What type of diet works the best? …The one you follow!
With so much fodder around which diet to try, be it the vegetarian diet, carnivore diet, intermittent fasting, low carb diet, low fat diet, caveman diet etc etc etc….It’s difficult to figure out which is the best….The truth is, every one of the diets listed above has attributes to it that, if followed 100% will yield great results. The key variable, the wildcard, is whether or not you will be able to follow it long enough. The truth is, by going on a diet, any diet, and following it rigorously, you are pretty much assured great results.
This leads to a lot of bad information out there about which diet is the best. For instance. If Jennifer is not currently dieting, then decides to give the caveman diet a try, and Jennifer gets on the caveman diet and gives it 100%.....Jennifer is going to get results! Then what is she going to do? She’s going to tell everyone that the caveman diet is the best! However, who’s to say that had she got on any other diet and also followed it rigorously that she wouldn’t have gotten the same, or even better results? The most likely scenario is that her results would have been very comparable regardless of the diet she got on. The key variable here isn’t caveman diet vs vegan diet vs low fat diet, the key variable here is diet vs no diet, and starting a diet, any diet, is going to yield results.
So with that said, which diet should you choose? Does it even matter? Well, yes it still does? I’ll explain. Very seldom does someone follow a diet with full adherence and not get amazing results. It’s not WHAT diet you do so much, but HOW you do the diet and HOW MUCH food you eat. That is to say, you are 1000x more likely to fail at dieting because you were unable to stick to it rather than you picked a diet that that was ineffective. The diet you should get on is the one that you can see yourself following for a long time. Pick the diet that fits your lifestyle, with the foods you like to eat.
When I create a diet for a client, my first step is I have them, in detail ,write out their current eating habits..What they eat, how much they eat and when they eat it. I then use this as a baseline to create the new diet. I’ll keep what is good, and change what is bad. Most often about half the diet remains intact. This makes following the new diet much easier as its similar to their “natural” eating habits.
With that said, each of the diet programs listed in the first paragraph have some great principles to them that make them effective, which is why they will all work. The “optimal” diet for humans incorporates principles for each. The results are a balanced diet with healthy foods, high in nutrients with low inflammatory properties. That is to say, healthy protein sources, fresh greens, healthy fats, and calorie intake at times that work with your daily activity and nutrition needs. If there is one problem with the no carb diet, low fat diet, carnivore diet etc….It is that they all lack in one area or another. This, in the short term, is no problem, but in the long term, can sometimes cause issues for someone’s health as it can take months or even years for any nutrient and vitamin deficiencies to manifest themselves in our bodies.
In conclusion, when deciding what you want your diet to be, think about the long term, what foods and eating style do you see yourself doing not a month from now, but a year from now.
