How To Pick The Right Diet For You

A lot of people have been emailing us lately asking us how we grade our diet reviews, and what criteria we use to do it. There are hundreds of criteria that we use, but many of our highest rated diets all share some very common criteria and have many features in common. Let’s take a look at four of our most common criteria to see how some of these diets stack up.

Allows you to eat anything. Ok so that headline is a little misleading, you can’t really eat anything all the time, but you should be able to eat whatever you want, in the correct portions. Why should you be able to eat what you want? Because at some point you WILL eat what you want, and if foods you like aren’t allowed on the diet almost all of us will break down at some point and eat it. If you know you are going to eat forbidden foods, why would you try a diet that doesn’t allow you to eat them? Sounds like a recipe for failure to me.

Follows a balanced mix of meals. Have you ever seen the ads for the all grapefruit diet or the all eggs diet? Do you think you can eat grapefruit or eggs every day for every meal the rest of your life? Me either. Some fad diets will help you lose weight very quickly, but diets that focus on only one, or just a few food groups won’t give you proper nutrition and at some point you have to start eating normal foods again. More often than not the results from these fad diets disappear when you get back to normal.

Calls for lots of exercise over the dieting period and beyond. When we think diets we almost always associate losing weight with food, and while that is a big portion of losing weight, exercise is an equal partner in that regard. Exercising often burns calories, and causes the body to burn calories even when you aren’t exercising as the body rebuilds. Any exercise that doesn’t encourage exercise is ignoring one of the primary reasons that people lose weight. You don’t think models and professional athletes are in great shape because of food alone do you?

Lastly, the diet you choose needs to be sustainable long after you stop the diet. What I mean by this is that some diets are so strict that once we are done losing the weight we want we go back to eating the way we did before, and the way we ate before put us in a spot where we needed a diet. Sounds like a vicious cycle doesn’t it? A good diet will teach you how to eat properly and give you good eating habits you can take with you long after your official dieting days are over. When you see that a diet works and is sustainable, you will be more likely to stick with it subconsciously, without even realizing that you’re still dieting.