by “New year, new to you.”
At least that’s what we all hear every time the calendar turns to January. When making those New Year’s resolutions, the most common promises we make to ourselves are weight loss, the gym and fitness.
While there’s nothing wrong with aiming for a healthier lifestyle in 2024, it’s easy to fall prey to a mindset that focuses more on how you look than how you feel. Fad diets, extreme food regimes and intense workout routines are appealing to us in the short term but can lead to burnout, loss of interest and even unhealthy habits.
In fact, a study published in the medical journal The BMJ in 2020 found that weight loss diets are generally ineffective in the long term, with most of the weight lost by participants being regained within one year.
The study followed 22,000 overweight or obese adults on 14 of the most popular diets including the Atkins diet, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the Mediterranean diet, for an average of six months.
At the initial six-month mark, some health parameters such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol had improved in most participants, but these positive effects had almost disappeared by the 12-month mark (except for the Medeterarian diet , which showed continued improvements. in cholesterol.)
It’s tempting to commit to the idea of a fast-acting diet to transform our bodies in the new year, but a skeptical mind can help you weed through the short-term solutions and find something that will work better for you in the end. .
Here’s more information on some of the more popular diets you’ll see flying around to start the year.
Keto
At a basic level, a ketogenic or “keto” diet centers around a low intake of carbohydrates along with a high intake of fat and protein. In general, people following this diet get 70% to 80% of their daily calories from fat, about 20% from protein and about 5% from carbohydrates.
The lack of carbs puts the body into a state of ketosis, during which fat becomes the body’s primary fuel provider and is theoretically burned for energy.
Although keto has been linked to weight loss, professionals have warned against the diet for those looking to improve their overall health. First of all, limiting your carb intake so much causes the body to break down not only fat but muscle and tissue.
The rigors of keto can easily lead to a diet that lacks other important sources of nutrition, such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
“I wouldn’t recommend the keto diet to anyone,” Jeffrey Mechanick, medical director at Mount Sinai Heart’s Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Clinical Cardiovascular Health, told USA TODAY.
“In theory, the keto diet basically mimics starvation,” Mechanick said. “If you don’t eat carbohydrates but you eat too much fat and protein, you’re still going to waste tissue. The tissue is still going to burn.”
Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean diet has been hailed as one of the most successful diet plans out there.
It focuses on heart-healthy foods that Mediterranean people eat most often such as plants, legumes, nuts, wheat, fruits and veggies. Instead of focusing on restriction and elimination, the Mediterranean diet focuses on healthier choices, such as replacing butter with fish and poultry with healthier olive oil and red meat.
Because this diet focuses more on overall health than weight loss, it does not provide simple guidelines for portion sizes, how often to eat and other instructions that are often included in similar diets. Because of this, people who hope this diet will work must commit to a complete lifestyle change long-term to see results.
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fasting diets
Intermittent fasting has become very popular recently, attracting the attention of social media influencers, lay people and doctors alike.
As USA TODAY previously reported, intermittent fasting is a diet plan that focuses not on what you eat but when you eat it. It depends on fixed periods of fasting and eating that occur in a designated period of time.
Some of the benefits include reduced calorie intake and more flexibility with food types, leading to a less restrictive mindset around food.
“Intermittent fasting may be worth considering for health and weight loss goals, but it’s not a magic solution,” Mary Sabat, registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of BodyDesigns, told USA TODAY.
“If it is practiced consistently and combined with a balanced diet and regular physical activity, it can contribute to certain health improvements. However, individual results can vary, and it is important to approach it as part of a style overall healthy living.”
paleo diet
Paleo is another low-carb diet that focuses mainly on protein, vegetables and fruits. The name is derived from the Paleolithic era in history and operates on the premise that those who follow it should eat like the hunter-gatherers of 2.6 million years ago.
By cutting out grains, dairy, legumes and refined and processed foods, dieters seek to mimic the simpler foods our ancient ancestors once ate and focus on “whole unprocessed” foods such as vegetables, nuts, seeds and flesh.
Nutrition consultant and registered dietitian Jen Messer told USA TODAY “Advocates of the paleo diet believe that eating this way can lead to weight loss, improved health and a reduced risk of today’s most common chronic diseases,” who she said, “scientific evidence does not support these health claims.”
While the paleo diet can help promote the inclusion of healthy foods containing potassium, antioxidants and other important nutrients and discourage dependence on processed foods, it can lead to a lack of dietary habits such as calcium and vitamin D on him too.
This can lead to vitamin deficiencies, increased risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, low blood sugar, kidney stones, constipation, heart disease and disordered eating.
Atkins diet
Another low-carb diet option, Atkins focuses on net carbs instead of total carbs and now comes in two versions: Atkins 20 and Atkins 40.
As USA TODAY previously reported, the classic diet has four phases based on periodically increasing carb intake: the first phase requires 0 to 25 grams of carbohydrates per day and 80 to 100 grams of carbohydrates per day The last stage involves a day.
Unlike other low-carb diets, Atkins also considers fiber and sugars when calculating intake, subtracting the number of carbs you record as eaten based on the other content of the food (if something has 10 grams of carbohydrate some you want to eat, only 3 grams). of fiber and 1 gram of sugar, then your net carbs would be 6 grams.)
Atkins also offers prepackaged foods for purchase through their program, which means you can pay to get prepared meals that fit your diet rather than cooking them yourself.
As with other low-carb diets on this list, the Atkins diet can easily lead to nutritional and vitamin deficiencies due to severe restrictions on certain types of foods. It also carries the risk of developing eating disorders, kidney problems and a low long-term success rate.
Dry January:What are the rules of Dry January? What do you know if you’re swearing off alcohol in 2024.
WW, Noom and other diet apps
Apps are the most modern and perhaps one of the most popular solutions to diet and weight loss. From the original Weight Watchers (now just called WW) to the newer Noom, there are apps for weight loss, “fitness,” “lifestyle changes” and everything in between.
Although we can see them as an easier way to integrate nutrition awareness into our daily lives, the apps can often mislead us, as they are not usually run by qualified medical professionals.
“A lot of apps I’ve seen will recommend as low as 1,200 calories a day, sometimes 1,500 calories,” Jessica DeGore, RD, a Pittsburgh-based registered dietitian told the USA TODAY Review staff. “We recommend 1,200 calories for a toddler, so I wouldn’t recommend that for an adult.”
Logging your calories and exercise can help with mindfulness and intentional eating, but it can also lead to disordered eating and unhealthy obsession.
“Whenever we put a negative label on something or shelve it, we tend to magnify it,” DeGore previously said. “And that kind of drives us a little crazy and we expect food, which I wouldn’t consider healthy behaviors.”
