Diets & Dieting advice

How should you choose the right diets or are you even right for dieting as such? It all depends on your personality and lifestyle. Activites like weight loss boot camps can also help when used alongside a new regime.

Do you prefer a diet that's prescriptive, and tells you exactly what to eat, in what quantities, at every meal? If so, a weight loss diet based on Calorie Counting could be ideal for you - why not check our previous pages for more information. Or do you prefer a more flexible eating plan that focuses on specific foods? In that case, you might prefer something like Atkins or the Glycaemic Index to help you lose weight. Just make sure you read round and compare diets with a website like Slimming.

Calorie Counting

Organisations like Weight Watchers use the principle of calorie counting to help their members lose weight. Using a comprehensive list of how many calories are contained in any food you eat, you can measure exactly how much you can eat at every meal, enabling you to lose weight steadily every day. The Zone plan works on the same principle. Using your gender, body fat ratio and level of activity to work out your own specific targets, the Zone plan calculates how much carbohydrate, fat and protein you should eat every day, at a ratio of 40:30:30.

Atkins

The popular Atkins eating plan reduces your carbohydrate intake and replaces it with fat and protein, with a goal of changing your metabolism so you can lose weight easily.

Glycaemic Index

Calculating the GI score of different foods enables you to choose foods with a low GI score, which your body breaks down more slowly. This means that the levels of blood sugar in your body fluctuate less, so your body is able to process sugar more effectively, and your metabolism can function more efficiently. Many supermarkets and food manufacturers now include the GI score of their foods on the packaging, to help you monitor your food intake.