WHAT KINDS OF DIETS ARE THERE?
Diets can be divided into the following categories:
- Low-carb diet: In this diet only 5 to 40% of the calories come from carbohydrates. Examples are the Atkins, Mayo, Paleo, Dukan, Montignac or Keto diet.
- Low-fat diet: Here only 10 to 30% of the daily calories are consumed as fat. These include the Low-Fat 30, Ornish, TLC, and Macrobiotic diets.
- High-protein diet: In this diet more than 15% of the calories come from protein, in some cases even more than 40%. The Dukan, Medifast, and Paleo diets are in this category.
- Balanced diet: This diet is usually made up of a mix of low-calorie foods that total a daily consumption between 850 and 1500 cal per day. The following diets fall in this group: Weight Watchers, Dash Diet, SlimFast, and the Zone Diet.
- Low-calorie diet: Here you only eat about 800 cal per day. These are often meal replacement diets, where you mainly drink shakes. Examples of low-calorie diets include SlimFast, Cookie, Medifast, Nutrisystem, the Raw Food Diet, and the Fast Diet.
- Intermittent fasting: There are almost no guidelines about what you should eat during intermittent fasting. One option here is to eat within an 8 hour period during the day and fast the remaining 16 hours. You can also eat as you normally do for 5 days and then basically fast (= eat less than 500 cal) for 2 days.
