We have taken a look at all the tools and diets that help you lose weight. We hope this will help you make an informed decision on what will work for you. We have listed them in order of how well they preform as well as how healthy they are.
The list if a combination of diets and lifestyle. It is possible combine different lifestyles and diets. An example would be combining a ketogenic diet with intermittent and water fasting.
So here to go. The top ten best fat loss tools back by science.
Mediterranean (Diet) – 10th place
The Mediterranean diet is one that is all about whole foods, high in fish, olive oil and low in processed foods. People in the Mediterranean live longer and avoid a lot of the lifestyle diseases that plague the western world. It is however also a diet than might not get you all the way to the look you are looking for. People in the Mediterranean are not slim. They do have some extra pounds on them on average. Nothing how ever when compared to the average weight in The United States. One of the big reasons people in the Mediterranean live longer is the higher volume omega-3 (found in fish and seeds) and lower volume of omega-6 fats (found in processed foods and cheap vegetable oils).
Paleo (Diet) – 9th place
Just eat like a caveman and lose weight. Pretty simple right? Wrong. Before starting the paleo diet you really have to read up on what you can and can not read. But when you do this you will eat your way towards your ideal weight. You can start with the easy version. Simply remove all processed foods and drinks, sugar, flower and grains. This will get you most of the way there. To go all the way you have to remove above ground vegestables and lentils as well. This makes a very effective and healthy diet. But the down side is that it is a very stright diet that will be hard to follow for most. Going out with friends can be difficult if you want to stick you your diet.
Walking (Lifestyle) – 8th place
Walking beats just about every other exercise when it comes to fat loss. Let us give you an example of just how effective walking can be. A 200 pound person (90 kg) walking one hour per day at a good pace will burn about 3000 calories per week. This is done without increasing appetite like you would see if doing cardio. If you want to burn the same about of calories you would have to run 21 miles (34 kilometers). Now the question is can you run more than three 10k’s per week?
Studies also show that unless you are very focused on the calories you consume you will end up eating the 3000 calories you burned by running back.
Whole Food Plant Based (Diet) – 7th place
It’s healthy, it’s eco friendly, it’s animal friendly but it is strict and takes a lot of time.
If done uncorrectly it can be deadly because of dangers of B12 vitamin defitioncy and pour ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. But done correctly you can have the health and look you want. If you read the book “How not to die” you will see all the wonders of the vegan diet. In fact the book looks at the science of why they top 15 western killers can be avoided by simply swiching to a vegan diet. The evidence is very compelling. But we have to remember that both fasting and a ketogenic diet does has the science to prove that they can do the same. If you want the best odds of living 100+ years the best know recipe at the moment would be living a whole food plant based ketogenic diet high in omega-3 and suplimended with vitamin B12. Doing daily intermittent fasting and adding 5-7 day fasts a minimum of 2 times per year. Better start saving up for retirement. It’s going to be a long one.
5:2 (Lifestyle) – 6th place
Eat like you usually do except for two days per week. This is what the 5:2 diet is all about. This makes a very flexible lifestyle, where you have room to have fun with your meals.
Ketogenic (Diet) – 5th place
The ketogenic diet minics a lot of the advantages of fasting. But when it comes to weight loss it will only get most people the first part of the way. If you are 100 pounds over weight and whole food diet will make you drop pounds like crazy. But when you get down to the last 10-20 pounds it gets harder. This is why the ketogenic diet is our second runner up. Flexible dieting performs better when it comes to getting all the way to low body fat and perfect body composition when we compare them head to head. Another disavantace of the ketogenic diet is that is can be hard to follow. Going out with friends and family can be hard because there are so little foods you can actually eat. At home it’s much easier because there is a lot of ways to cook meals that resembles high carb meals. But this also does make the ketogenic lifestyle a diet that will take up a lot of your time and can be expensive.
Intermittent Fasting (Lifestyle) – 4th Place
We have put intermittent fasting as a different tool than water fasting. It has some of the same benefits, but it’s much shorter time frame. Anywhere from 16 hours to 24 hours.
Flexible Dieting (Diet) – 3rd Place
Flexible dieting also know as “If it fits your macros” or “IIFYM” is a very effective way of losing weight. It is this because of two things. It lets you eat both healthy and unhealthy foods as long as they fit your macronutrient needs. This makes it a low easier to followed compared to most diets out there. Most people that use IIFYM eat a diet that is 70-80% healthy and then use whats left to satisfy their sweet or savory thooth. Flexible dieting does involve counting calories, but unlike your standard calorie counting it will leave you much more satisfied because it makes sure you get enough proteinpulver. This will also protect your muscle mass and keep your metabolism high. As with any diet doing strength training is important to make sure you do not lose any muscle mass.
Strength Training (Lifestyle) – 2nd place
If you are trying to lose weight and you are not strength training you are doing it wrong.
Water Fasting (Lifestyle) – Overall Clear Winner
Overall score: 10/10 – Weight loss: 10/10 – Health: 10/10
When picking a winner there really were no competition. The Water fast beats all other weight loss tools in pretty much every way possible. If you tell anybody that you’re are doing a water fast, they will probably tell you that you are crazy. You will die, you will lose all your muscle, you will gain all the weight back and you will only lose water. But this is definitely not the case. It’s important that you do not put juice fating in the same category as water fasting. Juice fasting do not have the same advantages as real fasting. So lets take a look at why this is our clear winner.
1. It’s healthy
First and foremost. Lets get one thing straight. Fasting is healthy. People have been fasting for as long as there has been people. You can fast for as long as your body fat levels allow. Meaning that you could potentially fast for a year if you were fat enough. If you’re underweight, malnourished, pregnant, breastfeeding og a child, then you should not be fasting. If you’re not one that list, then you definitely think about trying it out. Starting of slow with a 16-24 hour fast is recommend. It’s hard going for days without food if you have not tried any kind of fasting.
2. Speeds up metabolism
When you do a water fast you take in zero calories per day. This is very different from doing a low calorie diet. This is because your body goes into ketosis very fast when you stop eating. A low calorie diet can slow down your metabolism, making it very hard to sustain any weight loss. But when you water fast the opposite will happen. Your metabolism speeds up. In fact doing a fast is the best way to fix your metabolism if you have damaged it in the past. For more on this we recommend doing a google search for “Jason Fung Fasting Metabolism”. Doctor Jason Fung is a speciallist in fasting and everything he says and writes is backed by science and thousands of cases with people in his clinic.
3. Protects your muscle mass
You might have heard of the dreaded “Starvation Mode”. A mode where your body starts to break down your muscles for energy. Most nutritionist and personal trainers will even tell you that this is what is going to happen to your body if you stop eating. This is however not the case. Starvation mode is when your body runs out of body fat and food at the same time. Your body will do anything it can to protect your muscle mass and if you do a fast the right way you diet will protect your muscles as much as a fast. It is important to that you do a fast the right way.
Tim Ferriss did a 10 day fast where he ended up losing a lot of muscle mass simply because he did it the wrong way. Since then he has done a lot of fasts with out losing a gram of muscle. Here is what he did wrong on his first fast. The last day before his fast if ate a high carb diet. This meant that all the glycogen stores in his muscles where filled up. He checked into a clinic that advised him to not move at all the 10 days he fasted.
This was very bad advice. The combination of lots of glycogen (energy) and no movement ment that it took a very long time for him to enter ketosis. Ketosis is where you want be when fasting. Ketosis means little appetite, maximum fat burn and protection of muscle mass. No movement also ment that his muscles got no stimulation what so ever. All in all a very bad combination.
Tim since came up with the perfect way to start your fast to make sure it is both easy and will get you the results you are looking for. On the last day before you fast you eat a ketogenic diet. This is simply put a diet high in fat (70-80%), a medium amount of protein (20-25%) and very little carbs (0-5%). This will start to drain your glycogen stores before your fast even starts. He also does a long walk on the first day of the fast (3-4 hours). This means that you run out of glycogen and go into ketosis very shortly after beginning your fast.
You can still do strength training while fasting, just do it with low intensity and take a little of the weights compared to fed training.
4. Faster fat loss than anything else
You can not go lower than zero calories, so naturally there is nothing that can give you faster weight loss (other than surgery). You can lose 1-2 pounds of fat per day depending on your size and activity level. You will lose more in weight because of water weight, but do not count this as the water till return as soon as you start to eat again. If you lose 20 pounds on a fast you should expect that about 10 pounds of this is water that will return within a few days of breaking the fast. But the rest is body fat, and because your metabolism has not slowed down it will not be hard to keep off.
5. More motivation
When you see the weight on the scale go down significantly every day you are super motivated. This makes it much easier to follow. Fasting also means that you only have to it for a limited number of days compared to normal diets where you have to be stricht for months on end.
6. Give you more time
Most diets take up time. You have to shop for the foods you are allowed to eat. You have to cook special meals that fit your diet. But this is not the case with fasting. Here you get more time. Cooking, eating and cleaning up after 3 meals per day will take 2 or more hours of your day. So here you go. 2 extra hours to do what you want every day you fast.
7. Saves you money
Being healthy and eating high quality foods is expensive. But being healthy and fasting doesn’t cost you a dime. Losing fat and saving money, that is something that anybody can get onboard with.
8. You can use it with any diet
Are you following a vegan, paleo, LCHF or any other diet/lifestyle. No problem. Fasting can be used with ANY diet. But as explained in the “Protects your muscle mass” section it is highly recommended to eat a ketogenic diet the day before you start a fast. This can also be done as a vegan.
All other tools you see on our list of weight loss tools and diets and be used combined with fasting.
9. It will extend your life
Fasting will add years to your life. This is not even counting the years you will add by losing fat. Even if you were to eat all the weight back between fasts giving your body periods without food will mean longevity the same way that we see with calorie restriction. But unlike calorie restriction it does not mean low metabolism or a boring diet.
10. It can protect you from a number of diseases
Getting into ketosis is great for much more than fat loss. When you go into ketosis your body starts to break down broken parts of your body. The ketones will protect your healthy cells. But where there is no glycogen deceased cells like pre-cancer cells will starve. Many doctors in the cancer field says that doing a 7 day fast to times per year will protect you from developing cancer. The research suggest the same for alzheimer’s, dementia and many other of the big killers. Research even shows that people with cancer has much better results when doing a 3 day fast leading up to kemo treatments. That is because the ketogenic state starts to protect the healthy cells and weakens the cancer cells up to the treatment. This results in higher damage to the cancer cells and less damage to the healthy cells during kemo.
11. Fixes your hormones
Very few diets focus on hormones. This is a big mistake. If your hormones are out of line, and they are for most overweight people you will have trouble loosing weight. With hormones at the wrong levels you can expect more hunger and less fat burning.
When you fast your hormones star to return to their intended levels. This fixes issues with hunger and metabolism. The amount of fasting days need is depended on how “broken” your body is. Each time you fast your body will work on fixing these issues.
12. It’s flexible
Do you want to go out with friends without worrying what foods you can eat. Do you want to order desert without feeling guilty. Will then fasting is fantastic. You can scheduel you fasts as it fits into your life. Going birthday party on friday and a wedding on saturday where you know there is going to be lots of foods and drinks. How about doing a short 2 day fast on wednesday and thursday. Enjoying food (even unhealthy versions) is possible without the guilt that people often feel with fasting. Not that eating unhealthy is recommended. But it’s okay to no be perfect.