How To Select The Best Fat Loss System?

In our last article, we presented three possible approaches to find a diet, which is suitable for us. Here we are going to have a closer look at approach number one – the “scientific way” – to see, if there is one, which deserves that title and can help us to provide a tailor-made easy fat loss diet for you and me.

To get a feeling for the enormous task, we have set out to master, let’s have a look at a website called “www.dietsinreview.com”, which lists in a very comprehensive manner an impressive and at the same time frightening number of diets, which they categorize as follows (number of diets listed in brackets):

Calorie counting (44)
Lifestyle based (165)
Meal based (116)
Diets supplements (340)
Health related (43)
Children diets (13)

In total 721 diet variations, which are amended by interdisciplinary categories like “Fitness based”, “Meal delivered”, “Food and diet products” and “ebooks”. We leave those out as their content overlaps partially with our bulleted list above and they are not all food/supplement based.

On the same site, we find a software tool with a bold and enticing statement: “Our new diet finder. Find the perfect diet for you“. When making use of this tool, we quickly realize that the selection criteria applied are solely concerning our lifestyle and the tools, we are comfortable with applying, when we are committing to a specific diet for the next weeks or months to come.

But this is only one part of the “perfect diet”, we are on the lookout for. More important I consider the question, if our body will be “transformed” into a healthier and slimmer state by this “perfect diet”. Here we are left on our own – note: 174 of the listed 721 diets are getting a 100% approval rating by dieters!- and without further help from somewhere, your guess is as good as mine, if your answer is “yes” or “no” for any chosen diet. We are indeed forced to follow our intuition and our preferences for certain food or ingredients for a final selection.

In order to find a solution, as a former scientist I would try to find the parameters, which influence/determine the wanted outcome and then set up an empiric equation

Output (fat & weight loss) = f (input) = f (var1, var 2, ….. var n)

, where var 1=actual weight, var 2= fat mass or %, var 3= health problem no 1, …..to var n=……

are all relevant body parameters to be changed/influenced by the diet and it’s recommended/prescribed daily quantities.

If this looks confusing to you, no wonder, as we are dealing here with the complexity of the human body with millions interactions taking place every split second and where the influence of diet ingredients are not known on a molecular level. Therefore, even a layperson understands that our system can never be described by a finite (limited) number of parameters, from which the perfect diet can be formulated. The variety is simply to large from individual to individual and is time dependent.

So where does that finally (not so surprising!) insight leaves us in terms of effective diets? Our list displays 43 diets, which are adressing specific health issues like diabetes, arthritis, breast cancer etc. Those diets contain elements, which are known to influence positively these diseases and therefore certainly can be considered in those cases. On the other hand, if any specific disease is absent, we are left with hundreds of diets to chose from, which all are promising easy fat loss in no time. We only can shortlist those to some extend by our individual lifestyle-preferences criteria.

This automatically brings us to approach two and three of our earlier post – the diet success stories and recommendations, either heard from our family, friends and acquaintances network or from trustworthy reviews. Fair enough, trust in other’s experiences is good but to be in control is better and control here means understanding the diet/fat matter in more depth.

Therefore I will summarize in my next article the available scientific knowledge regarding acquiring and losing fat in our bodies, so that you get a pretty solid basis for making the best possible decision about the route to go – which easy fat loss program to chose. Obviously physical exercising will have to be part of such summary.

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