How there ever been an experiment with a reasonable number of people doing different diets to see what one had the best results?

This is probably going to come across as snarky, but I don’t mean it to be.

The most effective diets are the ones where you put less calories in your body than you burn. They are 100% effective. You will lose weight. It really is that simple.

The best results long term are when people stop looking at diets as a couple of weeks they’ll put themselves through to lose weight and start looking at it as a lifelong change. That means only you know what you will keep up with.

As an example, if everyone says the grapefruit diet is the best, and you eat grapefruits at every meal, what are the chances you’re going to keep up with that for a long period of time? I’d guess zero, but maybe you love grapefruits so we’ll say slim.

So rather than following a fad formula diet, figure out how many calories you’re taking in now. There are great apps online or for smartphones. I like MyFitnessPal if you’re looking for a place to start. They can usually also give you a target number for calories if you want to lose a certain amount each week. Don’t try to lose more than a pound a week. Think long term.

Now decide what you can honestly give up from the list of things you’re eating for the rest of your life. Be honest, don’t give up your joys, give up things that are unhealthy but you really don’t love. Take those things out. I don’t like pizza well enough to justify how it makes me feel, I gave up pizza. Yay!

Replace those with something healthier. In place of pizza, I eat sandwiches, less calories if you hold the mayo and cheese, I feel better after eating them, everyone wins. Not that hard, right?

Now you have a number of calories you’re realistically going to eat. If this is over your target number that’s ok, because now phase 2 of this 100% successful diet comes in, exercise.

Exercise doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym or hire a personal trainer it just means get out and do something regularly. Find an exercise you like. If you hate exercise, try walking, or get a bike. Both are easy to get started and are something you can do for the rest of your life.

Now figure out how many calories your exercise burns per hour and take that from your total calories. If you’re still not under your target, you either need to eat less or exercise more, only you know which you will prefer.

Once you get those basics down, there’s an infinite number of changes you can make. Find new foods that fit in your diet, change exercises, keep yourself interested and make the time. Before you know it you’re where you want to be and don’t have to worry about repeating some painful diet every time you want to get “back in shape”.

You’ve just devised your own custom 100% effective diet and haven’t paid anyone for any of it. Congrats!

Now you just have to do it.

@funkdaddy
I personally am not really trying lose much weight but want to find out about the effects of nutrition on weight loss.

From what I’ve found so far from a few studies but I need to research more low carb and high protein diets works better than a low fat diet over a two year period.

Diet alone does not work

This is an interesting article that discusses a study that found it doesn’t matter what you eat, but that it comes down to the number of calories you eat.

The National Weight Loss Registry tracks different diets and their efficacy.

@gorillapaws
I wouldn’t disagree that if you eat 80 calories of anything you will have to work off 80 calories, but if that diet makes your motabolism slow or make you feel hungry so you eat more then they are not good diets in my mind.