There are so many diets out there for weight loss today. It seems like every time summer comes around that there is the new and latest breakthrough diet for dropping the pounds fast and getting into shape. The truth of the matter is however, that losing weight is simple, and the best diet is the one that drops the most weight while still being possible to follow.
There is no point following a diet that you can't stick to for more than a couple of days. While extreme crash diets can cause rapid weight loss in the sort term, they are much more difficult to follow for more than a couple of weeks and can cause a host of problems like metabolic slowdown and malnutrition. Your body still needs a certain amount of micro-nutrients per day to function, so just drinking cabbage soup is going to starve your body of these and be impossible to keep up for more than a few days. So it's important to keep your diet balanced, even while cutting calories to make sure you are getting all the vitamins and minerals needed to function at your cellular level.
Nutrition For Weight Loss
When dieting it is important to keep proteins, nutrients, amino acids and enzymes all high. This best way to achieve this is with lean cuts of meat, lots of green vegetables and some fruit. You should avoid fruit juices however as they are mostly void of the fibre and contain large amounts of sugar. Fruit smoothies are still great however, as you are eating the whole fruit along with some yoghurt of similar. Just try to keep overall carbohydrates and sugars low, as this is where a lot of the hidden calories people eat per day are. In the past people have been focusing on their fat intake too much, and still been eating a lot of hidden calories as carbs. Once your bodies glycogen stores are full, it will happily start adding these calories to your fat stores. This is the last thing we want.
You should focus on consuming one gram of protein for each pound of body weight. So if we're taking a 185 pound male, he could get this from say 2 meals with a lean cut of meat and a post workout protein shake with 2 scoops of whey. The protein shake would provide about 50g or protein, leaving about 60g to be obtained from each meal. One could be a grilled chicken breast or some fish.
As we are trying to lose weight it is important to keep calories low (approximately 500 below maintenance per day). However once you have met your required protein income per day, it doesn't really matter so much where the rest of your calories come from. This principle is called IIFYM, or if it fits your macros. As long as you are getting your daily required protein, and staying at least 500 calories below maintenance you can eat whatever else you like. Although it's best not to go crazy and eat ice cream everyday to make up your calories. Keep it varied and nutritional with the occasional cheat meal here and there. This is the best diet for fast weight loss, while not losing your mind.