New year new you? Which diets work best.

With every new year, comes new year’s resolutions. Whatever your resolution is, I tend to notice the main topic that always comes up is getting fit. Nowadays there are so many crazy and interesting diets, but which one is the best if you’re trying to lose weight?

When searching the web, I looked for the best and most popular diets for your health in 2019. These diets consist of the keto diet, the paleo diet, the Whole30 diet and, of course, calorie cutting.

There are some big things that make the keto diet different from others. In 2018, it was the most popular diet in the world. It is a high-fat, low-carb diet. This type of diet is fairly new as we usually see low fat diets and low sugar diets. The main purpose of not eating carbs (for most people that means eating little to no bread) is for your liver to produce ketones to use as energy. When you eat something high in carbs your body absorbs it and turns it into blood sugar and produces something called glucose and insulin. Too much glucose and insulin in your bloodstream can over time lead to diabetes and other health problems. The keto diet, by cutting carbs, stops your body from getting its energy from glucose. Instead, you burn ketones.

The paleo diet, also known as the caveman diet, consists of high-protein and high-fiber as an easy way to lose weight without cutting calories. While doing this diet, you can’t eat any processed foods, wheat or dairy. This diet is based on our ideas of what prehistoric hunters and gatherers must have eaten, which people believe should lead to better health and reduce modern diseases such as diabetes.

The Whole30 diet is one of the most popular diets right now but it isn’t recommended for weight loss and isn’t promoted as such. The diet focuses on eating more whole foods, such as meats, vegetables, eggs and fruit. It went viral in 2018, encouraging people to eat healthier. Unlike the first two diets, this diet doesn’t restrict specific food groups but instead focuses on foods that have been commonly problematic for people across a broad range. Therefore it is marketed as boosting your health and increasing energy with an overall better understanding of what sensitivities you may have with certain foods. Whole30 was supposed to be a diet that took course over a month, but many people have decided to turn it into a year-round lifestyle. The reason for this is you don’t have to cut calories to remain healthy while still being able to eat good tasting foods, making this diet more attractive to try.

One of the most brought up discussions when speaking about diets is calorie cutting. Calories are one of the main source to getting energy on a day to day basis. Calories are the measure of how much food goes into your body. You can also measure calories lost from doing activity on a day to day basis. Women tend to need about 2000+ calories on average while men, on average, need about 2500. Eating the same number of calories as you burn on a daily basis (whatever that number is for you) will sustain your weight. If you really want to make some progress, you’re going to have to cut out a decent amount of calories. When I researched this topic I found that, typically, women eating 1500 calories a day and men eating 2000 calories a day would only lose 1 pound a week. This method seems like a long term solution to lose weight. I would say it’s less effective than the other methods as you aren’t enhancing your health just by calorie cutting. Also, you would still have to go on a specific diet to do this while staying healthy, and it takes a long time. The only way to lose a big amount of weight per week would to be extremely active while doing this method.

After going through multiple diets and breaking down what each one does to your body, I have decided that the keto diet while calorie cutting at the same time would be the best way to lose weight. If you were a male who ate 2000 calories a week while following the rules of the keto diet you would be in extremely good shape. The mix between detoxing your body and cutting calories would decrease body weight and increase health severely. Even if you decide not to do the keto diet, the others are still first class weight loss diets that can help make you healthy.