Obesity has become one of the most concerning health issue in the world. Obesity is when a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) is at least 20% higher than it should be. BMI is used to calculate the percentage of body fat using the measurement of your height and weight.
How does a person become obese? It’s when one consumes too many calories than they should be. To maintain a weight, a man needs to consume 2,500kcal a day while a woman needs to consume 2,000kcal a day. If you are eating more than the calories needed, that’s when you start to pack those pounds.
So what are some healthy and safe diets that can help you kickstart your journey to losing the weight and maintaining them in the long run? Here are a few diet plans that you can follow that are safe.
1. The Boiled Egg Diet
That’s right. The name of the diet says it all. This diet consists of lots and lots of eggs in your meals. The boiled egg diet is a way to substitute your usual protein sources with lean protein such as the egg itself, chicken and fish. This diet is notably repetitive and usually lasts for 2 weeks. Some may question whether it is fine to eat so many eggs as it is high in cholesterol. It is 100% safe to consume so many eggs and cholesterol is nothing to be worried about because the cholesterol in the eggs is actually good cholesterols.
This diet basically eliminates all uses and consumption of oil, butter, and fats. It is also very low in carbs and sugar. The only sugar you consume will be natural sugar from fruits. Even so, the fruits you can eat with this diet are citrus fruits- grapefruit, orange.
To find out the meal plan for the two-week boiled egg diet, check it out *here*.
Some people have claimed to have lost up to 12kg in two weeks with this diet.
2. Cabbage Soup Diet
If you have an event coming up in a week and you need a quick diet to fit in that dress or pants you bought one size smaller to motivate yourself to lose some weight, the cabbage soup diet might be the solution.
This diet makes you lose up to 4-5kg in just 7 days! However, cabbage is all you will be eating for the whole 7 days. You can, however, add two other foods such as milk, fruits, and vegetables. No meat!
To start this diet, you will need to prepare this cabbage soup in a big batch as this will be your only meal for the entire day. There’s no rule to how much of the soup you can eat in a day. Whenever you are feeling hungry, just get yourself a bowl of the cabbage soup. You can have as many meals as you want, that being said, all your meals are only the cabbage soup.
Things you should avoid during the cabbage soup diet:
-Bananas
-Corn
-Beans
-Peas
3. Paleo Diet
Paleo comes from the word “Paleolithic” which refers to the prehistoric period when humans discovered the technology of stone tools. The Paleo Diet is composed to resemble the daily diet of our ancestors from thousands of years ago. Researchers believe that their diet consists of whole foods and based on how they would have prepared their food back then.
Paleo diet can make you lose weight even without counting the calories. It is all about the types of food they consume and how they cook their food.
During the Paleo diet, you will eat basic foods such as meats of all kind, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, natural oil and fats. Sounds about normal and everything we eat on a daily basis nowadays, right?
However, what we do not realize is that most of the food we consume now are processed foods and artificial flavoring. Hence, during this diet, you are to avoid the following:
-Processed foods
-Sugar
-Soft drinks
-Dairy products
-Artificial flavoring and sweeteners
-Margarine and trans fats
It is advisable to prefer organic, grass-fed and unprocessed food of all kinds during this diet. You can, however, consume tea of all kinds and coffee. The Paleo diet is pretty straightforward and you do not have to worry about your calorie intake, as long as you do not overeat your daily calorie.
For a more precise meal plan, read all about it *here*.
4. Keto Diet
The ketogenic diet is a diet with a very low-carb diet but high-fat that will make you lose weight fast. This diet requires you to drop all your carbs and replacing them with fats instead.
There have been studies and research done proving that keto diet can make you lose weight 2.2 times more than a calorie-restricted diet. Not just that, keto diet has plenty of health benefits that can reduce the chances of many diseases- heart disease, cancer, acne, Alzheimer’s, and many more.
So what can and can’t you eat during this diet?
Avoid:
– Sugar: soda, fruit juice, cake, ice cream, chocolates.
-Starch: rice, bread, pasta, cereal
-Fruits: all kinds of fruits.
-Beans and legumes: peas, lentils, chickpeas
-Alcohol
-High carb vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, yam
Eat:
-Meat: any kinds of meat
-Fatty fish: salmon, trout.
-Eggs
-Cheese
-Nuts and seeds
-Avocados
Snacks you can eat:
-Cheese
-Nuts or seeds
-Eggs
-Dark chocolate
-Low carb milkshake
-Guacamole dip
You can try the keto diet for a week and see some noticeable results. The keto diet is one of the easiest diets because you still get to eat a lot of food without counting your calories. You just need to give up on your rice and pasta and bread for a few weeks and you will fit into your skinny jeans in no time.
For more information on the keto diet, what you can or cannot do, or simply to know the meal plan for a week, visit *here*.
5. Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting may not be unfamiliar to us because it is somewhat practiced by fellow Muslims during the Ramadhan month. So how does this intermittent fasting work?
It is an eating pattern that restricts you from eating for a certain period of time and another amount of time, you’ll be allowed to eat.
There are a few ways of intermittent fasting:
-16/8: The 24 hour of your day is split to 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating. You are required to skip your breakfast and your eating period will last for 8 hours.
– Eat, Stop, Eat: This requires you to fast for 24 hours that you can do once or twice a week. For example, you stop eating breakfast from today until breakfast tomorrow.
-5:2 diet: In a week, you consume only a 500-600 calorie diet, not to be practiced two consecutive days, but eat normally the other 5 days of the week.
The 16/8 method is the easiest and most sustainable method because you still get to eat every day without limiting your calorie intake and there’s no restriction on what you can or cannot eat.
6. Juice Fasting
You have seen plenty of juice bars or stores that specifically sell juices popping in your neighborhood over the recent years. Juice fasting has become more and more popular and most people are catching up to this trend. With juice fasting, this diet is just all about juice and liquid drinks.
Some people have done juice cleansing for the longest time. This is a method to detox your body from all the unhealthy food you have been consuming and also a way to absorb an adequate amount of nutrients to your body.
People who take up this juicing diet has claimed to lose up to 50kg in just 60 days! The juice cleanse does not only help you lose weight, it helps boost your body’s immune system and remove toxins from your body. As you may have guessed it, yes, this diet is solely and heavily relying on just juices as your meals.
Of course, with such a drastic change to your normal daily diet, this diet comes with consequences as well. Some of the side effects of juice fasting are:
-fatigue
-dizziness
-nausea
-constipation
-diarrhea
However, after adapting to this diet for a certain amount of time, your body will get used to it and these symptoms will slowly vanish.
Do you have a diet that works for you? Which of these diets will you try? Let us know if you get tremendous results after trying out the diets!