We decided to review the most popular diets that can be found nowadays and find out if they work or not.
Top Diets: Short Review
Atkins Diet
The Atkins diet is the most admired of the top 10 diets. This low-carbohydrate diet encourages the elimination of carbohydrates from your diet. The diet really works and you can munch as much as fats and proteins you want. However, before starting this diet, study a bit to know the suitability of this diet for your body.
South Beach Diet
This diet is one of the most successful of the top 10 diets to lose weight. It is not a low-fat or low-carb diet. Instead, it focuses on consuming the correct amount of fats and carbs. The diet depends on the glycemic index. It limits the intake of carbs in the initial two weeks and then re-introduces those carbs with a low glycemic index. You need to eat three healthy meals daily, along with some snacks, provided they are healthy enough.
Cabbage Soup Diet
It is also one of the effective of the top 10 diets. The diet contains insignificant amount of calories. You will observe instant weight loss, if you stick to cabbage soup diet for a week. The more soup you consume, more pounds you drop.
Grapefruit Diet
This is the finest weight loss diet for obese people. The advantages of this diet arrive from the addition of grapefruit to a low-calorie and low-fat diet.
SlimFast Diet
This is also one of the superior of the top 10 diets. The diet restores your breakfast and lunch meals, with two SlimFast shakes, and puts ahead for a usual meal for dinner. These low calorie shakes will help you to lose weight.
The Beverly Hills Diet
This diet reaps the benefits of the natural chemical reaction of foods when consumed to lose weight. The diet is quite strict, as protein needs to go with proteins and carbohydrates with carbohydrates only. The diet is exceptionally restrictive, but motivates rapid weight loss.
3-Day Diet
This is also one of best of top 10 diets. The diet can be ideal to lose weight, if you can follow a three-day meal plan without wandering from it.
Apple Cider Vinegar Diet
This is one of the sensitive diets of the top 10 diets. Hence, you need to follow it carefully. It is a low-calorie diet, which stimulates quick weight loss.
Negative Calorie Diet
This is one of the ultimate types of diet among the top 10 diets to reduce weight. It includes addition of healthy vegetables to your diet as much as possible.
Dukan Diet
Remember that the Dukan food regimen is not really a craze. It’s been round as thirty days. The fact will possibly not have come across it until recently is that the formal book seemed to be only modified with.
Start to modify at the moment. You may abide by individual progress on the diet from day one of your criticize part prior to finish. We’ve packaged together most of the recipes and menu tips and even top-rated hints in getting the best from a Dukan diet experience.
The Atkins Diet
Can you say hype? If you’re living in any Western world country then you’ve probably heard of the famous Atkins diet. Whether this is the most successful diet ever or not it’s still up for debate, but it certainly is the more advertised one. The Atkins diet has been for a while the most hyped eating plan around and millions of people have tried it at some point or another. This is no exaggeration. It was estimated that more than 3 million people in the United Kingdom alone have tried the Atkins diet at the peak of the hype in 2003.
The basic idea behind this diet is that cutting down on the carbohydrates, while allowing people to eat high-fat food is going to work. One of the best things in favor of the Atkins diet was the fact that it allowed people to eat eggs and cheese and steaks. It sounds like a dream diet actually. Who’d pass up the chance of losing weight while still enjoying a good eggs and ham breakfast? Well, the downside is that you get no bread or salad with that steak. None whatsoever. Which becomes a real problem after a week or so. How much meat can you eat without touching any vegetables at all?
Anyway, the theory is that cutting out the carbohydrates will force your body to use the stored fat in order to obtain the energy needed through the day. This means that you get to eat no bread and pastries, potatoes, pasta, milk, rice, fruit, vegetables (well, there are a couple you can still eat) and, obviously, no junk food or soft drinks. On the other hand, you are allowed to eat red meat, fish, chicken, cheese, mayonnaise, cream, butter and eggs. This is going to be your only food for the first two weeks, which are called the Induction Phase.
The second phase of the diet is called Ongoing Weight Loss and it lets you increase the intake of carbohydrates by 5 grams per day, starting from the basic 20 grams per day stipulated by the Induction Phase. The user must find how far the amount of carbohydrates can be increased before the body is unable to lose between 1 and 3 pounds per week. This is called the Critical Carbohydrate Level for Losing Weight and this is where the amount of carbs stops growing. This phase is supposed to last until you almost reach the desired weight.
With 5 to 10 pounds left to shed it’s time to enter the third stage of the diet. This one is called Pre-Maintenance and it’s supposed to increase the carbs intake by 10 grams a day in order to slow down the weight loss process. Welcome to the world of 30 grams of pasta per day. The final phase is called Lifetime Maintenance and a lifetime of eating around 90 grams of carbs per day for the rest of your life. Moving from 250 grams or more to less than 100 grams and for the rest of your life could be quite a challenge for many people.
The side effects of the Atkins diet depend on the user. Some people did fine on this diet, some got infections of the kidneys from the high-protein content or heart problems from all the fat food they ate. Dizziness and general weakness are also to be expected as the body goes into starvation mode when denied carbohydrates. With high-fiber fruit and vegetables out of the way you can also expect constipation to become a problem. Also, the lack of many dairy products leads to a significant drop in the amount of calcium absorbed by the body and may cause osteoporosis or other bone conditions later on.
The South Beach Diet
The South Beach Diet is one of the odd fishes swimming in the treacherous waters of the international weight loss industry. Many people love it and are perfectly willing to swear by the good name of M.D. Arthur Agatston, while others find it hard to stick to the obligatory induction phase. The South Beach Diet belongs to the low-carbohydrates group of diets and has been derided as a fad diet, although its fans claim that it is not a fad diet and that it is, in any case, much more responsible and healthy than Atkins. Then again, not many diets manage to be less healthy than Atkins.
Dieters who choose the South Beach Diet can expect to see their food intake restricted to lean meat, seafood, eggs, low fat dairy products, nuts, vegetables (most of them, anyway), artificial sweeteners and a couple of carbohydrates of the low glycemic variety. During the first phase of this diet, the shock phase, most fruit and vegetables are still on the banned list, just like the rest of carbohydrates. Unfortunately, some people find it hard to cope with the low energy level, the fatigue and sometimes nausea that accompany this phase. However, it should be noted that not all dieters experience these symptoms. It’s all in our genetic make-up.
The bets part of this diet is the focus on removing simple carbohydrates (sweets, pasta, bread) from the diet and replacing them with the healthier complex carbohydrates from wholegrains and vegetables. The worst part is the marketing jargon that makes it sound like a fad diet and the tough first phase of the diet, which sacrifices the long-term healthy eating approach for an instant gratification technique based on the catch-all slogan “lose weight fast”. Any such approach will have the dieter lose a lot of water and not that much fat.
On the other hand, the second phase of the diet is a bunch of quite sensible eating advice and the recipes provided by the author are very good. There are also pre-packaged South Beach foods for those who lack the time or the inclination to cook for themselves. All things considered, the South Beach Diet is not a bad idea if one could clear away the hype and marketing lingo and focus on the healthy eating part and the good food choices. This information is something that should stay with you through the years if you’re looking to keep that weight from returning.
The Cabbage Soup Diet
Ahh, the famous Cabbage Soup diet. Most people interested in dieting have certainly heard of this one. many of them have actually tried some version of it. Since nobody has ever claimed to be the inventor of this diet, there is no definitive cabbage soup diet, but rather a string of versions floating around magazines and the Internet. Every expert who tried to promote this diet has either added or replaced an existing feature, which means that aside from that cabbage soup you can expect to see a wide range of other foods, although nothing spectacular.
The biggest problem with the cabbage soup diet is all the hype that surrounds it. Some people claim that cabbage has fat burning properties, which is nonsense. Others say that one could shed a whooping 10 pounds in a single week on this diet, which is not true. There’s no magical ingredient in cabbage that helps weight loss. The basic idea behind the diet is to starve yourself by drinking a lot of cabbage soup and some water on the side. The trick is to keep your stomach filled with cabbage soup in order to keep hunger away while the body burns fat to maintain itself.
The early version cabbage soup diet featured nothing else than the basic soup. Recent versions have added fruit, vegetables, skimmed milk, lean meat or brown rice to the eating plan in order to help people stick to it for a longer time. Dieters are not allowed any alcohol. The only drinks allowed beside the cabbage soup are water and unsweetened fruit juices. The soup itself is based on cabbage, onions (or onion soup mix), tomatoes, green peppers, celery, carrots and mushrooms. There are some variations even here, but nothing important.
Unfortunately, the cabbage soup diet is not a good idea. Many people cannot stick to a diet that forces them to starve every day, especially people who have to go work. Another issue is the fact that most of the weight lost through this diet comes from water and muscle mass, instead of fat. This means that seven days later the dieter still has all the initial fat on and a good chance of replacing all the lost muscle mass with even more fat. Moreover, the low calorie intake at the core of the diet will force the body to enter starvation mode and hang on to the existing fat for its survival. This is not a good way to lose weight.
The Grapefruit Diet
The Grapefruit Diet is one of the fad diets that were really popular back in the 1980s although it has been in one form or another since 1930. Most of the time, the grapefruit diet has been discounted by experts as dangerously unbalanced or simply unable to deliver on its promises. It was generally thought that consuming vast quantities of grapefruit cannot influence weight loss in any way, which relegated this diet to the status of yet another fad, one of those things people go crazy about without any real reason. However, time has passed and new discoveries are about to rock the traditional view.
The basic idea behind this diet is to eat grapefruit whenever you can, drink a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice with every meal, add grapefruit to cocktails and also to salads. Grapefruit is supposed to go well with the lean meat from crab and chicken and with vegetables, such as red onions, spinach and celery. The biggest advantage is, of course, the fact that grapefruit is virtually fat-free and has few calories. An entire grapefruit has about 70 calories, which means that you can eat about as much as you can stomach and still lose weight.
The best thing about the Grapefruit Diet is a recent study carried out by a team of scientists led by Doctor Ken Fujioka, from the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center of the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. The study has found that, contrary to the opinions voiced by experts in the 1980s, adding grapefruit and grapefruit juice to your diet can actually help you lose weight. And what’s really great about it: you don’t have to change your eating habits at all. Naturally, eating less fat and sweets and doing some exercises is a very good way of speeding up the weight loss process, but you don’t have to go out of your way with this diet.
According to the study, eating half a grapefruit before each meal and exercising a bit every day helped a group of obese people drop an average 3.6 pounds in 12 weeks without any change in their eating habits whatsoever. A second group had to drink a glass of grapefruit juice before every meal and lost 3.3 pounds in the same 12 weeks. While it’s true that losing 1 pound per month gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “slow diet”, you have to appreciate a diet that lets you eat whatever you like and still shed a pound per month. If weight loss is not a stringent affair, then you can stick to this diet for a long time and reap the benefits.
The Slim Fast Diet
Some diets advise dieters to eat large quantities of vegetables, others try to make people eat a single food for a whole day. The Slim Fast Diet has the shake. It sounds pretty much like what the folks at Herbalife are pushing, although it may be the other way around. Diets are a dime a dozen these days and it’s hard to keep track of who came with which idea and when. So let’s discuss instead the basic features of this diet and the usual pros and cons. This is one of the diets that people seem either to love or hate, as some claim that it works wonders, while others speak of it as a rip-off.
The basic idea is to replace two daily meals with Slim Fast shakes, accompanied by two pieces of fruit and a nutrition bar, and to have a sensible dinner at the end of the day. A sensible dinner means that you are allowed to eat whatever you want, as long as you keep the portions average. At least this is the theory. In practice you will soon find out that dinner is the only time you can get some actual nutritious food, aside from the vitamins and minerals-laden shakes, which means that your food options are limited to those that can keep you on your feet and thinking clearly.
Aside from the shakes, dieters have to drink between 6 and 8 glasses of water per day in order to help the weight loss process along. Dieters should also exercise during this diet, but I’m not so sure that a 1,200 calories a day intake can support a program of exercises. On the other hand, the added exercises should help you shed weight faster and spend less time on the diet. Some people complained of having to buy all those shakes and bars, but I’d say that trading two regular meals for two shakes tends to balance out the costs.
Actually, it seems that the biggest problem dieters face is the fact that every one is on his own. There is no outside structure, there is no support. Just a box of shakes and your own common sense. This is a good thing for some because it helps build self-reliance and teach people to gain control of their own eating process not just during the diet, but for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, many fail without outside support and this may be a big issue with this diet.
Dukan Diet
The Dukan diet is known as a rapidly and effective weight loss solution that sets you up to the mark. Diet plans that force you to count each diet before you can consume foods or starve personally to be able to reduce weight are not any great.
Besides, they do not deliver the results, along with starvation diets, they are extremely difficult to live on to. Help that with all these diet regimes you eat daily almost the same meals but in more compact sums. Of course, it will provide help to drop extra pounds forever although providing you stick it out during a very long time.
The actual fact diets honestly will be so difficult to follow is often because the food products you are food in fact design the desire to eat extra nutrition. Maintaining a small calories diet for anyone who is continuously, and appetite meals will be next to impossible.
This is why so many people fail upon the mentioned diets. It is simply just like you can find many people have becoming viewing victory on the Dukan weight loss program since it cuts out these foodstuffs that increase your desire to make one feel hungrier.
Once he made this weight loss program thirty years back, Dr. Pierre Dukan understood the ways on how necessary incentive are if your someone can be being on a diet. Which is the reason your mate put together a thought that destined persons reduce weight rapid (which hopes to stay on a diet that takes days to indicate including the slightest enhancement?) these wouldn’t be hungry and hunger meal as they simply were surely diet.
Believe the diet plans you’ve already been upon. What was the factor that developed you wait older? Weren’t a charge card sick and tired of sensation feeling hungry continuously, depriving yourself of food and really definitely not understanding very much in the way of outcome!
To the Dukan food regimen you can see the mass loss in just a few days. What is much more important is that, other people can get those. Which means inside a fortnight you may get customers observation positively on the weight loss. It could in addition lead to putting together lower back with individual’s outfits puzzled in the rear of your cupboard as too close.
The best thing of most is that will you are dropping the mass you won’t always be starving yourself. In truth, you are allowed to eat all the tolerable food products. Beef steak, chicken, fishes, you are able to take snacks generally throughout the day if you need to. Dream losing weight fast on a diet without ever feeling hungry, snacks consumption whenever you want.
Side Effects of Diets
According to popular diet advice, bad diets are generally those diets that are unhealthy and do not address the problems that caused you to gain weight in the first place. If you don’t learn something about the foods you eat, you will gain the weight back when you reestablish old eating habits.
Following are some of the major side effects associated with bad diets.
- Unbalanced and unhealthy: Some so-called fat burning diets frequently require the elimination of perfectly healthy foods. As a result, what you eat is not a healthy, balanced combination of food and lacks several vital minerals and portions of food such as complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber or essential fatty acids.
- Can cause starvation: If a fat burning diet plan asks you to a skip a meal in a day, it probably will not work for you. In reality, it could cause quite the opposite effect i.e. weight gain by slowing your metabolism. That’s why; having frequent smaller meals instead of 2 or 3 larger meals in a day is always preferred.
- Can devoid you of exercise: Most bad diets claim that with their regular use, you would continue to lose weight even if you don’t exercise. This is completely untrue. In fact, to achieve long-term weight loss goals, a perfect combination of diet and exercise is a must.
- Results are temporary: Bad diets may be effective for weight loss in the short term because you will lose some extra fluid as well as some fat. However, the weight loss is usually temporary because you’re going to return to your old eating habits when you go off the diet. In a few weeks, your weight will be right back where it was before the diet.
- Inconsistent effects: Another problem with bad diets is that these diets only work when you stay on them so that means you have to be on a diet the rest of your life to be successful.
- Expensive in long run: Naturally, when one has to strictly follow a certain diet regiment and for long time period, it will definitely cause a burden on the user’s pocket.
- Undesirable health hazards: Some of the diets contain ephedrine, a dangerous, addictive drug that is not only illegal in high-level athletes, but also potentially deadly because it can increase incidence of strokes, seizures, and heart attacks. They are even more dangerous when combined with caffeine or other herbs. These dangerous chemicals can also be found in teas and drinks.
- Risk of excessive fluid loss / dehydration: Most bad diets cause paid and excessive fluid loss. This naturally results in fast weight loss and many dieters mistakenly think of this as a major benefit of such diets. Typically, this levels off after 8-12 weeks. When normal intake of carbs resumes, the weight is usually regained. Also, excessive fluid loss in the early stage of such diets (e.g. low-carb diet regime) can cause low blood pressure resulting in dizziness and fainting.
- Constipation: A diet restricted in carbohydrates will not permit sufficient fiber from fruits, grains or vegetables. Result? Constipation is a frequent side effect of low-carb dieting. On the other hand, fiber itself is important in causing sustained and long term weight loss which is usually deficient in these diets.
- Frustration: the meal plan for these so-called low-carb or fat burning diets is very strict and demands that participants make no changes. Except for a choice between coffee and tea, no options are offered. Because the diet is so demanding, dieters are likely to give up before they have finished and might potentially be frustrated from attempting to diet in the future as a result.
How to Improve Results of Your Diet?
The fact that these popular diets often fail to help lose weight does not mean they are not worth trying, however. Some of these top diets incorporate simple and healthy principles, and the key is to stick with them until your weight loss plan becomes successful. If you follow a diet for long enough, you will find that you can eat whatever you want, because you are eating foods that are good for you and that make you feel good.
Another principle of healthy dieting is to combine different approaches to your weight loss. For example, you may want to add an exercise program to your diet in order to shed some pounds, or you may try using dietary supplements, or so-called diet pills, to help you out. Most of these suggestions work hand in hand with one another and will help you get results.
- If you are looking for a reliable exercise program, we suggest you take a look at our weight loss exercises guide.
- If you want to find the top diet pills and find out how they differ from each other, take a look at our guide on identifying the best diet pills.
Don’t forget, diets can be successful and bring results, but you need to stick to them and boost them with weight loss exercises and slimming supplements!