Diet culture feels more ubiquitous than ever before. Gone are the days where most folks would grab a hard roll, slather on some butter, and get on with their lives. Now, there’s a seemingly endless number of ways one can eat to lose weight, gain muscle, boost focus, and feel healthier while tackling the best weight loss programs. And a lot of people are following different diets.
It’s estimated that 45 million Americans go on a diet each year, and Grand View Research claims that the global weight management market was valued at $142 billion in 2022. (1)(2)(3) Searching for diet advice online can be exhausting, especially because not all meal plans marketed as “healthy diets” have the science and evidence to back up their claims. By having a better understanding of the most common types of diets, you can decide which one works best for your lifestyle and overall goals (whether that’s to slim down, bulk up, or be healthier).
Key Takeaways
- The best diets for weight loss are intermittent fasting, the Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, a low-carb diet like the keto diet, and the paleo diet. (4)
- The Mediterranean diet is considered the healthiest diet and is the most popular diet in the U.S. (5)
- The healthiest diets are typically plant-based, emphasize healthy fats, avoid simple sugars, are low in sodium, and favor natural foods over processed foods. (6)
- The average American diet typically consists of high amounts of sodium, saturated fat, refined grains, and calories from solid fats and added sugars. (7)
- It is estimated that 45 million Americans go on a diet each year.
Different Types of Diets
- Intermittent Fasting
- Mediterranean Diet
- The Ketogenic Diet
- If It Fits Your Macros
- Veganism
- Carnivore Diet
- Paleo Diet
- Dessert with Breakfast Diet
- Sirtfood Diet
Editor’s note: The content on BarBend is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. The opinions and articles on this site are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. It’s always a good idea to talk to your doctor before beginning a new fitness, nutritional, and/or supplement routine. None of these supplements are meant to treat or cure any disease. If you feel you may be deficient in a particular nutrient or nutrients, please seek out a medical professional.
A Word About Diets
Caloric restriction is often the assumption when someone says, “I’m on a diet,” however, we’ll be discussing a variety of diets. So, what exactly is a diet? Is it the food you eat daily? Yes. If someone eats burgers every meal, that’s their diet. But it can also be an action taken, both short-term and long-term, to adjust your current diet to achieve a goal such as building more muscle, losing weight, or improving health. Some actionable diets can be used for short bouts of time to reach a specific goal, however, your long term dietary plan — your diet —should be something you can healthily maintain.
Before we dive into the different types of diets, it’s important to note that none of these options are the be-all, end-all for your health needs. You can lose weight on just about any diet, so long as you’re in a caloric deficit (that is, you burn more calories than you consume). (8)
The same is true if you’re looking to put on some muscle mass. No diet is necessarily better than the other in accomplishing this. Prioritize calories first, and then choose a diet style based on your preference and the food groups you want to incorporate.
Studies have also shown that the quality of food is just as if not more important than the number of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fats) you take in. (9) In other words: if you’re following a low-carb diet, you need to make sure you’re eating quality fats and protein, too. On the flip, opt for whole grains over refined starches if eating a diet lower in fat.
Lastly, some diets may lack vital micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) necessary for everyday life — vegetarians, for example, are more likely to develop an iron deficiency than their meat-eating counterparts. Iron deficiencies can lead to anemia, the symptoms of which include fatigue, chest pain, and even pale skin. Of course, you should always consult a doctor, but eating a wider variety of food or taking a supplement may help with any deficiencies.
That said, here’s a list of the more popular diets and what they’re all about.
Intermittent Fasting
If this isn’t your first foray into researching different types of diets, you may already be familiar with intermittent fasting, also referred to as IF. For the uninitiated, this isn’t so much a diet as an eating strategy where you consume all of your calories in a set time period and then fast for the rest of the day.
What Is Intermittent Fasting and How Does it Work?
There are different approaches to intermittent fasting, with the most popular being an 8:16 split — meaning you consume your calories in an eight-hour eating window and fast for the other 16 hours of the day. You can also do a 10:16, 16:10, or even 6:20 eating:fasting split. Some extremists go as far as squeezing a whole day’s worth of calories into a single hour.
The concept is that you’ll be eating fewer calories since you’re squeezing them into a narrower timeframe, as opposed to consuming them throughout the day.
During the fasting period, you’re allowed zero-calorie beverages such as black coffee, herbal teas, and sparkling and flat water.
Mediterranean Diet
As the name suggests, the Mediterranean diet is inspired by the eating habits of people who live near the Mediterranean Sea. Those countries, including Greece, Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Turkey, and more, have some of the longest life expectancies in the world. According to a study in the Lancet Medical Journal, Spain’s citizens are expected to live to an average age of 85.8 years. (17) The United States’ life expectancy, for comparison, is about 78.5 years.
What Is the Mediterranean Diet and How Does it Work?
The diet is rich in heart-healthy foods such as vegetables, fish, fruit, grains, olive oil, and nuts. Consumption of red meat and sweets with added sugar or honey is kept to a minimum, and dairy intake is moderate and consists of high-quality sources such as yogurt and cheeses.
The Ketogenic Diet
In recent years, the ketogenic diet has arguably been one of the most discussed and debated diets. Even if you’re not a follower, you’ve no doubt seen specially designed keto snacks on store shelves for its devotees.
What Is the Ketogenic Diet and How Does it Work?
Keto, as it’s called for short, is a diet that prioritizes fat (65 to 75 percent of your daily calories), with moderate protein consumption (20 to 30 percent) and very few carbs (only about five percent, though some versions prohibit carbs altogether). Which means you’ll be eating a lot of avocados, eggs, and bunless cheeseburgers.
The keto diet was designed to keep the body in a near-constant state of ketosis, a metabolic state where the body creates ketones from fat to use as energy instead of sugar from carbs (the body’s primary and preferred energy source). (23)
[Related: Ketogenic Diet Strength Training]
If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM)
Most people fall off their diets because it’s too regimented — you have to eat the same thing day after day. Eating chicken, rice, and broccoli on repeat until your next cheat meal is miserable for most folks. Enter the IIFYM diet, or “If It Fits Your Macros” — a more flexible dieting approach that lets you eat whatever you want as long as you hit your pre-determined protein, carb, and fat targets.
What Is the IIFYM Diet and How Does it Work?
First, you must determine how much of each macronutrient you need to eat per day to accomplish your goals, whether to lose weight or gain weight. How much of each macro a person needs will change based on that specific person and their goals.
The acceptable macronutrient range says you should get 45 to 65 percent of your daily calories from carbs, 20 to 35 percent from fat, and 10 to 35 percent from protein. You can use our macros calculator as a starting point.
Macronutrient Calculator
(As ever, consulting with a registered dietitian will yield the most personalized results.)
From there, make sure that everything you eat fits into those macros by tracking what you eat on an app like MyFitnessPal. You can eat a slice of pizza or your favorite Little Debbie cake so long as you don’t go over your carb or fat limit.
Veganism
Veganism is one of the fastest-growing movements in the United States. Six percent of Americans identified as vegans in 2017, up from just one percent in 2014. And the alternative meat industry — which includes products such as Beyond Burgers — is expected to be valued at $35 billion over the next decade. (28)
[Related: Strongest Vegans on Earth]
What is Veganism and How Does it Work?
While mainstream media considers it a diet, wherein followers avoid animal-based products, some consider it a lifestyle (many vegans avoid wearing any leather or animal hide). A few years ago, vegans would only eat beans, legumes, grains, egg-free pasta, fruits, and vegetables. But advances in technology have allowed the alternative meat industry to provide vegans (and those following a vegetarian diet) access to a wider variety of products.
Carnivore Diet
What if your mother’s advice to eat your vegetables was a lie? That’s the essence of the carnivore diet, the antithesis of veganism. Carnivore devotees only eat animal-based products — meat, cheese, milk, animal-based fats, and eggs (though some variations only allow meat, no eggs, and dairy). There are no grains, no vegetables, and no fruits. No, that’s not a joke.
What is the Carnivore Diet and How Does it Work?
Also known as the zero carb diet, the carnivore diet is basically a variation of the keto diet since fats and proteins are prioritized over carbs. This dietary approach flies in the face of scientific research that suggests that limiting your meat intake can extend your life and improve cardiovascular health. Still, its followers have claimed it can fight inflammation and prevent nutrient deficiencies. There is some research suggesting that it can lead to weight loss, especially since protein increases the body’s thermic effect of feeding — the energy it takes to digest food.
Paleo Diet
The paleo diet, sometimes called “The Caveman Diet,” could be considered a cousin of the carnivore diet. It’s a diet where the foods that are consumed are similar to what early humans, our hunter-gather ancestors, are thought to have eaten two million years ago. (35)
What is the Paleo Diet and How Does it Work?
In addition to meat, this diet prioritizes whole foods such as fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. You’ll avoid any grains, dairy, processed foods, beans, legumes, and sugars while adhering to this diet.
Dessert with Breakfast Diet
You may start each morning with a plate of eggs and some oatmeal, but how would you feel about finishing that with a cookie or a slice of cake? Well, you can. The dessert with breakfast diet is exactly what it sounds like — a sugary treat first thing in the morning. It sounds too good to be true, but there’s evidence it works for different goals.
What is the Dessert with Breakfast Diet and How Does it Work?
A 2012 study in the journal Steroids found that people who ate high-carb and high-protein foods for their meal that included a dessert lost more weight and kept it off for the duration of the eight-month-long study than those who had a low-carb, high-protein breakfast. (40)
Sirtfood Diet
Thanks to endorsements from Adele and British royal Pippa Middleton, the sirtfood diet has grown in popularity in recent years. Created by nutritionists Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten, the diet focuses on foods high in sirtuins, a group of proteins found in the body that regulate metabolism, and calorie restriction for weight loss.
What is the Sirtfood Diet and How Does it Work?
Some foods high in sirts include red wine, dark chocolate, walnuts, kale, buckwheat, Medjool dates, walnuts, arugula, coffee, capers, and extra-virgin olive oil. However, following the sirtfood diet isn’t as simple as just eating those foods. Goggins and Matten prescribe a two-phase approach. In the first three-day phase, you only drink three sirtfood green juices and eat one full meal rich in sirtfoods, which amounts to 1,000 calories for three days.
[Related: Benefits of Green Powders]
On days four to seven, your caloric intake goes up to 1,500. Then, in phase two, you eat three sirtfood-rich meals per day and a green juice for two weeks. After that, you can either repeat that process or stick to a diet rich in sirts while continuing to drink at least one juice per day.
More on Diets
The word diet isn’t just for those looking for a weight-loss plan, but refers to anything we eat daily, whether we’re trying to lose, gain, or maintain weight. Remember that the best diet for you is the one that will help you reach your health and wellness goals but that you can also stick to.
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