Many people tend to choose a specific diet at the beginning of each year to improve their eating habits and protect their overall health. But what are the best types of "Diets" recommended by experts?
Before presenting the most beneficial diets for the body, nutritionists warned against three common mistakes made by people wishing to lose weight:
- **Skipping Breakfast:** The morning meal helps provide satiety throughout the day, especially when it contains a good dose of proteins.
- **Eating Dinner Late:** Dinner should be the lightest meal of the day. When it is rich in calories or consumed too late, it can disrupt proper sleep. At night, appetite hormones are regulated. However, in case of severe exhaustion, the body tries to compensate by increasing feelings of hunger and boosting fat storage.
- **Neglecting Hydration:** Drinking a good amount of water throughout the day helps regulate feelings of hunger better. In fact, water consumed during and between meals occupies space in the stomach, thus helping to limit the amount of food. Additionally, dehydration can lead to chronic fatigue, prompting the body to seek more food to compensate.
Here are the best diets recommended by nutrition experts for weight loss and health support:
- **Mediterranean Diet:** Considered the best overall, it helps prevent cancer and diabetes and improves heart and brain health. It relies primarily on natural products and excludes processed and trans fats. Furthermore, the Mediterranean diet is low in red meat, sugar, and saturated fats, while paying great attention to omega-3s with olive oil as a key component.
- **DASH Diet:** The DASH diet, aimed at combating high blood pressure, resembles the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet but emphasizes restricting salt intake and allows for the consumption of white meats and low-fat dairy products.
- **MIND Diet:** As its name suggests, the MIND diet aims to prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It is rich in vitamins B6, B9, and B12 and encourages the consumption of plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and antioxidant-rich foods known for their ability to slow down brain aging, such as berries.
- **Anti-Inflammatory Diet:** While inflammation is a natural mechanism of the body, when it becomes chronic, it can increase the risk of numerous health issues, including heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, arthritis, and asthma. Hence, the importance of the anti-inflammatory diet, which focuses on good fats like omega-3s.
- **Flexitarian Diet:** This diet resembles a plant-based diet but is not entirely devoid of meats. The aim of the Flexitarian is only to reduce the amount of meat in the diet, as semi-vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index than those who rely on meat.
- **TLC Diet:** The Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet requires its followers to limit salt consumption to a single teaspoon per day. Sugar should also not be exaggerated as a measure to reduce triglyceride levels.
- **Ornish Diet:** This diet encourages the preference for plant proteins, complex carbohydrates, and good unsaturated fats like omega-3s, at the expense of animal proteins, refined sugars, saturated fats, and bad trans fatty acids.
