A healthy diet is a crucial element of good health. Nutrient timing and the type of foods you consume play a major role in maintaining a healthy weight. Through exercise and diet, allowing these two key elements to work synergistically, will help yield you the best results.

The hard truth about how to lose weight at home diets

Hundreds of lose weight at home diets have been created, many of these diets have promised you fast and permanent weight loss results. As we all know, there is no one size fits all model when it comes to dieting. Our bodies are not all created equally. This is where I come in as a professional, to provide you with the science and the facts. I guarantee if you asked 10 different doctors which lose weight at home diet will help you with weight loss, you will probably get 10 different answers. I know you probably ask yourself why is that. Over the years, it has been a challenge trying to find the perfect diet that works for everybody. The more our population increases, the harder it becomes to customize a plan for each individual patient.

The best lose weight at home diet for weight-loss is one that allows you to have nutritional diversity and a diet that is good for all parts of your body. From your brain to your toes, and not just your waistline. We also have to think about sustainability. Is this lose weight at home diet something I can live with for a lifetime so that my body does not go into relapse. In other words, a diet that is plentiful in nutrients and doesn’t require an extensive and expensive list of groceries.

Quality NOT quantity of calories when choosing a lose weight at home diet

“A calorie is a calorie” appears to be an often dietary slogan used today. Start to consider quality of calories. It’s important to understand the concept of “empty calories” (foods with no nutrition value), can often lead to chronic overeating. Rather than choosing foods just based on only “caloric value”, start to think about selecting high-quality, nutritious foods, and minimizing foods with poor nutrition value.

• High-quality foods: raw, minimally processed foods such as vegetables and fruits that are in season.  Stay tuned for a future blog to go into more detail on this.
• Poor-quality foods: Highly processed foods, sugary beverages, refined grains, refined sugars, food cooked in vegetables oils, foods high in trans-fat, and high-glycemic foods.

Managing Macronutrients

With the surplus of macronutrient focused diets over the past several decades, a discussion of the three main macronutrients – Carbohydrates, Fats, and Protein – has become quite standard when discussing optimal lose weight at home diets.  A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 “Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates” looked at the theory of possible advantages for weight loss of a diet that emphasizes protein, fat, or carbohydrate.

• The study followed 811 people over 2 years, assigning subjects to one of four diets: Low-fat and average-protein, low-fat and high-protein, high-fat and average-protein, and high-fat and high protein.
• Researchers concluded that all of the lose weight at home diets resulted in meaningful weight loss, despite the differences in macronutrient composition.
• The study also discovered that the more group counseling sessions participants attended, the more weight they lost, and the less weight they regained. This supports the idea that not only is what you eat important, but behavioral, psychological, and social factors are important for weight loss as well.

These divergent results suggest that any type of diet, when taught for the purpose of weight loss with enthusiasm and persistence, can be effective.

Conclusion of study: Lose weight at home diets that are successful in causing weight loss can emphasize a range of fat, protein, and carbohydrate compositions that have beneficial effects.

References

25. Sacks, F.M., et al., Comparison of weight-loss diets with different compositions of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. N Engl J Med, 2009. 360(9): p. 859-73.
26. Larsen, T.M., et al., Diets with high or low protein content and glycemic index for weight-loss maintenance. N Engl J Med, 2010. 363(22): p. 2102-13.

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