Healthiest diet?

I'm not really overweight, but I'm not in too good of health. I know that healthy diet alone wouldn't be enough to solve all my particular health problems, but it will hopefully make some improvements. Anyway, I was curious on what types of diets are the healthiest, judged by popular opinion.

The Adkins diet in my mind is no good, because it limits carbs so much that you're hardly eating any fiber, which is essential (especially for your plumbing (lol)). Adkins also greatly lacks vitamins and antioxidants, found in the fruits and vegetables that Adkins wants you to avoid. It's because of the carbs in them.

South Beach and The Zone diets are both too similar to Adkins, too little carbs and fiber.

Any of the diets with too many carbs is also bad, because too many carbs hurts weight loss and boosts blood sugar and triglycerides, which is bad for the heart. Diets too high in carbs are also often with not enough protein, which we all need.

Eating the right amount of carbs is still bad if they're the wrong carbs, the carbs with higher sugar and low fiber like white bread and pasta, just about anything processed, and just about any desserts, cake, cookies, candy, etc.

In all the reading I've done about health, diets, etc., the healthiest diet I believe is Sugarbusters. Sugarbusters gives you the right amount of daily carbs while making just about all of those carbs low sugar and high fiber, fruits, veggies, and whole grains. Almost no white bread, cake, candy, etc. And you get plenty of protein. There are a couple other diets very similar to Sugarbusters which are called something different, but they're still basically the same diet.

I'm not 100℅ sure if what I've typed is totally accurate,
I'm just wondering how many of you on this site agree with all this, have tried the same diets, and have or haven't had success losing weight and/or becoming and feeling healthier from it.

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Comments ( 25 )
  • Healthiest way to get vitamins and minerals is to eat them in raw form. To get my daily iron intake, I don’t eat spinach or any of that pussy shit. I go to a railroad and eat some of the tracks.

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    • Pussy, I eat my iron molten!

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    • SwickDinging

      Go hard or go home, amma right?

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    • Haha 😂 lol
      Do they have diet low calorie railroad tracks too? Or just regular railroad tracks? Lol 😂
      So Popeye was a pussy? He ate spinach. No, just joking, lol

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      • I check with the railroad manager if it’s proper iron first and none of that stupid low-calorie crap.

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        • 😂

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  • charli.m

    Just eat in moderation. Use some common sense. All these diet fads are about money.

    Eat mostly veg, some protein, some fruit, some carbs/starches, some dairy, some good fats and keep the sugar and processed food to a minimum. It's not rocket science. Tweak it from there to what works for you as an individual.

    Oh and not to be a grammar Nazi douche, but it's Atkins, not Adkins.

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    • Columbusbiguy

      Agreed. The hardest part about diets is that you eventually end them, and then you go back to an unhealthy lifestyle and put it back on again. A friend of mine did Advocare on and off. He loses a bunch of weight, stops the program and gains again. He is now dlibg that with the Keto diet. You have to make a lifestyle change for anything to stick long term.

      And exercise, even if it is just walking, exercise does wonders for the body.

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      • That is true, you need to be active. As for the diets, Atkins and many of those are definitely not things that should be part of a long term healthy eating plan. And Advocare and Keto, like Atkins, also are also fads that are just temporary quick fixes. That's another reason why I wasn't supporting those diets. But with the eating plans related to Sugarbusters, you can make them into long-term changes in eating habits because they generally are more closely related to just generally all around eating a healthy lifestyle, simply eating a healthy balance of fruits, veg, whole grains, meats, a little bit of treating yourself now and again to anything good (cake, pie, etc.) as long as it's limited, but not making any of it a bulk of your diet. It's an all around healthy lifestyle with the right amounts of protein, vitamins, fiber, and antioxidants. You're not disproportionately ruling out a big part of essentials like for example you are with carbs on the Adkins diet, and that's why diets like that should definitely not be part of a healthy lifestyle change

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      • charli.m

        Very true. The focus should always be on eating good, nutritious food and creating a healthy life, not weightloss.

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    • Oops, lol, I meant Atkins. I do agree that Atkins and some of the others are totally fad diets. The Sugarbusters and it's varieties though seem to make sense in being healthier, since we know that we need to limit sugar, increase fiber and vitamins, etc., and they have the best diet arrangements with all that. And what you said also basically explains the diet; "eat mostly veg, some protein,... keep sugar and processed foods to a minimum". Overall, I'm pretty sure (but not completely until I spend time on it) that it will work better for me as an individual than any of the other ways of eating.

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  • Aroura77

    Ok, so....I went on a bit of a long one that's basically what I wish someone had said to me when I was in a similar position to you. I dunno if it's helpful, but I feel like it would have helped me if I'd taken the faith I needed to just believe the very boring research and government recommendations instead of trying every diet change ever and discovering for myself why a lot of it's bunk.

    Either way, good luck and I hope you have a long and healthy life :)

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    • Aroura77

      Eat a varied, high vegetation diet which focuses on grains, beans and low saturated fat oils like sunflower and olive oil, and reduces high saturated fat, high sugar or simple carb foods like cheese and white bread respectively.

      It's fine to eat high fat foods like a salad with lots of olive oil as long as they're low in saturated fat, and it's fine to eat high carb foods like pearl barley and other grains as long as the carbohydrate isn't too simple.

      It's fine to eat a big quantity of healthy foods because they're often low calorie density except for those high in unsaturated fats.

      It's fine to have simple carbohydrates, saturated fats and high salt foods, and really in order to have a proper diet you should have these things, not for nutrition but because it's more sustainable to be able to find a way of eating that doesn't restrict you with rules that say what you're eating is either 'allowed' or 'not allowed', like eating healthily is a set of rules you switch on and off and have to abandon if it's someone's birthday party or a night out or you just fancy something in particular.

      Would recommend taking a multi for extra insurance if meeting nutritional needs is something you might struggle with.

      And remember, if you're not overweight, you don't have to lose weight to be healthy because health and weight do not correlate when you're in a healthy range. Health is about having adequate nutrition to keep your body functioning optimally.

      You could lose a lot of weight through strict dieting, and it would most likely make you far less healthy if you have to restrict your variety heavily, because it's variety that ensures adequate intake of all required nutrients. Changing your diet with the main intent of losing weight, either outwardly or inwardly with the guise of health on the outside, will not make you healthier, it will will drive you to lose weight until you have lost weight, and then when you no longer need to lose weight your diet will go back to previously because your driving force for eating this way will no longer exist.

      How 'healthy' your diet is falls on a spectrum, and it's best to nudge it up bit by bit, while keeping in mind that low calorie does not necessarily = healthy and high calorie does not necessarily = unhealthy.

      Homous is a good example of a health food high in fiber, fat soluble vitamins (which are often neglected on low fat diets), low in simple carbs and high in complex carbs, high in unsaturated fats and low in saturated fats.

      Protein: a fallout of the confusion between losing weight and being healthier, which is only applicable to people who are overweight. Protein is often sited as the healthiest of all macro-nutrients, because for some reason we've put a competition on it, but the reason people recommend high amounts of protein is because it's got a high satiety to calorie ratio, i.e. it takes a long time to digest so keeps people full for a long time and aids in weight control. If your goal is health and you are a healthy weight, as above, this doesn't really matter. If you struggle to maintain a healthy weight, then this may be a good solution, but high protein foods are not necessarily healthy. They can be, like in the case of beans, nuts, white meats e.c.t., but they're not necessarily, like in the case of high sugar protein shakes or bars, or high saturated fat meats like bacon.

      Protein consumption is recommended at about 0.36g per pound of body weight, which is not a lot, and it's hard to have a deficiency in the developed world without subjecting yourself to rigorous restrictions to low protein foods, such as an 80/10/10 diet (high carb, low protien). Protenatious foods can be healthy, but because of the other things in them.

      Be skeptical of diets with a brand-name; Sugarbusters, weight watchers, south beach, military, atkins, zone, detox, anything that can be sold.

      Healthy diets aren't a set of rules that can be sold to you, they're an area in a spectrum that has the requirements: adequate to meet nutritional needs and be sustainable long term in your daily life. Sustainability is the personal bit that you have to adjust for yourself, and hence it's not something that someone can sell to you, because your realistic idea of what you're happy to eat like for your long term life is important.

      P.S. studies show that increasing exercise in people at most health levels tends to correlate with a natural desire for healthier foods, and since exercise is an important part of being healthy, maybe doing a bit more might help things along. (I find taking a 10 or 15 minute walk is fairly easy to do when I'm more sedentary, or even doing a bit more cleaning/housework, whatever gets your heart rate up :) )

      P.S.S Diet industry people have pushed a lot of ideas that are generally accepted to be true that aren't, but one of the most egregious ones is that poor diet is the cause of all illness or that a healthy diet can cure all illness. Unless your illness is caused by poor diet, please don't expect for it to be curable by a certain diet, if only you try hard enough to find it. Part of being a being is getting ill, and it doesn't always have a treatable cause. As time goes on you will get older and you will have health issues and these cannot all be cured by diet, no matter how much the people who want to sell you that diet say it's true. There are very few cases when a change in diet can cause a long-term reduction in systematic illness beyond the placebo effect, and the cases that are creditable like reduction in acne with decrease consumption of milk are subjective, i.e. may work for one person and will not necessarily ever work for another. The placebo effect is a common thing that people experience with the high of the excitement and hope being on a new diet, but it has to work long term to be a proper solution.

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  • SwickDinging

    In general any diet that massively limits an essential food group (basically anything except transfats and refined sugar) is not "best" for longterm health. We still need carbs and fats and even salt.

    The best thing to do is to focus on cutting out processed food and try and make most of your own food from scratch - even something like mac and cheese made from scratch is quite nutritious as long as you are modest with the cheese in your sauce. A good rule of thumb is when you start making a meal you should be reaching for a knife and chopping board to start cutting up veggies. Start from there and just be sensible and you can't go too far wrong.

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  • Vvaas

    just my opinion but a diet of a lot of red meat and some vegetables and a small amount of fruit and nuts is pretty healthy

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    • "Some vegetables"

      It should be mostly veg, with some meat and some starch. Why are people so reluctant to eat the healthiest, tastiest and most natural food type?

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      • Vvaas

        vegetables are full of carbs. a diet extremely high in carbohydrates isn't healthy lol that's why i only said some

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        • You're thinking of starchy (carb) foods like potato. Normal vegetables contain carbohydrates but definitely not enough to be classified as "extremely high". They contain just the right amount to be healthy. Like the sugar in fruits are healthy because the fruits contain fiber and whatnot to help digest the sugars properly. But whereas fruits should be eaten in moderation or for strenuous activities, vegetables are so low in kilojoules that you cannot eat too much.

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          • Vvaas

            nah

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    • Having enough meat and fruit and vegetables combined is good if you are not disproportionately making any of those categories bigger than the others. You need the right amount of carbs, fiber, and antioxidants along with getting enough protein. What you're saying seems to lean maybe a little too close to the Adkins or Zone style eating. I do agree that nuts are healthy also. But instead of lots of meat with some vegetables and a small amount of fruit, the meat, vegetables, and fruit should all be close to the same amounts of food in a healthy eating lifestyle change.

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  • LloydAsher

    If you are young as long as you eat enough calories to function the weight will slide off. I lost 20 lbs by stopping eating when bored.

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    • That's good, too much between meal snacking has also been something that hurts weight loss efforts, and you cut that out and lost weight which is good.

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      • noooidea

        that's weird because once i started snacking more instead of going stretches between meals, i actually started losing weight easier.

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        • Oh. When you said that you lost 20 lbs by no longer eating when you're bored, I took that as you lost the weight by no longer excess snacking.

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          • charli.m

            That was a different user.

            Frequent small meals is a good weightloss tool for some people. Maybe many, Idk the stats. It's to do with metabolism, IIRC.
            Everyone is different.

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