The BEST DIETS

A new year and for many of us, new resolutions to keep. Probably the most popular New Year's Resolution is to lose weight. Or you may want to eat healthier for your heart, because you have high blood pressure, or you just want to eat a better, healthier diet in 2012. If you are serious and really want to focus on improving your diet and health, how do you choose a "diet"? Well, to help everyone along, the U.S. News & World Report just published its second ranking of many popular diets. They asked a group of 22 experts in their fields to rate the various diets. So what are some of the top diets and what are some failures? In this blog post we will focus on their top ranked diets.

Top Diets – based on being easy to follow, safe for your health, effective in losing weight, nutritious and good for those with heart disease or diabetes.

DASH – for those who haven't heard of it, the DASH diet stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. Thus, it is a great diet for those with high blood pressure. However, it is also a great, healthy eating plan for most of us. Worried about heart disease? This is a good, nutritionally sound diet for anyone to follow. The focus of this diet is plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low fat dairy and low fat meats. One also cuts back on salt, sweets, fatty foods and red meat. So what are the health benefits? Try lowering blood pressure, increasing your good cholesterol (HDL), lowering your bad cholesterol (LDL), and lowering your triglycerides. This diet is a heart healthy diet.

TLC Diet
– like the DASH diet, this one was also developed by the National Institutes of Health. TLC stands for the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Diet. This diet is designed to be heart healthy. The first focus is cutting back on fat especially saturate fats found in fatty meats, fried foods, whole fat dairy products. Like the DASH diet, the focus is on eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains and choosing low fat dairy products and lean protein such as fish or skinless poultry.

Mayo Clinic Diet
– this "diet" is really more of a focus on eating healthy and making this a habit. Not too surprising the focus once again is on fruits, vegetables, whole grains. If you fill up on these foods you won't be as hungry for the more fattening fare. This program offers guidance on what to add to your diet and what to begin taking away. This diet is also heart healthy and good for those wanting to fend off diabetes.

Mediterranean Diet
– this "diet" is really one all of us can work towards following as it is a great, overall healthy way of eating.

Weight Watchers – for those looking for a weight loss program to follow, U.S. News & World Report ranks Weight Watchers as one of the easiest programs to follow. Although there are many commercial weight loss programs available, this one scored high because it is easy to follow, promotes not only short term weight loss but teaches you how to keep the weight off. It even lets you "indulge" albeit occasionally.

Want to know more about each of these top diets? Check out the article at:

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet


 


 

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