There is no doubt that the market place is filled with countless programs that claim to be the last word in healthy eating diets. One plan may allow you to eat all of the whole grains and vegetables you want, while the next may all but eliminate them. The problem is that there is no way they can all be right, and not all of them can be wrong; this leads to confusion, and this confusion is often all the excuse people need to not try any healthy diet at all. How are you supposed to tell which ones are good or bad; and which ones should be avoided versus which ones are worth trying?

What may surprise you is that some of the most popular diets are not necessarily the most healthy. The truth is that a lot of them are based around a gimmick of some kind, and the rest of the diet relies on some basic principles found in all healthy eating diets. This creates the illusion that the gimmick makes it work, but the harsh reality is that the gimmick is often the least healthy aspect of such diets.

Still, it’s hard to convince people that a certain diet doesn’t work. There is a lot of psychology that goes along with it, but the simple explanation is that these people are invested in believing their diet of choice works, and that the gimmicky portion is the secret. However, there are many people who don’t resort to fad diets to get healthy. Instead, they develop a well-balanced plan of their own by taking the best elements from several healthy eating diets.

One of the fad diets to make a big splash recently was the low-carb diet. These diets really did work for a good number of people. How they worked, and whether they’re a good long-term option remains debatable, but they did work. The catch is that there are very few people that should b restricting carbohydrate intake to this degree. Sure, it’s a good idea to get rid of the “bad” carbs found in white flour, white rice and sugar, but it’s not a good idea to give up the “good” carbs which are high in fiber and loaded with nutrients that can’t be found anywhere else.

So, a low-carb diet may help somebody to lose weight, but it can’t really be counted among healthy eating diets because it falls short on fiber as well as various important nutrients. But, somebody can take a part of the typical low-carb diet and use it to create some of their own specific plan.

Of course there are tons of other diets that say you should do this or do that, or not to do it at all. But healthy eating plans don’t have to rely on gimmicks, they simply rely on common sense. Instead, it’s just a matter of eating a variety of wholesome foods and keeping them on balance, and in this day and age, that may be the biggest gimmick of all.

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