There’s lots of diet book authors who often contradict each other.
What principles do they all agree on?
I’ll start;
If you eat an excess of foods high in both sugar and fat, you’ll gain weight.
You MUST use more calories than you consume for meaningful weight loss to occur.
don’t eat the same way you used to.
You will lose five pounds the first week.
Also, most of those other diets is rubbish.
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If you buy my book, my bank account will be as large as your tummy.
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Doing stupid and unhealthy stuff that takes off pounds fast but has no mechanism to keep it off once you get off the diet because you have to because it’s not sustainable, which is OK, because when the weight goes back on, you can buy my next book.
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Ignoring what you’re supposed to be doing: permanently changing behavior, getting more exercise, getting more sleep, reducing stress, carefully examining ingredients and labels; eating more but smaller and balanced meals, focusing on fitness rather than weight, and all the other stuff real doctors say.
Most vegetables and fruits are good.
Use more calories than you consume (which is easier said than done. How many calories are absorbed, how fast your RMR are, how much NEAT you do, etc. all vary from person to person as well as how far you are from your set point).
Exercise is good (but this is usually just seen as a means of expending more calories).
A western diet is bad for you.
Another one, Transfat is bad for you
It’s not universal, low carbers try to avoid fruit and starchy veg.
Increase water intake and eliminate soft drinks and alcohol?
Neither does a 52-year-old relic, in this discussion, at least IMO.
Why? It’s a forerunner of the South Beach Diet and its allowance of fats contradicts the OP as well.
There is nothing that all diet books agree on.
I’ve yet to see one advocate eating potassium cyanide.
But, yeah, a real expert needs to weigh in with a weightloss diet book. The real experts all agree on how to lose weight, right?
I’ll bet that you can go through a pile of diet books higher than your head and not find one that warns against eating potassium cyanide.
While some diets might discourage some vegetables, I’m not aware of any that doesn’t agree that, say, broccoli and spinach are good.
Moved from General QUestions to Cafe Society.
samclem, moderator
Diets like Atkins advocate eating even these in limited amounts. 2 cups of vegtables a day but all of the fat you want. In fact if you are having trouble losing weight on the normal Atkins he has a high fat regimim that as I recall is almost all fatty substances and no carbs at all (no vegtables, fruits or grains etc)
the only thing I can tell the diet books all agree on is there way is the only way. And eating less than you burn whatever form that takes.
Possibly the only thing they all agree on is that you can’t lose weight while eating what you want, when you want, in the quantities you want.
Most sound diets agree upon portion control. Or should.
Low carb doesn’t as far as I know, well at least the version I did did not advocate portion control.
I think they all agree that sugar is a bad thing.
Yep, the Fuhrman diet basically says “stuff your face all day if you want, just stuff it with green, leafy vegetables.”