If you are looking to lose weight, then it can be a real struggle. Motivating yourself to count calories or restrict certain things from your diet can be really difficult. Day after day doing just that can get monotonous, so the chances of sticking to it can be pretty low too. So it is easy to see why many people choose a diet plan to follow. It is so much easier when you’re told what you should or shouldn’t be eating. Even better if there is food provided for you, right? But do any of these diet plans really work? Are they going to be worth the money? Here is a quick low-down on some diets that are out there on the market to see if they will work for you.
5:2 Diet
This diet is based on the idea that intermittent fasting will aid weight loss. But don’t panic, it doesn’t mean that you don’t eat for two days a week. What it simply means is that you have two very low-calorie days a week and five normal days a week. The plus side to this is that it can mean that you’re not restricting yourself all day every day. You know after a fasting day that you’ll be eating normally again the day after. However, the down side to the diet is that it doesn’t mean you can indulge on the other five days. They still need to be fairly calorie controlled, as well as exercising, to see real results. So you do need to be fairly disciplined for it to work.
Shake Diets
There are quite a few shake diets out on the market, that involves having a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and a shake for dinner, with another snack or shake too. The plus side to these diets, like the Cambridge Diet, Exante or an Exante alternative, is that you do see some dramatic weight loss. So if you have quite a bit of weight to lose, then this could be the one for you. It is also simple that you know what you’re eating; there is no need to meal plan. The downside is that it can be pretty tough to stick to, at least at first. You might feel quite hungry, so it is important to have plenty of water to fill you up. You may experience things like bad breath as your body gets into a state of ketosis. But that state does help weight loss. So you’d just have to weigh up the pros and cons of it all.
Dukan Diet
The Dukan Diet is your typical low-carb, high-protein diet. It has several phases of the diet; the first is where you have a week of only eating protein. It can help with some pretty dramatic weight loss, but as you can imagine, can mean some pretty bland and uninspiring foods. From there, things like vegetables and fruit are reintroduced, as well as fat-free dairy and low-calorie drinks. With this kind of diet, you will have to plan out your meals yourself, which can be tricky for some, though some prefer to have a strict and prescriptive diet. You can lose a lot of weight eating this way, so that has got to be the biggest pro point about it. But the biggest downside is the cost of it all. You can, of course, eat eggs and egg whites for your protein, as well as certain legumes. But mostly, you will be looking at meat and fish for your protein intake. And when you need protein with every meal, it can get pricey.
There are other diets similar to the Dukan Diet, such as Paleo and Atkins, as they focus on low-carb and high-protein too. They both have plenty of good points, as they both introduce cutting out refined sugar, avoiding alcohol, and eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. So you will reduce your calorie intake with these types of diets, and they can be pretty effective. The cons of eating this way is that your body can become quite acidic when it consumes a lot of meat and fish. Cutting out dairy is something that the Paleo diet recommends too, compared to the Dukan Diet. Which for some, can be useful. But for others, it can mean having to learn about new ways to get calcium into your diet, which again, can affect the acidity of your body levels.
Slimming World
Slimming World is a popular diet as no foods are banned. It does encourage you to eat more nutritiously filling foods, rather than high-fat foods. You get a list of ‘free’ foods that you can eat, but you can still have some treats occasionally. You can also go to weekly meetings, which is helpful if you prefer to be accountable to people, and know that you will be weighed in front of someone else. Another pro is that it is pretty family friendly. So if you don’t want to have to prepare several different meals in the house each day, then your family could eat this away too and not feel like they are having ‘diet food.’ The cons of this are that there is no education about calories with this kind of diet. So if you achieve your goal and then resume eating normally, you could quite easily put it all back on again. Another point, which is neither a pro or a con, is that the weight loss is quite steady; probably about one or two pounds a week. So you’d need to decide if that is what you’re after.
At the end of the day, how well you do with a diet, both before and after, is going to be about you and your self-control and motivation. No matter what diet you try, you’re only going to keep the weight off if you’re educated and motivated to do so. So think about why you’re going to be dieting before you start. Then you’ll see the best results.
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