excellent results.
As understood by the word intermittent, this diet means that there must be regular gaps between your meals i.e. eat for a short period of time and fast for a longer period of time. This diet works on the interchanging principle of fasting and non-fasting. It divides the 24 hours of a day in such a way that you have to eat for less time and fast for more time.
There are 4 ways in which intermittent diet can be followed:
- 16/8 method:
- Eat-stop-eat method
- The 5:2 diet
- The warrior diet
Just like the 3-day military diet, it is also a diet that will give you amazing results, however, it is far easier to follow as compared to a restrictive diet like the 3-day military diet. A healthy eating plan that is easier to follow consistently, along with making sure you don’t cut off important nutrients is a healthy approach to staying fit. It can yield long-term results and enable you to not yo-yo back and forth into non-stop dieting. If you wish to follow this start-stop method, you must read: Intermittent Dieting
3. Atkins Diet
The Atkins diet claims that it can prevent and manage many health conditions including cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. This diet is named after a famous American physician and cardiologist Dr. Robert Coleman Atkins. This diet has been followed for decades worldwide to lose weight and to decrease the percentage of fat in the body. It is a low-carb diet and allows you to eat all the protein and the good fat that is required by your body. This is an effective diet as carbs are combined with a high protein this diet which ensures that you don’t get hungry often. It might take a few days for the body to get used to a low-carb diet but once you get used to it, you will not feel like eating a lot or feel hungry too often.
When Dr. Atkins started this diet with his patients, he found out that some people lost a lot of weight due to this diet while some didn’t which means that everybody has a different way of reacting to weight loss diet plans as every body’s metabolism, level of activity in mind and body structure is different.
This diet limits the intake of carbs and that is directly related to losing weight. There are 4 phases of the Atkins diet along with a list of foods that you can and can’t eat during this diet. Other than helping you to lose weight, the Atkins diet has other health benefits as well. To know more about this amazing diet plan, also read: Atkins Diet
4. Gluten-Free Diet
Gluten is just a group of proteins that are present in cereal grains with starch. Gluten is widely used in food recipes due to its adhesive and viscoelastic properties. Sources of carbohydrates like wheat and wheat products have a high content of carbs and a gluten-free diet means cutting down on the intake of carbs which can help in weight loss. There are people who suffer from gluten intolerance or Celiac disease, and for such people, avoiding wheat, and wheat products, is a medical necessity.
A gluten-free diet is an alternate method of dieting for those who are intolerant to gluten. While following this diet, you must only eat products that are free of gluten such as rice, whole grains, and millets that are naturally free from gluten. Gram flour and coconut flour are also used to make gluten-free Rotis/pancakes. In baked goodies, refined flour can be substituted by almond flour, quinoa or ragi flour. Fruits such as apple, bananas, milk, curd, nuts, healthy fats (ghee, olive oil, coconut oil), coffee, tea, etc. can be consumed without fear of an allergic reaction. You can easily follow the gluten-free diet as you can have a gluten-free breakfast as well as a gluten-free lunch or dinner.
If people suffering from gluten intolerance eat foods that have gluten in them, they may face abdominal pains, indigestion, headaches, and fatigue. If you wish to follow this diet, you must read: Gluten-Free Diet
5. GM Diet
GM diet is also known as the General Motors diet. It is a diet for 7 days where you have to follow a stringent eating regimen. People have been known to lose 4-5 kg by following this diet within a week’s time. But like all diets, the results for the GM Diet can differ from person to person. GM diet allows you to eat only a specific type of food per day, these you can consume as much as you like. The type of foods that are part of the GM diet makes you feel full for longer, stimulate the loss of weight and burn fat from the body at a quick rate as compared to other diet plans. It is an extremely strict diet and it is not easy to follow it.
If you have never followed a nutrient restrictive diet before, then it may be a little hard for you to follow this diet as compared to other people. You can follow this diet whenever you want but there must a good time frame between the first and the next time you plan to follow this diet. If you follow this diet or any fad diet frequently it may harm you in the long term as there will be less than the required nutrients in your body.
Not only does GM diet help in weight loss, but it also has many other benefits. You have to consume different food items on all the 7 days of this diet. Hence, you don’t need to worry about the diet being monotonous. There are also some side effects associated with the GM diet, which you must know before you start to follow this diet. In order to follow the GM diet, everything that you need to know is mentioned here: GM Diet
6. Egg Diet Plan
Eggs are ideal for weight loss as they have a low content of fat and carbohydrates and a high concentration of protein. An egg diet means that you only eat eggs in your meals and you lose weight without reducing the amount of protein intake from your diet. Even though an egg diet is good for the overall development of the body but you must keep in mind, that different people need varying amounts of protein in their bodies. One egg contains only 1 g of carbs, it is low in calories and helps in burning even the stored fat of the body.
Egg diet is of two types:
Egg only diet: in this method, you only eat eggs in all your meals of the day. It is also a form of mono-diet which means you eat only one food item. It is quite an extreme type of egg diet as you survive only on eggs in order to lose weight.
14-day egg diet: in this method, you can eat other foods along with eggs that have lean protein. In this version of the egg diet, you eat hard-boiled eggs along with other food items. Other food items that you can eat other than eggs are chicken and fish.
There are certain food items that you can and cannot eat while following the egg diet plan. Egg diet plan may be beneficial for some and may not be helpful for some people depending on the type of nutrients that their bodies require. In order to follow the egg diet plan, you must be well prepared and well known about this diet. To know everything about the egg diet plan, you can also read: Egg Diet Plan
7. Mediterranean Diet
This diet is rich in fibers, vitamins, proteins, and healthy fats along with a low content of carbs. This diet aids you in achieving your goal of a healthy lifestyle. Mediterranean diet is filled with fruits and vegetables with a number of health benefits. This diet also includes seafood, dairy, and healthy oils.
This diet is beneficial for cardiovascular health, helps maintain blood sugar levels, makes it easy for you manage the lost weight, improves the health of your gut, relieves you from anxiety and stress, and is beneficial for people suffering from arthritis. In addition to all these advantages, the Mediterranean Diet is also rich in antioxidants, making it one of the best anti-aging diets across the world. You can consume seafood, eggs and dairy, some spices, grains, legumes, seeds, etc while following this diet.
To follow this diet which is loved by laymen and expert nutritionists too, you can also read: Mediterranean Diet
8. The Avocado Diet
Avocados contain dietary fibers that make you feel fuller and ensure that you don’t get food cravings too often. Avocados are rich in monosaturated fatty acids, potassium, fiber, and vitamin E. But avocados have high-calorific content. For example, ½ an avocado has 182 calories. Hence, the consumption of avocados should be limited otherwise you will end up gaining weight rather than losing! Avocados are valuable for a weight loss diet due to the presence of all the essential nutrients in them.
It was found in a study that avocados aid in the proper management of weight. It makes people more satisfied with their meals and they tend to eat less after eating an avocado. The avocado diet is a healthy way of dieting as it doesn’t concentrate on the consumption of only one food item. Through this diet, you get all the essential vitamins and minerals that you need for a healthy body. To know more about the avocado diet, also read: Avocado Diet
9. Oatmeal Diet
Oatmeal diet means that you consume a lot of oatmeal in order to lose weight. It is a weight loss program for 7 days. Oatmeal is made of dry oats with a lot of nutritional value. The oatmeal diet recently gained popularity and it is a preferable diet as oatmeal is very easy to cook.
To follow this diet, you need to eat oatmeal but to avoid monotony you can change the taste of oatmeal by adding fruits and vegetables to it. There are 3 ways of following the oatmeal diet and you can select any method depending on the way you like it.
The oatmeal diet is very pocket-friendly as it requires you eat fruits and vegetables which you eat in your regular diet along with oatmeal which does not come out to be too expensive either. You must never add sugar or any sweetener to your oatmeal just to improve its taste, as adding sugar or sweeteners may lead to weight gain.
Also Read: 14 Benefits Of Pistachio That Make It A Super Healthy Snack
10. The Keto Diet
Keto diet is a diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in healthy fats. Keto diet is also known as ketogenic diet and comes with many health benefits. There are a number of studies that prove that the keto diet improves your health and helps in weight loss. This diet works towards managing symptoms of epilepsy, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Keto diet aids in the reduction of sugar level in the blood along with the level of insulin. There are 4 types of the keto diet that you can follow:
- Standard Keto Diet
- Cyclical Keto Diet
- Targeted Keto Diet
- High Protein Keto Diet
All these types of keto diets are different in their own ways and there have been numerous studies to prove that keto diet aids in weight loss. There is a list of foods that you can eat in the keto diet along with a list of food items that you can’t eat. Along with its benefits, the keto diet has a number of side effects as well, so know everything about the keto diet before you start on it.
In conclusion, these are the top 10 diets that you can follow for weight loss. But before you start any diet, you must know every detail about that diet. If you have any pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes, you must consult your doctor before embarking on any weight loss program. While losing weight is desirable for many, it is equally important that you pick a path, and a diet, that works for you and helps you maximize gains without any long-term side-effects.