5 Good Diets To Lose Weight Fast
We all know that the real key to positive and sustainable weight loss is to make long-term changes to our nutrition and exercise routines. But in the event that we need to shed some pounds fast for an upcoming event, we feel the need to make some drastic changes to our diet. Instead of getting caught up in dangerous crash-diets or starving your body of the nutrients that it needs, here is a list of five good diets to lose weight fast but will also keep you healthy.
The Smoothie Diet
The key pro to the smoothie diet is that you lose weight quickly.
The idea is that you drink smoothies to replace at least 2 of your meals per day. This drastically cuts your daily calorie intake, which allows you to drop pounds fast. However, it’s important to plan your smoothie recipes carefully to watch your sugar intake and ensure that you are getting enough protein, fats and fibre.
The unfortunate drawback to the smoothie diet is that it is unsustainable, and when you go back to eating solid foods, you are more likely to put on the weight you lost. This can lead to a cycle of yo-yo dieting that it is hard to break out of, so be sure to plan which meals you are replacing with smoothies carefully to make sure that you are optimising smoothies for your weight loss. Weight loss doesn’t have to be dangerous with these good diets to lose weight fast.
Be sure to check out recipes for green smoothies, and consider how adding smoothie boosters to your drinks can boost your weight loss whilst staying healthy.
The Flat Belly Diet
This diet, authored by Liz Vaccariello and Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, claims that in 32 days you can lose up to 15 pounds by following this diet.
The diet plan involves eating four 400 calorie meals per day, not going longer than 4 hours without eating and eating mono-saturated fats in every meal. The first four days are the most restrictive; after that, it promotes a Mediterranean diet.
The diet also says that you must drink 2 litres of “sassy water” per day: water mixed with ginger root, cucumber, lemon, and mint leaves.
The 5:2 Diet
The concept behind this diet is simple: eat what you want for 5 days a week, and fast for two non-consecutive days. As such, it is often considered as a ‘part time’ diet and is generally easy to follow as you do not need to exclude any food groups or strictly calorie count for 5 days a week. It is advised to eat a normal amount of calories on your 5 days, and then consume 25% of your usual calorie total; about 500 calories for adult women.
As well as being beneficial to your weight loss, intermittent fasting diets are suggested to improve brain function, reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer, and improving cholesterol levels.
On your low-calorie days, be sure to make the most out of your calories by choosing foods which are nutrient-dense, such as lean proteins.
The Keto Diet
The keto diet is most well known for being low-carb. The science behind it is that it encourages your liver to produce ketones to use as energy. Though effective, ketosis can be tricky to achieve. It requires you to strictly ratio the food groups that you are getting calories from. This makes the diet a difficult one to follow, and you really need to commit to monitoring your food intake in order to see results.
This graphic explains how to split up the food groups in your diet to successfully follow the keto plan.
It may be restrictive, but there are plenty of keto-friendly recipes available so you can adapt some of your favourite foods to fit your diet, including Garlic Bread, Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Tiramisu.
The 8-Hour Diet
This diet suggests that by only consuming calories within an eight-hour window each day, you can lose 20 pounds or more within 6 weeks.
Similarly to the 5:2 diet, there are no specific guidelines to what you can and can’t eat, as long as you are only eating within the eight-hour window. However, the diet encourages you to consider portion size and suggests choosing eight power foods to increase the effectiveness of the diet, as well as your health.
No-one loves going on a diet. The focus should always be on making sure your body stays fit and healthy. Make sure that you are safe whilst trying to shed the pounds by eating a correct balance of foods and keeping hydrated. Do so with these good diets to lose weight fast!
