There are countless weight-loss diets around today. Some are aimed at reducing appetite, while others restrict how much you eat of particular foods, carbohydrates or fats, or involve counting calories.
Since every one of them claims to be the best, it is rather hard to work out which deserve our attention and which we can safely pass over. The truth is that no single diet can be the best for everyone — and what has worked for some of us may not work for someone else, for one reason or another.
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In a week-long series of articles we will look at the 8 best known weight-loss diets, including from a medical point of view. The first piece is devoted to the plant-based diet
1. Vegetarianism
A vegetarian diet — in this case a vegan one — restricts the consumption of all foods of animal origin for ethical, medical or other reasons.
Veganism is the strictest form of vegetarianism.
As well as leaving out meat, vegans leave out dairy products, eggs and any products of animal origin, such as gelatine, honey, albumin, whey, casein and some forms of vitamin D..
For people who want to lose weight this diet will be highly effective even without counting calories. The secret is that plant foods contain almost no fat and are rich in fibre, which lets you feel full for a longer stretch of time..
A vegan diet brings down both weight and body mass index, especially in comparison with other diets.
For instance, one study that ran for four and a half months showed that people on a vegan diet lost 4.2 kg more than those on a control diet. The vegan group were allowed to eat until they were completely full, while the control group had their calorie intake restricted. You can read the report here:
A multicenter randomized controlled trial of a plant-based nutrition program to reduce body weight and cardiovascular risk in the corporate setting: the GEICO study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23695207
But all the same, once we look at the question from every side, we see that vegan diets are no more effective for losing weight than other diets, because at the first stage weight loss on vegan diets comes from eating fewer calories. You can read the conclusions here:
Appetite control and biomarkers of satiety with vegetarian (soy) and meat-based high-protein diets for weight loss in obese men: a randomized crossover trial
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24944057
Further pluses of the diet.
A vegan diet, like other plant-based diets, lowers the risk of:
- cardiovascular disease;
- type 2 diabetes;
- Alzheimer's disease;
- and death from cardiovascular disease or cancer
Drawbacks of the diet
Since vegan diets rule out animal food altogether, the following vitamins and micronutrients will be missing from the menu: vitamin B12, vitamin D, iodine, iron, calcium, zinc and omega-3 fatty acids. The scientific grounds, read here:
Vegetarianism, female gender and increasing age, but not CNDP1 genotype, are associated with reduced muscle carnosine levels in humans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20865290
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