The Low Down On Diet Comparison

 

Low carbs and high protein is the way to lose weight, or so you’ll hear from one diet guru, and he has the testimonials to back it up. Low fat, lots of carbs and fresh fruits and veggies, says another – and he’s got the back up from satisfied users, too. A third swears that you need to count the amount of sugar; another tells you the enemy is white flour – if you want to lose real weight and keep it off, who do you listen to?

Take a look at the brief summaries below for a quick overview of the pros and cons of each of the popular types of diet plans.

Low Carb-Hi Protein Diets 
Diets like the Atkins, the South Beach and the Zone Diet all recommend restricted carbohydrates and allow liberal amounts of protein, including protein derived from animal sources. Generally, they limit the overall amount of carbohydrates, or teach you to differentiate between “good” and “bad” carbohydrates. Bad carbohydrates, which are forbidden, include white flour, white bread, and white sugar.

Pros: The diets all encourage learning healthy eating as part of losing weight. Deriving most of your daily calories from high fiber sources of carbs like leafy green vegetables and grains is generally considered the best diet for nutrition by the established medical community. The popularity of the diets makes it easy to find low-carb foods.

Cons: The allowance of eating all the protein and fats you like flies in the face of conventional medical wisdom. A diet high in saturated fats could lead to heart disease, diabetes, gout and other chronic health conditions. Following the diets’ cautions and advice to keep portions reasonable should mitigate that concern, though.

Weight Loss “Programs”

Jenny Craig, NutriSystem, Weight Watchers, SlimFast and a number of other weight loss programs rely heavily on pre-packaged ‘diet’ foods. They incorporate professional coaching, social structure and reinforcement.

Pros: The professional coaching and nutritional benefits are a big plus, as are the reinforcement and support aspect of the diets. Meals and supplements are prepackaged in the right proportions, and if you stick to the diets and exercise as directed you will lose weight.

Cons: The weekly fees and cost of meals can be expensive. In addition, if you rely completely on the packaged foods, you miss out on the re-education of your eating habits, which is important to maintaining any weight lost.

The Real Mayo Clinic Diet
This is not the diet that has circulated for the past thirty or more years and purported to have originated at the Mayo Clinic! The true Mayo Clinic’s nutrition and diet center recommends a healthy eating weight loss plan based on limiting fats, proteins and carbohydrates, counting calories and deriving most of the daily nutrition from vegetables, grains and fruit.

Pros: There’s no ‘diet’. Instead, you’re encouraged to take control of your eating. Portion control and sensible balance of nutrients are the cornerstones of a weight loss plan that takes weight off gradually, and helps you keep it off permanently.

Cons: It may be difficult to stay on the diet. Counting calories and portions can be difficult if you’re eating out or on the run.

There are many diets that promise to take weight off quickly and painlessly, without exercise or changing your eating habits. The three major variations of diets above all will result in 1-2 pounds of loss per week, which most doctors believe is the optimum way to lose weight for long lasting results.
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How Much Is Your Fad Diet Costing You?

In Australia, your average under-35-year-old spends around $105 per week on food and drinks — that might include a meal out and a few (too many) cheeky bevvies. According to the most recent data available from Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) MoneySmart program, if you're sharing the cost with your significant other, you're looking at closer to $207 per week between the two of you.

But it seems like everyone has pledged allegiance to one of the change-your-life diet and nutrition plans signed, sealed and delivered by the grand high priestess of #cleaneating.
Anyone who's given the latest "healthy" diets a spin will tell you maintaining them can be as draining on your bank account as it is on your willpower, and there's sufficient evidence to suggest that a significant lifestyle change will see you fork out more than you normally would. Sure, we all want to look like Miranda Kerr, but can we really afford the $216.75 it costs to purchase all the ingredients we need to make her breakfast smoothie (above)?

Guidelines from the Australian Government's Department of Health recommend we consume 8700 kilojoules (2000 calories) daily to maintain a healthy diet, which averages out to around $15 per day for an individual twenty- or thirty-something Aussie.
We decided to see how the fads stack up, and if they're really worth the cost.

The Mediterranean Diet

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Favouring fresh, seasonal produce, fish, grains and even a splash of vino, the heart-friendly and oh-so-exotic Mediterranean became a fast favourite among fad dieters. It counts Jennifer Garner, Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Heidi Klum among its devotees and, let's be real here, they all look pretty dang good.

While the "Mediterranean Diet" has been around for about 20 years, the Mediterranean diet has actually subsisted for millennia, with residents of Greece and its surrounds averaging six or more servings of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables per day.

An average day will see you chowing-down on chickpea salads and chicken kabobs, and there are no real curve balls in terms of what you'll be adding to your grocery list — chances are, you'll just need more of it. Katherine Hobson of US News & World Report estimated the cost of the average Mediterranean diet at around $18 per person per day — which, for the cost of your morning coffee, is a small price to pay for good heart health, improved brain function and a longer life.

Clean Eating

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Let's be honest, you probably saw the hashtag before you knew what it was about. While its online incarnation has come to envelop everything there is to love about being healthy and #blessed, the diet itself works on the relatively simple principle of ditching the drive-through and processed fare in favour of leafy salads, raw vegetable smoothies and lean unprocessed meat.
 
Some online commentators have wondered if one needs a celebrity salary simply to eat clean — Kim Kardashian and our Nicole Kidman are among the diet's recruits — but it's not that bad. The team over at Clean Eating Recipes estimate that maintaining their diet (that is, eating three meals and a few snacks every day) would set you back anywhere between $80 and $100 per week, or a very reasonable $13 per person per day.

But you'll find that basic cost quickly creeps up as you incorporate the recommended organic meat and produce — recent analysis of supermarket prices by Suncorp Bank found that organic food is 79 percent more expensive than conventional produce, so you could be liable for up to $25 per person per day. What's more, significant servings of superfoods such as chia seeds, which clock in over $4 per 100g at Woolies or Coles, will also add to the cost. You could be forgiven for thinking chia seeds are actually made out of gold.

Paleo

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Oh, Paleo — everyone seems to have an opinion, but very few people seem to understand what the Paleo Diet is about. Also known as the "Caveman", "Stone-Age" or "Primal" Diet, the idea is that you'll unravel human evolution, arriving at a time before we invented the wheel. Paleo purists and "extensive scientific research" will tell you we should only be ingesting the fare our ancestors ate, which might mean you're eating steak and eggs for breakfast (no, really), soup for lunch, and meat-and-three veg for dinner.

Yep, you're about to become a meathead in every sense of the word. Lean game meats (like kangaroo) and offal like liver and tongue are encouraged, seafood and shellfish are your friend, while eggs, some fruit, nuts, seeds and certain oils all appear in varying quantities.

Estimates based on Dr Loren Cordain's The Paleo Diet and Paleo Diet Cookbook will see you fork out around $43 in "set up costs" — that is, purchasing staples you'll use in your daily food preparation on a daily basis — and you can expect to spend just over $130 per week, or $19 per person per day, on your groceries.

Meat, good. Cost, bad.

Author: Kristen Amiet. Approving editor: ..


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