If you have only ever read one diet book in your life then you know that it is obligatory that the author declares his or her own diet to be revolutionary, fail-safe and fast.
Some are stuffed with scientific explanations or long-winded justificatios for one instruction or another. While others simply tell you what to do and expect you to get on with it with no explanations at all.
One one diet, you will have to cut out caffeine. On another caffeine is fine but whatever you do don’t go near a banana. And in yet another you can stuff your face with butter and cream just so long as you don’t overdose on green stuff.
Let’s see we have the Atkins Diet, the NEW ATkins Diet, The South Beach Diet, The Zone Diet, The Caveman Diet, the Eat Stop Eat Intermittent Diet and the Cabbage Soup Diet. Of course there are hundreds more but you get the point.
I guess the fact that so many of us have read so many diet books is all the evidence you need that no one of these authors actually does have the best diet for everyone. It is interesting that for each different diet there is a group of avid supporters and equally avid detractors. You would think if the diet creator had in fact found the best diet that it would be firmly rooted in physiological principles that would work more or less the same magic on everyone who tried to lose weight using it. And yet, that is patently not true. Your neighbor may have lost 30lbs on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate that she now swears by and yet when you tried the same diet and followed it religiously it did not melt one stubborn ounce from your backside.
So what is really going on? Well, call it horses for courses. I can not be bothered with measuring, weighing and calculating calories. I like diets that give me a list of safe foods and then let me loose but I quickly get bored on regimented diets and soon start to cheat. Some, on the other hand like the security of counting calories, knowing exactly how many calories are in every mouthful and having clear cut guidelines to follow.
To find the right diet book first know your own character and then decide if you want to follow a regimented regime where every meal is planned out and every calorie counted or one which is a little freer and intuitive where you are given safe food choices and allowed to come up with your own menu.
