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With so many diets to choose from we thought we would tell you which is the best fat loss diet!

Right, let’s get straight into this so you can get ripped in no time at all.

The best fat loss diet of all time is the 5:2 diet. This one is certainly the winner. This diet is actually an eating pattern rather than a diet as such. It’s pretty easy as 5 days of the week you eat normally and the other two days you eat 500 or less calories.

This plan sounds pretty good to me and there have been some real good results on this. But there are some downsides to this. This diet is all dependent on your starting point and your current relationship you have with food. We have all heard the saying ‘you don’t get fat overnight’ which is a very true fact. Although you may feel bloated after going to your favourite Chinese buffet or after eating a huge Sunday roast, you are extremely unlikely to have gained any stored body fat from this meal. Let’s say you are 22% body fat and male or 28% body fat and female, and you want to become healthier. You will inevitably at these percentages have issues with insulin as well as whole host of other issue which may not have surfaced yet. No one gets to these levels overnight and no one should be told to carry on eating as they are but starve themselves twice a week. The next issue with intermittent fasting (or similar) is it requires will power. We only have one will power. There is not a separate will power for food and another for quitting smoking or cutting back on the alcohol. This one singular will power is responsible for helping us make the correct choices on more than twenty different things each and every day. Let’s face it, getting to 22% body fat or higher wasn’t achieved through making the correct lifestyle choices. Do you not think telling someone to starve themselves for two days and not expect them to over compensate with food the very first chance they get is ridiculous. Eating this way will inevitably lead to you eating more than you normally would have done to make up for the lack of nutrients in those two days. The body will also store as much as possible from the first normal feed it gets on your first day of eating normal again, and I assure you this first meal will be epically high in calories. This is because the body is not stupid, it’s designed to stay alive and if it thinks a famine is on its way it will do anything it can to keep us safe. Another thing to look at is the number of calories you are actually saving in these two days. Let’s say you normally consume 2500 calories per day, this is 12,500 across 5 days. Adding another 1,000 for the other two days gives us 13,500 per 7 days but we have achieved this through 2 days of hell. What’s wrong with just consuming 1,928 calories per day instead, or better still consuming something along the lines of 2,200 and burning the remaining 272 through exercise.

Not the right diet for you?

OK, so here’s the one, the best fat loss diet must be the one which gives you points to use as calories. There are currently 5 in mainstream operation in the UK and in this article, we will look at the most popular one. You all know which one I’m on about and.

You will lose around 7 times more weight than dieting alone. You will be put on a calorie-controlled diet governed by a points system aimed at reducing calories. You can chat to other people in the same boat as you and make new friends. But are there any downsides to this? Firstly, we need to look at your initial goals which in most cases are to lose fat whilst becoming healthier. Does this diet do this?  Your results are tracked by using a set of conventional bathroom scales which have no idea on the difference between fat, muscle, bone, water, etc. So, not only are you being rewarded for potentially losing water, muscle, and hopefully some fat but you are also consuming (in most cases) less than 1300 calories per day. So, whilst on this super low, hormone damaging calorie restriction, at least you get to eat real food. Well, your main bulk of ‘nutrition’ comes in the form of breakfast bars, crisps, soups, and ready meals which you must purchase from the franchisee or team leader. Don’t get me wrong people who stick at this will lose a vast amount of weight. How much of that weight is fat we just don’t know. But what we do know is around 70% of those people put the weight back on within 2 years of coming off the program. This very low-calorie diet you are put on down regulates your hormones and processes which long term makes it harder to lose the weight and keep it off. The second you start eating normally again you will bombard your system with too many extra calories which it simply won’t be able to cope with. This will lead to you becoming lethargic, and your insulin racing around like an F1 driver. Another thing to consider which is usually overlooked is your digestives enzymes. Eating all this processed food eliminates the need for your digestive system to have to do much work. When we introduce real food again, we will be hit with food intolerance style symptoms. Restricting calories, basing your meals around pre-made packaged food, and meeting in a dull and dingy room surrounded by unhealthy people taking it in turns to humiliate themselves on the scales is not the way to improve your quality of life.

Another popular diet is the Caveman diet. This is how we are supposed to be eating as our ancestors did. Our bodies have not adapted to the food and lifestyles which we have nowadays. This one’s concept is very simple. If it has legs, wings, eyes, or grows, we can eat it. Imagine going out with a knife and a basket, whatever you can capture, kill, or forage, you can eat. Some people live by this diet, and in fact die by it too. First let’s look at the pros of this way of living. You won’t be eating any additives, preservatives, or chemicals. Most ‘clean’ foods are anti-inflammatory which most of us would benefit from. You’re likely to be consuming more Iron on a caveman diet also as organ and red meat is on the menu. Another great thing about eating all this protein is the satiety that comes with it. It’s highly unlikely you will be feeling hungry on this protein packed diet. This all sounds perfect, so caveman must be the best diet? Here comes the bad news. Firstly, if you are vegetarian or vegan you can forget about this one as there is no vegetarian burgers in caveman times and neither is there Quorn pieces. What is interesting though is the fact our oldest cousins who lived around 60 million years ago ate a diet rich in fruits, leaves, and insects. It wasn’t until 50,000 years ago man started using tools and started hunting. What’s amusing about this diet is its been branded as ‘the way humans were designed to eat’ but the Palaeolithic era only represents 1% of the time humans have been on the planet. But the main issue in my opinion is you must cut out all grains and dairy. This means no bread, rice, pasta, crackers, biscuits etc and even some fruit and veg is off the menu. Any diet that totally illuminates entire food groups can cause major health issues. Most people find they lose weight on this diet simply because there is a lack of variety which can be consumed. Another downfall of eating like this is the quality of produce in the 21^st Century. Even if we only were to eat organic fruits, veg, and meat, the quality still would not even come close to how it was back then. Let’s say you go and purchase a punnet of organic blueberries from your local supermarket. They would provide around 16% of your daily recommended allowance of Vitamin C per 100g. Travel back even 2,000 years ago and this figure would be somewhere around the 80%. If we look at this geographically, the agricultural changes from continent to continent would be yielding a different array of produce. We can argue the fact the world was all connected and looked very different back than, but the land was still vast enough to contain different climates. The fact of the matter is cavemen were not the best pictures of health with evidence pointing to them having parasites, infectious diseases, and atherosclerosis which is where the arteries become clogged with fatty substances. The caveman diet is certainly not a long-term solution but may set a good starting point from which we build on.

The Caveman diet may be a good starting point, but it needs adapting

This search for ‘the best fat loss diet’ could go on all day. I could write about at least 20 more diets which people put themselves on or even worse are put on by the professionals. Whilst all diets will lead you to weight loss eventually you need to be very careful of the side effects and long-term consequences. Is your diet promoting health? Is it preserving at much muscle as possible? Are you supporting your natural hormone functions? Short term diets can be used to rebalance or drastically drop body fat if it’s causing more harm holding the extra weight, but these drastic solutions must not be used long term. Rather than searching for the best diet try finding out what’s the best diet for you. No one person is the same, there is no one size fits all when it comes to healthy. A very easy question to ask yourself, prior to starting any diet regime is, ‘can you see yourself being on this diet in 6 month’s time? If your answers no, then it’s not the right diet for you.

If you are worried about a diet you are on, or would simply like more information about how you can become as healthy as possible and look amazing, than send us a message! ?