7 Top Diets for No Refined Foods and How They Help You Lose Weight
More and more people have become conscious of their health, especially since we’re just recently recovering from a global pandemic. But beyond this, diets have long been a common trend for individuals looking to lose weight or stay fit, ensuring they consume all the nutrients their body needs while maintaining a physique.
One of the most popular reasons for starting a diet is to lose extra weight. In fact, many Americans have committed to certain dietary guidelines and specific eating plans on certain days. These diets often range from low-cholesterol, low-fat, or no-refined food diets. Still, diets aren’t solely just for the purpose of losing weight. While it can be one of the most effective ways for you to do so, it also opens the opportunity for you to improve habits and pursue an active lifestyle as you go on.
That said, knowing which diet plan is appropriate for your needs can be quite tricky at the start, given that there’s a massive variety of diets to choose from. Different types of diets vary in how effective, suitable, and sustainable for different people. For example, there are some diets that specifically target your appetite so you’ll tone down your food consumption, while others merely inhibit your intake of fat, calories, or carbs. Meanwhile, other diets tend to center on lifestyle changes or eating habits instead of putting a certain limit on food intake.
The simple truth of the matter is that certain types of diets work differently for everyone. If you’re planning to go on a diet but don’t know how to start, you should first determine the specific matters you wish to address regarding your health and fitness goals. Remember that the diet you plan to stick with depends largely on your immediate needs and your health aims. You’d want to opt for diets that focus on targeting these issues for maximum effect and so that you get the best results.
TOP 7 NO-REFINED FOOD DIETS AND HOW THEY HELP WITH WEIGHT LOSS
No Refined Foods basically refer to unprocessed food that contains an unhealthy amount of salt, sugar, and fats. If you’re looking for a diet plan that mainly addresses this, then you’re on the right page.
As mentioned, dieting can be a confusing matter to deal with, and you’d want a diet plan that addresses your personal needs, metabolism, lifestyle, and preferences. Of course, it must also be one that makes you feel like your best self and make you comfortable doing it at the same time.
There are plenty of diets out there that promise different sets of results, but here’s a list of the top 7 diets for no-refined food and how they can be effective in helping you lose a bit of extra weight.
1. MEDITERRANEAN DIET
The Mediterranean Diet is a great diet that combines nutrition and tastiness at the same time. It’s mostly packed with ingredients that are full of flavor, like whole grains, vegetables, and fruits. Besides, they’re also highly associated with a slew of health benefits that help improve heart health, enhance brain function and maintain blood sugar levels at the same time.
The foods associated with this diet are those that are common in nearby countries within Italy, France, Spain, or Greece. There are no strict diet regulations, though it mostly encourages seeds, whole grains, legumes, and fruits. Any processed food, including those with refined grains and added sugar, is a no-no.
If weight loss is on your plan, the Mediterranean Diet is an ideal option to promote this. Though it’s not specifically meant for weight-loss treatment, it’s recognized as a sustainable and practical way to lose weight while maintaining the results afterward.
2. INTERMITTENT FASTING
Intermittent fasting is a diet plan that looms between eating and fasting periods. There are different kinds of intermittent fasting. For one, there’s a 5:2 method which slashes your calorie intake to roughly 500-600 calories biweekly, while the 16/8 method limits it to about 8 hours daily.
It’s popularly known as a diet meant for weight loss and offers plenty of health benefits, especially for your brain and body. It works such that it inhibits the period where you’re meant to eat – which is a direct way of cutting your calorie consumption. Doing so inevitably leads to weight loss, which can only be attainable if you maintain your discipline and keep from eating food to compensate for non-eating periods.
3. FLEXITARIAN OR PLANT-BASED DIETS
Being a vegan or vegetarian is probably one of the most convenient ways to diet. From its name, plant-based diets mean that all the food you have to consume is plant-based, simultaneously meaning that you’re not allowed to consume animal products for ethical and health reasons. But if you’re not up to such a strict diet, you may also like to try flexitarian diets.
The flexitarian diet is still plant-based, though it still lets you loose with consuming animal products or food, albeit in moderation only. There isn’t a specific rule for plant-based diets, though many consider this to be more of a lifestyle instead of a health plan. It improves blood pressure and metabolic health while also promoting weight loss. With plant-based diets, you’re encouraged to increase fiber intake, which is enough to fill you up without putting on extra calories. This helps you lose weight as you go ad maintain it at the same time.
4. VOLUMETRICS DIET
The Volumetrics Diet is a diet plan that mainly promotes weight loss. This was created by Professor Barbara Rolls of Penn State University and is recognized as a lifestyle health plan instead of a typical diet.
This diet encourages weight loss by letting you increase your intake of nutrient-dense food that has a low amount of calories but is high in water content. At the same time, it restricts food dense in calories such as candies, oils, seeds, or cookies.
Like Flexitarian diets, there isn’t any specific ff-limit’ food for this, though you’ll need to pair the diet up with an hour of exercise every day if you want to get the best results. The food content also lets you consume food high in nutrient content while reducing certain health risks or diseases.
5. DASH DIET
DASH is an acronym for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and is a diet that targets the prevention of Hypertension or high blood pressure. That said, it promotes the consumption of vegetables, whole grains, and fruits. The food content should specifically be low in salt, fat, and extra sugar as well.
It’s worth noting that this diet isn’t meant to be a weight loss plan, though many people have reported that they have lost weight with it. The DASH diet basically encourages roughly five servings of both fruit and vegetables and seven servings of whole grains or healthy carbs. The servings depend on your calorie intake per day and fitness goals.
Some of its benefits include reducing depression symptoms and risks and decreasing overall body weight and fat percentage.
6. LOW-CARB DIET
If you want a diet plan that promotes weight loss, what’s better than a low-carb diet? The low-carb diet is probably the go-to for individuals looking to lose that extra weight. These include the keto diet and Atkins diet, among many others.
This diet significantly suits down carbs more than other diet plans since it restricts your total calories to roughly 10%, offering great results in terms of weight loss. These diets mainly restrict your intake of carbs and focus more on fat and protein consumption. This is because proteins help tone down your appetite, maintain muscle mass and improve metabolism all at the same time. When this happens, your body will start utilizing fatty acids instead of carbohydrates for energy by turning them into ketones. Several studies have found that low-carb diets have delivered significant results in weight loss compared to low-fat diets. They were also effective in burning belly fat.
7. MIND DIET
The MIND diet is also among the most well-known eating plans that promote weight loss and a wide variety of health benefits. It doesn’t follow a clear-cut plan, though it promotes the intake of ten specific foods that keep your brain healthy and functional.
For the most part, eating over six servings of leafy vegetables, five servings of nuts, berries, beans, and whole grains several times a week is recommended. The MIND diet also significantly lessens the risk of someone getting Alzheimer’s and can even improve resiliency for the elderly. If you want to maximize its weight loss benefits, combine it with proper exercise and an active lifestyle to reap the desired results.
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