Weight loss is a very important topic to not only America, but the West as well. And why shouldn’t it be—people are fucking fat! You know that, I know that, everybody knows that people in the developed world (and increasingly the developing world as well) are getting way too big for their britches.
Directly proportional to the increase in girth of the average Joe has been the proliferation of diet plans, workout plans, and various gimmickry that are all marketed as sure-fire methods to lose weight easily—“easily” meaning without strenuous exercise, deliberately planned dieting, or really any effort on the part of the fatbody using the plan, who is likely slothful in addition to gluttonous.
But how effective are these diets? To answer that, and to answer the question of “what diet is the most effective to lose weight”, we must briefly educate ourselves on nutrition, and then take a closer look at a few of the popular diets that are out there nowadays and judge whether or not they are effective.
Low Carb Diets
Low carb diets incorporate things like the paleo diet, ketogenic diet, and the Atkins diet. These are diets that attempt to force the body to utilize its stored body fat by minimizing the amount of carbohydrates eaten—after all the fastest way to put on fat is to eat an excess of calories, and carbohydrates are a quicker caloric fix than anything else. And there is some truth to these diets—studies have shown that these diets will get the fastest results in weight loss in the immediate sense.
However, various types of low carb diets can cause problems depending on the individual. Those who choose the Atkins diet (which states that all carbohydrates should be minimized, including complex carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables, while proteins and fats should be maximized) report adverse effects such as headache, dizziness, and constipation. Indeed, the original diet plan has been modified to include more vegetables, provided they are low in carbohydrates.
From my own personal experience, the paleo diet works wonders for weight loss—and regularity of bowel movements—but it has one major disadvantage: it’s expensive as hell!
And indeed, studies have shown that in the first year, low carb diets are the most effective, but…
Vegan Diets
Let us put aside our nigh-universal distaste for the stereotypical smug, preachy vegan, and look at their diet from an objective standpoint. Vegans, of course, eat absolutely no products that are sourced from animals in any way, including honey.
Truth be told, when carefully planned and supplemented, veganism can be just as healthful as a regular diet, although it doesn’t give you the superior health many of its adherents claim.
However, when not planned properly, vegans are more prone to being deficient in certain types of nutrients, and that’s not getting into the fact that a diet consisting entirely of junk food can be technically vegan (in the sense of being made with no animal involvement), and thus lead to the somewhat paradoxical phenomenon of fat vegans.
Despite the fact that the vegan diet is in many ways wrong, and indeed some anthropologists feel that eating animal products enabled man to become the apex predator he is, I do feel people could stand to eat more vegetables, especially in the West.
The Raw Food Diet
This encompasses many diets: there are raw vegans, raw omnivores, and raw carnivores, all sharing in common the belief that the overwhelming majority of a diet should be uncooked, unprocessed foods.
And there is a grain of truth to this: cooking will often lead to fat and water soluble vitamins being lost from the food, which explains the omnipresence of soups, stews, and broths throughout the cultures of the world as a method to retain said vitamins and minerals.
But then you’ll get into the fruitier concepts of this diet, namely that food has “enzymes” that are destroyed when food is cooked. While nobody sane doubts that enzymes exist, the belief of raw foodists that the “food enzymes” are more beneficial than our own digestive enzymes has not been scientifically proven.
The problem with this is that many, many raw foods are harmful to people, including milk, eggs, various types of greens, and potatoes and other root vegetables, to name just a few. Cooking evolved for a very good reason, after all.
So which diet is best?
From my experience, the best diet to lose weight is whatever diet involves you consuming less calories than you burn, which can be any of the above diets, or just eating a standard balanced omnivorous diet. Just in the past few months, reducing my calories and exercising more (facilitated by me becoming a personal trainer and leaving my desk job) has enabled me to drop 30 pounds, without any great amount of planning or change of macronutrient quality.
Me at a pudgy 215
And me at a leaner 185
Granted, it would be better to eat a high protein/fat diet than the inverse, since that diet will ensure proper muscle, nervous system, and (likely) bone strength than the soy-based flotsam most people eat today, but if weight loss is your goal, that diet won’t help you if you eat a surplus of calories.
So, I’m sorry to disappoint anybody who wants an easy solution, but if you want to lose weight and get muscularly defined, you’re going to have to reduce your total caloric intake, and increase your exercising, particularly heavy resistance training.
Read More: The Downfall Of Every Diet
This article is terrible and the guy who wrote is still fat.
If you want to lose fat and get into shape you must go into a caloric deficit end if story.
End of story? How’s my body composition going to be if I go into caloric deficit everyday but I eat only white bread?
I recommend the reasonable food diet. Eat real food, not processed crap. Eat vegetables. Eat meat. Eat eggs. Eat fruit. Eat some grain, but try to not eat that much of it, cook your own food. Grow as much of your own stuff as possible.
Lift some heavy weights.
Do some cardio
This will put you ahead of 90+% of folks.
I’m a huge fan of intermittent fasting. I lost 50# and went from dad-bod to climbing mountains in three months.
I wouldn’t say he is still fat, as 185 is lean enough. Not everybody needs to be super shredded to be healthy.
Although, I will completely agree that caloric deficit is the one and ONLY way to ensure fat is lost. Any other diet that has been proven to be successful contained a caloric deficit of some sort, whether intentional or not. The manifold of fad diets out there promising the ever elusive goal of attaining the perfect body have all had its success stories come from caloric deficit as the sole factor of their said success.
One could literally get everything else wrong, and so long as a deficit is still present, fat will be lost.
The Kratom diet.
Anyway, doesn’t some of this also assume that every calorie consumed gets absorbed? Chances are if I down a 1500 calorie pizza, a good portion of that 1500 is going to just pass on through unused.
I’m not sure that you shit out calories, but when it comes to the “calories in- calories out” equation, people really tend to overlook the fact that the “out” part of the equation, which includes your basal metabolic rate, can be changed through diet. They think that only the “in” part is diet. It’s not.
Check out Dr Gundry’s Plant Paradox, it will open your eyes.
There are no “fads.” Just eat healthy foods in smaller amounts.
Never allow junk foods to pass your lips again.
Yup, but there’s a lot of junk food that people think is healthy. Bread is pretty shitty even if it is “whole grain.” Protein bars are pretty shitty when they are packed with 16g of sugar and other space-age chemicals. But most people would not consider them junk.
Low carb/high fat diet combined with intermittant and regular fasting is the best way to go in my opinion. Just reducing calories will just slow down your metabolism.
I agree. I don’t even think we should call it “low carb.” Given the fact that we are heading towards 50% of Americans having type 2 diabetes, I think the typical American diet should be called “high carb” and low-carb diets should just be called “normal carb.”
If you really want to lost weight, low carb is the only game in town.
Every single time, I have found that resolutions to “cut back” on the beer and chips come to nothing. To lose weight, you need some categorical rules about what you can and cannot eat. Dump the carbs – all of them, except green veg which is basically fiber so goes straight through you, and you will lose weight. End of.
You can eat as much egg, meat and cheese as you like, but after a while you won’t want to because ketogenic dieting kills your appetite. You stop eating more than you need, and the pounds evaporate.
The only big downer about it is that it makes strenuous exercise a LOT more painful, because you’re burning heavy, heavy fuel (fat) all the time. So I can see why guys who like cycling or the gym might struggle with keto. But if you’ve got a weight problem, arguably that needs addressing first before you start building fitness.
The interesting challenge is persuading overweight women to do low carb. Remember, they’ve been pumped full of propaganda telling them that fat makes them fat (it doesn’t) and a healthy diet involves eating lots of cereal and “low fat” cake. We’re keen on shaming obese women on RoK, but if they are being lied to by Mummy State about the cause of the problem, can we really blame them?
With all the recent ROK articles about trannies and ugly women constantly bitching given that they lost the genetic lottery we need more articles like this. Just sayin’.
Raw food diet? Are you insane?
The human digestive system is unique in nature. Weak jaws, small teeth, small mouth opening, short digestive track make us unsuitable as to live as vegetarians. Teeth that can’t rip flesh and weak digestive juices (strong ones are needed to kill the germs found in raw animal flesh) make us unsuitable to be raw meat carnivores.
The only explanation that makes sense is it is optimized to process cooked food. Cooked meat and cooked vegetables.
https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627
Just eat whole unprocessed cooked at home foods. High protein unprocessed meats and fish, fresh veggies and fruits. Cut out most starches and almost all sugars except that which is found naturally in fruits and veggies. Dairy as you wish or can tolerate but mindful of HGH in it. Tell the docs to fuck off. Cholesterols are needed by the body to repair cells and nerve cells in the brain. Cholesterol statins drugs cause dementia and mental probs..exercise. simple.
Oh and I forget, LEARN TO COOK, by not being afraid of spices…God learn to cook using spices, your own palate will love you…all the bland food that people throw down, you eat more to get taste out of it…spices make it so much better and you will eat less because your palate will get satisfied faster.
So, no Jimmy Dean Corn Dogs wrapped in Blueberry Pancake I assume?
Diets don’t work. You have to make it a lifestyle and stick to it. I’ve been a year round swimmer since I was 5 and a runner, I just eat a lot of protein and go to practice twice a day. At 5″5, I’m 120 lbs, the thinnest girl in my entire family.
The low-carb diet is meme science.
To burn the most fat, you need to consume carbs and work at around 40-50% of your VO2 max. If you don’t eat carbs, you’ll have no energy and won’t be able to sustain that level of power production and you won’t burn as much fat and subsequently won’t lose weight.
Thats completely untrue, you switch from burning glucose to burning fatty acids and ketones
It’s not meme science. Ketosis is a real thing. You are right about it not being good for athletic performance, but it is a diet only for fat people, to address a very specific problem with their metabolisms, namely insulin resistance. But you can definitely still work out while doing low carb. “Low carb” does not mean zero carbs. Also, if you work out intensely, you don’t need to go super-low in carbs to get in ketosis.
The only time low-carb, keto diets wouldn’t be a wise choice is when you’re a professional athlete and your livelihood depends on your performance or you’re a female with menstrual cycles. Otherwise, regular intermittent-fasting, high-protein/fat diets are the way to go to stay lean. In order to use ketones and fat as fuel, fasting is basically required. As soon as you give your body that sweet sweet glucose it’ll use it. Fasting has kept me around 11-12% body fat all while sitting on my ass studying all day long. I lift 3-4 times a week give or take.
Visit marksdailyapple.com and find the most recent success story posted this past Friday. That’s me. I lost 60 lbs 8″ off my waist in 7 months going low carb and ultimately “keto”. Unlike the author of this article, I am ripped under 10% bodyfat without any supplementing, very little exercise the first few months, oh and I eat up to 8 oz of saturated fat per day. Meme science my ass.
I did a low carb diet and I ended up with adrenal burn out. I learned the hard way that carbs, good carbs, are necessary to live. I was lean, but no matter how much I slept I still felt tired. I do intermittent fasting now. I try to have all my meals within a 8 -10 hour time frame. That has worked better for me.
Carbs aren’t a “quicker caloric fix than anything else.” The reason why people go low carb is insulin, not calories. If you are fat, you are insulin resistant, end of story. In order to undo the damage you’ve done to your metabolism, you need to lower your bloodsugar and restore insulin sensitivity. Also, carbs just make you hungrier. A lot of the low-carb popularity is due to how it restores normalcy to your appetite.
*Also, you don’t need to cut out carbs to lower your bloodsugar. You can lower bloodsugar by doing IF and exercising, or even by just eating three square meals a day and not snacking. If you typically eat dinner around 6 and then don’t consume any more calories until breakfast the next day, you’ll probably be okay. But there are benefits to skipping breakfast and going even longer without eating, like autophagy.
Remember also to reduce salt, which is insidious, aggravating hypertension and water weight. Shun fast food of any kind, any sodium based seasoning mix (almost all), canned soup products, and most Asian food prepared in restaurants (unfortunately). You can get more than enough salt in low salt products and you will probably notice benefits (lost water weight) very quickly. Add potasum rich foods to balance electrolytes. Exercise is a must, as well, no diet is effective without it.
A quick read of this article and a browse thru the comments and I’m glad I don’t come to ROK for weight loss and/or health advice because you’re all wrong. I eat a strict ketogenic diet and was on a caloric deficit thru intermittent fasting for the last 8 months. Lost 60lbs and fell to below 10% bodyfat. Now I’m ripped in better shape than I was in my 20s (35 now) every single health and fitness marker has improved in my life. I eat up to 8 oz of saturated fat per days mainly from animal sources. Want proof go visit marksdailyapple.com and find the recent success story. Or find me on Instagram with @aaronthetailor
The author should retract this article and take his pictures down. I wouldn’t listen to a word he says.
And then you have your average fat shaming woman complaining that fit model and thin mannequins is bad for girls MUH ANOREXIA!. Well if thin models and bikini Ads triggers women into anorexia then we have a pandemic of anorexia, wait a minute, we don´t, we have exact the opposite. In fact the number of girls with anorexia is decreasing not increasing despise of a hyper sexual culture where sex sell and is everywhere. It´s funny how all bodies and shape are beautiful, unless your body is thin and objectively beautiful then you are a shitlord who mere presence trigger all the fatties.
There is nothing women hate more than young thin fertile women, that´s why they have Muslim refuges and not Ukraine refugees. Western women know they can´t compete against a thinner culture of women, look how much black girls hate Latina girls
Aaron,
Thanks for the marksdailyapple website.
Now even the health/diet articles here in ROK have degraded. Dammit Roosh/ROK why are you letting this site degrading??????
Try the ELMO diet.
Eat
Less
Move
Often
cold showers + intermittent fasting (20/4 split, sometimes 16/8, once a week 24 hour fast) + ketogenic diet (incl. lots of kale to inhibit estrogen and broccoli for DIM) + Yerba Mate (perhaps Verdeflor’s yerba mate that is mixed with Boldo for liver detox) + apple cider vinegar + 1 high carb cheat day per week (reseting leptin levels) + short high-intensity weight training in a fasted state + wait for at least 2 hours before eating after exercise (to benefit from raised HGH) then eat protein first
the results will start to come after 2 months or so (it takes time to become keto-adapted) depending how bad you were insulin-resistent before. I believe you can make continuous sustainable progress with this diet. The week to week progress will never blow you away (maybe just for me as my genes are not great, could be much better for some of you) but it is much more sustainable to lose weight at a steady moderate pace anyway. Check out Dr. Berg’s and Tomas DeLauer’s youtube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/user/drericberg123
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTdelauer
Investigative science journalist Gary Taubes believes the best diet is one that keeps your blood sugar stable because glucose drives insulin and insulin drives fat. If you eat a diet that makes your blood sugar high, you will only use the calories that your body immediately needs at the moment of eating and the rest will be stored in fat cells never to be released until blood sugar levels are back to normal, allowing the release of fatty acids.
It’s also important to avoid intense exercise as that will make your muscles crave glucose. The best thing to do is to rest as then your muscles will switch to fatty acids for energy.
However, my question is… How much kratom should you take while on one of these trendy diets?
Watch how Butter Bob changed his life.
Today approx 40% of America is clinically obese to morbidly obese. Paleo, keto works and obese America should rationally practice intermittent fasting and follow a low carb/ high fat regimen. Consume No processed foods. No sugar, no grains nor potatoes. Watch your daily calorie intake. Commit to Exercise daily and include at least 3 days/wk of weightlifting. It’s not a diet. It is a lifestyle change that can prolong and even save your life.
http://www.buttermakesyourpantsfalloff.com
Eat the way your grandfather did.
Intermittent fasting is by far the best diet, as after 8 hour not eating, the body starts repairing itself. If one eats say between 12-6 in the afternoon, that is 18 hours not eating, and 10 of those hours the body is repairing.
Add ketogenics – eating fats, e.g avacados, instead of carbs, and the body, after a few weeks, starts using fat as fuel and not carbs. Check out Dr Eric Berg on Youtube, and his cases. Nothing comes close.
Raw meat seems to be unsafe since it can contain a lot of microorganisms that can’t be wash off isn’t?
That was dumb. First of all, the author is still fat himself. Second of all, the Ketogenic diet is the natural human diet and works wonders for your health and physique once you are fat adapted. You only go through problems while going through induction and converting your energy system to ketones. Once you’re body has learned to use fat for energy, your energy levels will fly through the roof, sex drive and fitness/strength will go up, and you will find it easy to get and stay ripped. I’m open-minded but anyone who rags on a keto diet doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
30lb loss – impressive!