What Kind of Diets Are Good to Follow?

Low-calorie, low-carbohydrate and low-fat are just a few of the phrases we read when tackling the issue of choosing a weight-loss diet. The truth is the best diets are the ones that encourage healthy eating habits that can be maintained over a lifetime. There are many diets, and many are extremely unhealthy. The diet that will work for you is the one that you can successfully follow for longer than a few months. When you know what to look for, selecting a good diet is easy.

Look for Healthy

A good diet will promote health. Good, healthy diets will not encourage you to severely restrict calories. Men should never drop beneath 1,600 calories a day and women should not eat less than 1,200 calories, according to the National Institutes of Health. Anything less runs the risk of forcing your body to move into a starvation mode. Healthy diets will encourage limiting fat and sugar intake as well as monitoring saturated and trans fat. Good diets include fresh fruits, vegetables and healthy fats. A good diet will also emphasize whole grains, rather than refined sugar and starches. Good diets will also urge you to control portion sizes. Good diets will not require you to eat too much or too little of one thing. Avoid anything extreme. Fads like grapefruit and cabbage diets might offer quick results, but this kind of eating is not something you can keep up for an extended amount of time. A good diet is always healthy.

Look for Practicality

After you've determined a diet is safe and healthy, the rest is up to you. You don't have to buy any special plans. As long as you eat fewer calories than you consume, you will lose weight, says the Mayo Clinic and Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition. The key to success is finding a plan that suits your lifestyle and budget. Once you've eliminated the diets that ask you to compromise your health, you can focus on plans that sound reasonable. You also want to consider your mental health. If you're miserable because of what you're eating, or not eating, the diet won't last long. Choose a diet that allows you some freedom and the ability to eat what you like some of the time. "Reduced-calorie diets result in clinically meaningful weight loss regardless of which macronutrients they emphasize," reports the New England Journal of medicine. With that information, shop around, experiment and keep your health in mind.