What is a “Clean” diet?

A clean diet basically means that anything you eat is a healthy food. No burgers, pizza, junk food, sodas, etc. Basically, if you know its bad for you, don’t eat it. A clean diet consists of fruits, veggies, lean protein, whole wheat/grains, and healthy fats(omega 3′s).

Water, Water, Water!

I can’t stress enough the importance of water. On a typical day, our body will require about 8 glasses of water to maintain healthy weight loss, healthy skin, proper digestion, as well as increase energy. For those who are very active with either their job or exercise routine, the demand for water is increased. This is when I would recommend anywhere from 10-15 glasses per day.

Cheat!

Yes, thats right, cheat! We all have those cravings and foods that are extremely hard to let go. A cheat day once a week is going to help curve those cravings as well as boost metabolism. When you feed your body something that isn’t normally in your diet, that causes your body to work harder to digest the food or “cheat meal” which causes that spike in metabolism.

Stay Accountable

This is a VERY important part of living a healthy/active lifestyle. We all hit a point where we lose motivation and fall off track. This is more likely to happen when you don’t have a way to stay accountable! Simple ways to help this is by sharing with everyone that you are on a diet, that you are trying to make changes in your body. This will be effective when people start to ask “Hey how is that diet going?”. That is going to help keep you more consistent and on track with the diet/exercise routines. Another great way to be held more accountable is to have someone do the diet/exercise with you! Having a “Success Partner” is going to be a fun and effective way to ensure you are doing your best to stay on track.

Maintain!

This is the most important part about any diet/exercise routine! Once you have lost the weight and gotten to feel happy and confident with the way your body looks, it’s time to keep the weight off! To be able to maintain your current weight, you need to know how certain foods effect your body. Keeping track of caloric intake is a fantastic way to know what number to stick with in order to stay at the current weight. If you get to the point where you would like to lose more, you simply increase the exercising or decrease the calories each day.

This is a big issue – the one that many people can relate to as they try diet after diet only to find that as soon as they stop the diet they gain the weight right back again. For many people, in order for a diet to work over the long term, a lifestyle change is required. So, best celebrity diets as voted on by thousands of people on Oprah may mean that you can finally lose that extra weight, but if it doesn’t have the two basic components of a healthy diet, and a moderate amount of exercise, you may not be any further ahead in the long run.

What needs to happen for you to lose weight, whether you are following a celebrity diet or not, is that you need to ingest less calories than you burn. For fast weight loss to occur in most people, this usually means depriving yourself of your favourite high calorie foods or perhaps using a supplemental diet product. You will want to make sure that the supplemental product is made of natural ingredients however as many are not. You will also want to make sure that your body is getting enough nutrients or else you will feel very tired and dragged out. It may also be difficult for you to stay on one of the best celebrity diets if the food choices are very limited and boring.

Another thing that you will want to consider is that even with the best celebrity diets, you are probably going to have to change your activity level. Most celebrities have time on their hands as well as money to join fitness clubs and personal trainers. For ordinary people, this is not necessary and more importantly not affordable. You can however do moderate exercise and increase the amount of calories you are burning by doing simple things such as walking the dog every night after dinner, or perhaps taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator. Celebrity or not, you can lose weight too. People will notice it and this way you can become popular.

Certainly, there are numerous diets available and it seems like every few months a new diet or eating plan has emerged to become the new successful diet rage. Is it possible that all the ‘popular’ diets can help you lose weight or are there certain diets that can help you lose more weight than others?

This is the question that a group of researchers set out to answer recently. Over a period of two months, 160 individuals were monitored closely as they followed a supervised program. The varying factor among all 160 program participants was that they were allowed to choose whichever diet suited their fancy. Researchers waited and watched in anticipation to learn which diet or diets would prove to be most successful.

What they learned at the conclusion of the study proved to be quite interesting. The data they collected not only helped them to learn more about which diet programs tend to be more successful in terms of total weight loss but also which diet programs more individuals were more likely to stick with for long term weight loss and maintenance.

While the study participants were allowed to choose their favorite diet plan, most participants opted for one of the following: Atkins, Weight Loss, Ornish and the Zone. Even though initial data was conducted after just two months, researchers continued to study the remaining participants. They discovered that after a period of time more than half of those participants who opted for diet plans that focused on low carbs and high fat, such as the Atkins plan, dropped out. Additionally, approximately the same percentage of individuals who chose the Ornish plan, which focuses on low fat and high carb vegetarian foods, also quit their diets. Weight Watchers participants fared moderately better, with about two-thirds of that group’s participants sticking with it. The Zone participants showed similar results.

So, which diet plans performed best overall in terms of total weight loss? Surprisingly, they all performed about the same. Those individuals participating in the Ornish plan who were able to stick with their diet for the entire year achieved a weight loss rate of about 6%; the highest of all groups. Atkins came in at about 4%, with Weight Watchers and the Zone performing at an average of 5% weight loss. Health risk factors related to obesity were an entirely different matter; however. In terms of heart disease risk, Weight Watchers participants decreased their risk by 15%, while other diet plans hovered in the 12% range. The Ornish diet plan participants, who showed a higher overall weight loss, showed a lower decrease in risk of heart disease, at just 7%.

Overall; however, researchers concluded that in the end, there is no one magic diet. If you’re planning to resolve to lose weight in the New Year, your best strategy is still the same regardless of which diet plan you ultimately choose. Eat sensibly, cut back on portions, drink plenty of water, participate in a moderate exercise routine and find a diet buddy to support you in your weight loss goals.