the secret that diets don't want you to know

Here's the truth: All diets work. Some diets work better than others.

Before you get baited by the next fad diet trying to get your hard-earned dollars, they don't have the "one secret" or the "magic pill" for weight loss. Even patients that get gastric bypass have to put in some work to lose weight.

Here's the rub: The dieting industry is a 72 billion dollar industry. That's $72,000,000,000. The industry didn't get this big by getting people to lose weight and keeping the weight off.

Now, there are a lot of diets out there. Vegetarian, meat only, paleo, pescatarian, low-carb, keto, Atkins, Noom, Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig. I'm sure I missed a bunch.

Which one of these diets works best from a medical perspective?

I'd say the one you can stick with over the long-term, at least 6 months. Sorry to bust your bubble. I know you want the weight loss fast and you probably have an event you need to trim down for, but quick diets and quick weight loss lead to one thing: regaining the weight quickly.

Once we start to look at diets that can create sustainable weight lost for 6-12 months, the medical data for a lot of the easily named programs is limited. One meta-analysis cites that most of the named fad diets are equivalent in terms of their weight loss.

You can argue with the diet zealots on the internet about which diet can defeat the other diets, but a lot the nuances don't matter if you cannot sustainably stay on the diet over the long term.

So stop arguing about which diet will make you lose weight; they all will if you stick with them.

The most important part about your diet? Making it a habit. Making it a day-in-day-out process. The sooner you're able to make a diet a habit that you're able to stick to more days than not, the faster you are going to get the results you want.

Here are some simple tips to get started:

1. When starting a diet and before making any changes to what you eat, write down everything you eat for at least 1 week in a notebook

   1. simply making this change gets most people to decrease the amount of calories they eat

   2. not changing anything is critical since we need a good baseline of what we during the week

2. make small changes - large, intense changes lead to more burn out and rebounding back to normal eating habits.

3. don't drink calories - This is the first small change I'd make if you drink anything other than water, tea, or coffee.

4. plan out meals and snacks ahead of time

   1. it's much easier to avoid junk food if you plan healthy meals and snacks ahead of time.

   2. This rule helps me when I'm at work surrounded by junk food.

   3. the rule for myself: no eating outside food until I finish all the food that I brought

What do you think about these rules? What kinds of diets have you tried? Reply in the comments section below?