What’s the latest diet trend this year that can help me lose weight? Does this sound familiar every year?
New fat diets promise that drastically changing your diet can help you lose sweets, but this type of quick-fix weight loss doesn’t last.
If you want to go on a diet and drop the pounds for good, your best bet is to adopt healthy habits that you can maintain over the long term.
So ask yourself these questions before settling on a new diet is this diet sustainable for me, meaning can you do it seven days a week or forever? Is this diet overly restrictive?
If you feel deprived, trust me, it will be tough to stick to it because, eventually, those cravings will take over.
Will you be able to live your life while on it? That means you can have a social life and still enjoy meals with your family and friends. Will you be adequately nourished?
Healthy cooking tips: The best diet is not a diet but a lifestyle that you can sustain forever.
After going through an endless list of diets, my top three best diets have been scientifically proven to help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight for life.
3 Best Proven Diets to Lose Weight
I’ll share the food portions and how you can easily incorporate them into your daily life.
1. Healthy Balance
A healthy balanced diet means eating various foods from each major food group, from proteins and carbohydrates to fruits and vegetables; even if you’re in good health, you should still avoid highly processed foods and added sugars.
A healthy, balanced macro breakdown would be 50 carbs, 30 fat, and 20 protein. Your healthy plate should look like this half vegetable, quarter protein, and quarter cups, so aim to fill your container with a variety of colorful vegetables as they are a great source of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and dietary fiber.
Aim to consume two to three servings of vegetables in each meal. Here’s what a serving of vegetables looks like one cup of raw leafy greens such as spinach or lettuce, half a cup of chunky vegetables such as broccoli, florets, bell peppers, and carrots, or half a cup of vegetable juice.
You can also add a piece of fruit to your meal or have it as a snack Choose high-quality proteins such as chicken breasts, fish meat, tempeh tofu beans, and legumes.
The general recommendation is about 0.8 grams of protein per kilo of your body weight, but if you lead an active lifestyle, consume between 1.2 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilo of your body weight.
For example, if you weigh 54 kilos and consume about 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of your body weight, you should consume about 81 grams of protein daily.
So you can achieve that is to consume two eggs for breakfast, one portion of salmon for lunch, half a cup of greek yogurt as your snack, and one slice of white fish for dinner.
This gives you 81 grams of protein, so protein is extremely important to repair and to build muscle tissue transport, storing nutrients, and coordinating bodily functions.
Carbohydrates choose healthy complex cups such as rice, quinoa oats, buckwheat noodles, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, whole grain pasta, or wholemeal bread. The primary function of carbohydrates is to provide your body with energy.
For example, if you consume 1 800 calories a day and 50 of that is carbs, that means your daily cup intake is about 225 grams, and how you can achieve that is by consuming two slices of bread for breakfast and one small bowl of rice for lunch one small bowl of rice for dinner.
A banana as your snack, a medium-baked sweet potato, and remember your five servings of vegetables that gives you a total of 220 grams of carbs in a day. As for healthy fats, you can easily integrate them into your diet by using olive oil in your cooking and consuming oily fish, peanut butter, avocado nuts, and seeds. Healthy fats keep the heart healthy, protect your organs, support cell growth, and provide energy.
So here’s what one serving of healthy fats looks like one tablespoon of oil or butter, one ounce of nuts, half an avocado, and fats from 4 ounces of salmon fillet. Remember to consume them in small quantities as they are calorie dense.
A general guideline for a healthy balanced diet, the goal here is to consume a wide variety of foods in moderation by keeping to your daily calorie needs and macros.
Of course, you can still enjoy your occasional treats of processed foods and desserts but keep them in small quantities. Remember, the key here is balance and moderation.
2. Mediterranean Diet
The following diet has been voted the best diet year after year: the Mediterranean diet.
What’s the Mediterranean diet, and why is it so popular and effective for weight loss?
The Mediterranean diet incorporates the traditional healthy living habits of people from the Mediterranean region.
This diet is low in carbs, saturated fats, and unsaturated fats. It focuses on plant foods and cooking using healthy fats such as olive oil with plenty of flavorful spices.
Following this diet can improve healthy cholesterol levels and keep blood sugar levels in a healthy range; now remember, there’s no one correct method to track the Mediterranean diet.
Here are some basic rules you can start with consuming a wide variety of vegetable fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, herbs, spices, and unsaturated fats such as olive oil.
Daily, consuming fish and other seafood twice weekly, consuming a moderate portion of poultry, eggs, cheese yogurt, and red wine, and only occasionally consuming red meat and sweets.
A general portion breakdown for this diet will consist of 50 cups, 35 to 40 fats, and 15 to 20 proteins. People following this diet would either limit or avoid their consumption of refined grains, refined oil-added sugars, sugar-sweetened beverages, processed meats, and other highly processed foods.
The Mediterranean diet believes that whole single-ingredient foods are often crucial to good health; therefore, start building your Mediterranean diet recipes.
You’ll want to stock up on whole grains such as whole oats, brown rice rye bread, barley buckwheat, and whole grain pasta tubers such as sweet potatoes and yams vegetables.
Such as lettuce, spinach, onions, broccoli, carrots, and cucumber fruits such as tomatoes, apples, bananas, nectarines, strawberries, dragon fruit, dates, nuts, and seeds, including almonds, cashews, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, legumes which include beans lentils peas pulses, and chickpeas.
Seafood includes salmon, mackerel, white fish, shrimp, and shellfish poultry, such as chicken and eggs. Healthy fats include olives, olive oil, avocados, dairy, greek yogurt, milk, cheese, and herbs and spices.
The Mediterranean way of eating is generally rich in healthy plant foods and relatively low in animal products and meats, with a focus on fish and seafood.
Following this long-term diet can improve your weight and prevent specific health issues such as heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
3. Low Carb Diet
The final best diet for weight management is the low-carb diet. This diet limits your cup intake, encouraging your body to use more fat as fuel.
The low-carb diet may work well for you if you have a higher sensitivity towards cups and your body has higher insulin resistance.
Insulin is the hormone responsible for controlling your blood sugar levels. Hence, a high level of insulin resistance means that your blood sugar levels are likely to spike after consuming significantly refined cups.
Common signs of carb sensitivity include intense craving for refined cups and struggling with constantly feeling hungry. Which can lead to overeating, energy level dips after an hour of consuming cups, you tend to weight gain quickly, and you experience withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, irritability, mood swings, and anxiety carb sensitivity.
A real thing, and it just might be why weight loss can be challenging for you now. If you fall under this category, it doesn’t mean that you cannot consume carbs at all, but you need to choose suitable cups and limit your portion. Your goal is to choose non-starchy colorful vegetables high, quality proteins, and healthy fats.
Let’s first understand that low carbs are essential to a healthy diet; however, it is very important to know that not all cups are created equal.
How, then, do we differentiate between good carbs and bad cups? Suitable cups are complex cups that are unprocessed and contain fiber found naturally in food.
These examples include quinoa, oats, buckwheat noodles, brown rice, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, and beans. On the other hand, they are loaded with nutrients and fiber and provide sustained energy.
Bad cups are refined cups processed with natural fiber removed or changed. Examples include cereal cakes, pastries, biscuits, pizza sodas, and added sugars. They are usually lacking in nutrients; hence, they are called empty calories.
Our bodies process refined cups quickly, and they do not provide lasting energy, which can cause a spike in blood sugar levels, and the goal here is to reduce or avoid all refined carbs in your diet.
A low-carb diet macro breakdown would be 15 to 25 cups, 40 to 50 protein, and 25 to 30 fat. You want to limit your cup intake to about 100 to 150 grams per day, and the key here is to restrict starchy cups and consume more non-starchy cups, so aim to consume only back two to three servings of starchy cups in a day.
For example, half a cup of oats for breakfast, one small bowl of cooked brown rice for lunch, and around 150 grams of sweet potatoes for dinner On the other hand, you can increase your protein portion to 2 servings in each meal.
Healthy fats keep the heart healthy, protect your organs, support cell growth, and provide energy. So when you are carb-sensitive, consuming carb-rich foods significantly impacts your overall well-being more than merely reducing your calorie intake. Therefore, you need to pay more attention to the types of carbs you consume.
Just know that diets aren’t just for weight loss. While changing your diet can be one of the best ways to lose weight, it can also be a gateway to improving your habits, focusing on your health, and leading a more active lifestyle.
Although the three diets are effective for weight loss, your diet should depend on your lifestyle and food preferences.
You will ensure that you are more likely to stick to it in the long term now. Remember, this is just a guideline to understand each diet before starting any new one. Talking with your doctor about your health history is always a good idea.
They can always help you decide which plan would work best for you, so let me know your preferred diet in the comments below.
