What is the best diet for Weight Loss?

“What is the best diet for weight loss?” is definitely one of the top questions that is asked in the health and fitness industry. It’s so common that a Google search returns about 1,210,000,000 results!!

Most people aren’t actually interested in weight loss. Most people really want fat loss. There is a very important distinction between these two. You could cut off your left leg and instantly lose several pounds of body weight. You wouldn’t do that, however. Losing the wrong kind of weight is far from ideal. Losing muscle mass will lead to weight loss, but it will also slow your metabolism down making maintaining fat loss far more difficult. A slow metabolism burns less calories than a fast metabolism. If fat loss is your goal, you do not want a slow metabolism.

Fat loss only happens when you are in a caloric deficit. You must be burning more calories than you consume. This is what every fat loss diet has in common, no matter if it’s low carb, high carb, low fat, high fat, paleo, vegan, carnivore, keto, or anything else. Does this mean it’s all about calories? Are all foods healthy so long as calories are low? No. Heavily processed foods have been consistently connected to poor health and fat gain. These are foods that typically come in wrappers, boxes or have lots of hard to pronounce ingredients. They share one quality that makes them almost always a poor choice- they make us eat a lot more!

Studies show that a high protein diet is more effective for fat loss than lower protein diets. High protein diets have been proven to preserve more muscle versus other diets (muscle burns a lot of calories) and are proven to help with appetite control. Protein is also an essential nutrient meaning you need to eat protein just to survive. A high protein diet (~1.6-2 grams per kilogram of lean body weight) will help you eat less and maintain (or gain) more muscle.

During the 1970s, ’80s and most of the ’90s fat was blamed for heart disease, cancer, and the growing obesity epidemic. Our own government guidelines told us to not eat too many fats and especially saturated fats because they are “so unhealthy.” This turned out to be mostly false. Studies actually show that a high fat diet in the context of a diet that is low enough in calories to maintain a lean body is typically perfectly healthy. Fats are also essential meaning you must consume a certain amount of fats just to maintain normal bodily functions and health.

Over the last couple of decades carbohydrates have gotten a bad rep. They have been blamed for most of our modern chronic health problems. In the context of a diet that is high enough in calories to cause fat gain and obesity, carbohydrates can lead to serious health effects, but in the context of a diet that is balanced calorically to maintain a relatively lean body they tend to not pose many health issues. Carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient meaning you don’t have to eat a single carb to survive.

So, what is the best diet for fat loss? There isn’t one! Meaning, the “best” diet for fat loss for you can be different than the “best” diet for the next person. It can be low carb, high carb, low fat, high fat, paleo, carnivore, keto, or almost anything else so long as it contains adequate amounts of the essential macronutrients (proteins and fats) and as long as it is largely absent of heavily processed foods.

Eat an appropriate number of calories (for you), eat the foods that make you feel best and stick to whole natural foods and your odds of long-term fat loss will be much better. The best diet is the one that works for you and that you stick with!

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