We have been asked over and over to share our criteria by which we judge our diet reviews, and rate one diet higher than another. There are many factors that go in to our analysis but there are many common traits that our most successful diets share. This article will summarize four of our most important criteria that will put you well on the way to diet success.
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.
Has a good amount of exercise baked in. Diets that focus on what you eat and how you eat it are great and they are a very important part of losing weight and dieting, but they aren’t the only part. You need to do a certain amount of exercise every day, or at least a few days a week to make sure your body will lose weight, and keep it off if your diet goes back to normal. Other factors for exercise include prevention of heart disease, and keeping your muscles strong as you get older to prevent your body from breaking down.
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.
