The Best Weight Loss Plan – An Healthy Diet to Lose Weight Naturally

Without doubt, America has a weight problem. An estimated 17% of all children and adolescents are overweight, and their parents are doing even worse: nearly one third of American adults aren’t just overweight, but obese (Source: American Heart Association).

Disturbing statistics show a steady climb in obesity from the early 1960s, when the obesity rate stood at just 10 – 15% of the population, to the more than 30% of the population today. In other words, the percentage of obese Americans has tripled in the last forty years. Remember: these numbers just reflect obese Americans and do not include the “merely” overweight.

Hard Decisions About Dieting

Given the plague of weight problems facing American children and adults, it should be no surprise that there are more diet fads today than ever before. From Jenny Craig to Jared the Subway guy, it seems that everyone is selling their own method of losing weight. As a result, Americans have been inundated in the last decade with conflicting dieting and nutrition information, which can be very hard to sort out.

What follows is a closer look at three diets that have garnered attention in recent years: The Atkins Diet, the South Beach diet, and the Mediterranean diet. By examining the pros and cons of each dieting theory, and especially the science (or lack thereof) behind each theory, choosing the right diet for your body and your lifestyle will be easier than ever before.

The Atkins Diet Plan

It’s hard to believe that there are some people still following the Atkins Diet; the “low-carb revolution” brought about by Dr. Robert Atkins in the early 1970s peaked in the late 1990s, but has had a lasting effect on the way Americans think about eating and dieting.

Breads, wraps, and snack foods in the grocery store, for example, are still stamped from time to time with the “low-carb” label, and in break rooms around America you can still hear dieters talking about “watching their carbs”. But what is this odd dieting idea that still lingers in the air even today, despite the fact that Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., filed for bankruptcy in 2005?

According to Dr. Atkins, the reason westerners are fat is that they eat too many refined carbohydrates, especially sugar, flour, and high-fructose corn syrup.

He suggested that by changing the balance of foods in the diet, the body’s metabolism would switch from burning the sugars (glucose) created by carbs to burning body fat. This switch in metabolism is more technically referred to as “ketosis”.

Ketosis happens with insulin levels drop, and insulin usually drops when glucose drops. Therefore, Dr. Atkins reasoned, if you significantly reduce the sources of glucose, you will trigger ketosis. However, certain foods generally considered healthy also got the ax in Dr. Atkins’ diet. Fruits, as well as some vegetables, are sugary and therefore carb-heavy, so dieters were advised to limit their fruit intake and eat more meats instead.

Nutrition experts, however, were less than impressed. Former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop called it “unhealthy and can be dangerous”. The American Dietitian’s Association called it “a dietitian’s nightmare”.

The American Medical Association, for its part, condemned low-carb diets as early as 1974 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, stating that they were “deeply concerned about any diet that advocates an ‘unlimited’ intake of saturated fats and cholesterol-rich foods” (Source: AtkinsExposed.org).

Dr. Atkins did get one thing right: Americans do eat too many processed, refined carbohydrates – that’s something most dietitians and doctors would probably be happy to agree with.

By cutting carbs, dieters inadvertently cut out many processed foods that contain high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, chemical additives, and dyes – all of which are, at the very least, quite suspect in the obesity epidemic. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Atkins Diet works for a time for some people – it’s just questionable if it works for the reasons Dr. Atkins suggested.

The South Beach Diet Plan

Created by dietitian Marie Almon and cardiologist Arthur Agatston in response to the low-fat diets advocated by the American Heart Association in the 1980s, the South Beach Diet has been popular for nearly a decade.

Unlike the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet doesn’t recommend cutting all carbs – just the “bad” ones. Bad carbs are defined as any heavily refined sugar or grain – the mainstay of the typical American diet.

Instead of heavy pastas and thick slices of bread, the South Beach Diet suggests relatively unprocessed vegetables, whole grains, and beans – all of which contain carbs and would therefore be avoided to a greater or lesser extent in low-carb diets.

Also unlike the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet makes clear that some fats are bad for you. It therefore discourages trans-fats and saturated fats, and instead encourages an increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are known to promote at least heart health and brain health.

Overall, the South Beach Diet is a much more balanced, realistic approach than the Atkins Diet and other diets like Atkins. Just like the Atkins Diet, dieters are bound to experience success if they follow the instruction to cut many processed foods out of their diet, as these uniquely modern, western foods are doubtlessly behind the ballooning weight of Americans and other westerners.

The Mediterranean Diet Plan

The Mediterranean diet takes the successes and observations of the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet one step further. Recognizing that we were healthier when we ate more simply, Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard University’s School of Public Health suggested a combination of fresh foods and exercise as the backbone of any successful diet.

In truth, the Mediterranean diet is hardly a “diet” at all; rather, it is a lifestyle change that returns westerners to a simpler way of eating, before grocery stores were jam-packed with “energy” drinks, snack foods, and microwave dinners.

Before American culture, in the form of McDonald’s and snack foods, invaded the Mediterranean, the typical food patterns of Crete, Greece, and southern Italy included, according to Dr. Willett, “abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat… fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts” (Source: Willett, “Mediterranean diet pyramid”, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1995).

So far, the research supports Willett’s claim that this old-fashioned way of approaching food and life is a very beneficial one. A ten-year study published in the Journal of American Medicine demonstrated that the Mediterranean diet could lower early death rates from heart disease and cancer by more than 50%, and in 2009, researchers reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry that people following a Mediterranean diet were less likely to develop depression.

Of the three diets considered, then, it is clear that the Mediterranean diet offers the best long-term benefit. Instead of a strict, structured diet like the South Beach Diet, the Mediterranean diet is more of a lifestyle overhaul leading to long-term health than a short-term weight loss regime.

Instead of the imbalances inherent within the Atkins Diet, the Mediterranean diet emphasizes a balance of healthy foods. Finally, as Mireille Guiliano, author of the popular French Women Don’t Get Fat, the Mediterranean diet emphasizes more than just healthy foods; it emphasizes a return to eating as an enjoyable, social experience.

In America’s current militant neuroticism around diets and dieting, such an attitude makes it possible to get off the dieting gerbil wheel and onto a healthy path that’s sure to last.