What's the best diet for weight loss

It's a question on the minds of most people once they've decided they need to shed some pounds: what is the best diet for weight loss? While that's not an unreasonable question, it often implies an approach that is less than optimal, which is to plan on adopting a radically restrictive mode of eating for a while until the weight is lost, and then going back to eating as normal. Instead of embracing fad diets, people who have lost weight — and kept it off — usually have made a permanent shift toward healthier eating habits. Simply replacing unhealthy foods with healthy ones — not for a few weeks, but forever — will help you achieve weight loss while also offering numerous other benefits. So a better set of questions might be, "What is a healthy diet? What does a healthy diet look like?" A healthy diet favors natural, unprocessed foods over prepackaged meals and snacks. It is balanced, meaning that it provides your body with all the nutrients and minerals it needs to function best. It emphasizes plant-based foods, especially fruits and vegetables, over animal foods. It contains plenty of protein. It is low in sugar and salt. It incorporates healthy fats including fish, olive oil, and other plant-derived oils. Here are a few examples of healthy meals for weight loss. For breakfast, a bowl of bran flakes with sliced strawberries and walnuts with nonfat milk. For lunch, a turkey sandwich on wheat with vegetables and an olive oil and vinegar dressing. For dinner, a salmon steak on a bed of spinach. You don't have to cut out snacks in order to eat a healthy diet, either. Healthy snacks for weight loss include almonds or pistachios, string cheese with an apple, Greek yogurt, or a banana with peanut butter. Before you begin your weight-loss journey, do some brainstorming about the kinds of healthy foods you enjoy so that you can have lots of choices as you plan your meals and snacks. Remember that the best diet is the one you'll stick to, so don't rush out and buy a bunch of "health foods" that you know you'll never eat.    

What's the healthiest diet?

There is no single diet that nutritionists have deemed "the healthiest." However, there are several styles of eating that experts either have designed for optimal health or have observed to be healthy when consumed traditionally by different people around the world. Such styles of eating tend to have a few things in common: they tend to be plant-based diets; they emphasize healthy fats, no simple sugars, and low sodium; and they favor natural foods over the highly processed fare typical of much of the Western diet. For example, the Mediterranean-style diet gets its name from the foods available to various cultures located around the Mediterranean Sea. It heavily emphasizes minimally processed fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains. It contains moderate amounts of yogurt, cheese, poultry, and fish. Olive oil is its primary cooking fat. Red meat and foods with added sugars are only eaten sparingly. Besides being an effective weight loss method, eating a Mediterranean-style diet is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, depression, and some forms of cancer. Experts developed the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) specifically as a heart-healthy regimen. The combination of food types contained in the diet seem to work together especially effectively to lower blood pressure and decrease risk of heart failure. The key features of DASH are low cholesterol and saturated fats; lots of magnesium, calcium, fiber, and potassium; and little to no red meat and sugar. Unsurprisingly, that equates to a list of foods similar to those of the Mediterranean diet: whole grains, vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, nuts, and olive oil. As its name implies, the MIND diet (Mediterranean-DASH diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) was designed by doctors to take elements from the Mediterranean and DASH diets that seemed to provide benefits to brain health and stave off dementia and cognitive decline. In practice, it is very similar to both the Mediterranean and DASH diets, but it puts stronger emphasis on leafy green vegetables and berries, and less emphasis on fruit and dairy. In recent years, the Nordic diet has emerged as both a weight-loss and health-maintenance diet. Based on Scandinavian eating patterns, the Nordic diet is heavy on fish, apples, pears, whole grains such as rye and oats, and cold-climate vegetables including cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower. Studies have supported its use both in preventing stroke and in weight loss. What do all of these diets have in common? They're all good for your heart, they all consist of natural unprocessed foods, and they all contain plenty of plant-based dishes. Eating for your health — especially your heart health — by adopting elements from these diets is a smart way to lose weight.