If you choose a diet plan that is healthy, satisfying and reasonably simple to follow, it is possible to lose weight, improve your wellbeing and keep things that way on a long-term basis. However, according to Mary Hartley, the registered dietician and nutritionist for dietsinreview.com, there are many popular diets out there which really don’t fit the bill.
The premise of the paleo diet is that obesity is a pretty modern phenomenon, and so you should eat like your hunter-gatherer ancestors to stay trim. This means gorging on red meat and eliminating anything that a caveman wouldn’t have eaten. However, in the US News and World Report’s most recent best and worst diets survey, this diet ranked dead last out of 29. There’s not a thing about this diet that wellness experts like; it’s hard to follow, ineffective for weight loss and a poor choice for heart health.
Ok, so maybe giving up modern agriculture isn’t the way to go, but plenty of people live without gluten these days, right? How about the gluten-free diet? While people with celiac disease, gluten sensitivity or gluten intolerance absolutely have to eliminate gluten products such as barely, wheat and rye, Hartley says, ‘Gluten has nothing to do with weight loss, so the diet simply doesn’t work.’ In fact, the majority of celiacs end up gaining weight when they follow a gluten-free eating plan for the first time, as their bodies can finally absorb calories and nutrients properly. Plus, gluten-free treats tend to be packed with more fat, sugar, preservatives and calories than standard snacks.
You shouldn’t eat like a caveman or a celiac, then, but how about a baby? The baby food diet was created by celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson for her A-list clients, who are told to eat up to 15 jars of baby food a day; although some versions of the plan let you eat a regular meal for dinner – how kind. However, Hartley dubs the baby food diet ‘the silliest diet imaginable,’ noting that there’s no magical fat-melting power in mashed bananas and pureed peas. Hartley points out that the trick behind diet is extreme portion control, as those tiny containers add up to only about a thousand calories a day. However, Hartley comments that dining on baby food is neither palatable nor sustainable for people who have teeth and like to chew their food.