Nutritionist Lyndi Cohen rates the best and worst diets
The Nude Nutritionist wants to lay out the bare facts — most diets are “utterly unsustainable”. Dietitian Lyndi Cohen warns that most people realise they don’t want to fast periodically or avoid carbohydrates forever and then they regain the weight.
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The Nude Nutritionist wants to lay out the bare facts — most diets are “utterly unsustainable”.
“Sooner or later you realise you don’t want to fast periodically or avoid carbohydrates for the rest of your life and, when that happens, you regain the weight — and often more weight than you lost,” dietitian Lyndi Cohen warned on Sunday.
“When you see a compelling before and after photo, don’t fall for it — you don’t see the photo six months after the ‘after’ photo.”
In the midst of spring diet panic, as people try to shed the winter weight before swimwear season, Ms Cohen has rated the most popular diets. And she had a stark message: there is no miracle diet that is good for your health, sheds fat fast and is sustainable.
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Ms Cohen, the author of The Nude Nutritionist and Back To Basics, said while some drastic diets that cut out food groups or focus on others can work, very few people can keep it up long-term.
“Diets will result in weight loss but they are utterly unsustainable,” she said.
Ms Cohen rated the worst fad at the moment, and one which gained significant momentum last year, was the keto diet — which she said was originally developed for children with epilepsy.
The high-fat keto diet recommends eating butter, bacon and steak and steering clear of carbs, and even fruit, because if the body does not have carbs to burn for energy, it instead burns fat — a process called ketosis.
“While you may get weight loss from the diet, it may be unhealthy to stay in ketosis for a long time,” Ms Cohen said.
“The keto diet is a restrictive diet that was designed for children with epilepsy, not for the general public. It is pretty much the Atkins diet repackaged and resold. This diet is incredible for children with epilepsy but it’s just another extreme and passing fad.”
WW (formerly Weight Watchers) and calorie counting were the next worst after keto, she said. “While you may lose weight or boost your health, if you can’t maintain it then you’ll struggle with consistency,” she said.
For this reason, the only “diet” as such that Ms Cohen put her expert weight behind is the Mediterranean diet.
“The Mediterranean approach is not actually diet, rather it’s a balanced approach to eating where no foods are off-limits,” she said.
“The Mediterranean diet is the only diet backed up with scientific research to show it’s effective in the long term. This is probably because it doesn’t prescribe a specific diet but rather encourages healthy eating principles.
“The Mediterranean isn’t prescriptive, there are no hard rules about what you can’t eat which might take a seasoned dieter time to get used to.”
Ms Cohen said the next best was a vegan diet, but with special care given to maintaining iron and calcium levels, followed by an intermittent fasting approach.