The Elements Of A Successful Diet

Many of our diet review readers have asked us to explain what makes a good diet and what makes a bad diet. There is no simple way to explain our judging criteria, which spans many levels, but there are some common traits that these diets share that provide a good base for judgement, success and effective weight loss. Here are four of our primary criteria for our diet reviews:

You can eat whatever you want. No, you can’t go out and eat 10 gallons of ice cream a day and expect to lose weight, but a good diet will allow you to cut back on dinner portions for a small cup of ice cream later, or maybe work out a little extra to have a slice of cake at your child’s birthday party. The truth is that nobody has a perfect diet and we will all break down and have junk food at some point. If you try a diet that fails every time you break down then that diet is a failure, plain and simple.

Has a good mix of foods and supplements. We’ve all seen those diets that only allow you to eat one food over and over again, and they all promise miraculous results. I’m not here to tell you that those diets don’t work but let me ask you, can you eat boiled cabbage every day the rest of your life? I know I wouldn’t make it more than a half a day. A good diet will have a variety of foods to give your body the nutrition it needs from a variety of foods, and to keep you satisfied with a nice variety of foods, not the same meal over and over again.

Calls for lots of exercise over the dieting period and beyond. When we think diets we almost always associate losing weight with food, and while that is a big portion of losing weight, exercise is an equal partner in that regard. Exercising often burns calories, and causes the body to burn calories even when you aren’t exercising as the body rebuilds. Any exercise that doesn’t encourage exercise is ignoring one of the primary reasons that people lose weight. You don’t think models and professional athletes are in great shape because of food alone do you?

You can keep it up after the official diet ends. Most people go on a diet for a few weeks or months and when they lose the weight they eat like they normally did before they started. If you lost weight using a fad diet, then you will most likely gain back all the weight you lost and then some because the weight loss process will be reversed. A good diet will teach you to eat properly and show you how to sustain results long after the “official” diet has ended. Look for a diet that is strong in balance, exercise and sounds reasonable. If you cant see yourself sticking to a diet during and after your official diet period, don’t start it, you are just setting yourself up for failure down the line.

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