With holiday food behind us and a new year to motivate us, many people are ready to start a new diet that they can (hopefully) stick to this year. If you find yourself among these people, before you jump on the bandwagon for whatever fad diet your best friend’s sister’s cousin is doing, it might be a good idea to find out which diet really is the best.
While the best diet is the one that you can stick to, U.S. News and World Report can help point you in the right direction. The results are in; they’ve released their rankings for the best diets for 2019.
According to U.S. News and World Report, “To be top-rated, a diet had to be safe, relatively easy to follow, nutritious and effective for weight loss. It also had to be stellar at preventing diabetes and heart disease.”
Now, there is more than one winner for “best diet” because U.S. News and World Report has multiple categories depending on what you’re looking for in a diet. There’s the best diet for weight loss and the best diet for diabetes, for example.
Enough already, you want to know who the winners are. After looking closely at 41 different diets, the winners are:
Best Overall Diet: Mediterranean Diet
Best Weight-Loss Diet: WW (Weight Watchers) Diet
Best Commercial Diet Plan: WW (Weight Watchers) Diet
Best Diabetes Diet: Mediterranean Diet
Best Diet for Healthy Eating: Mediterranean Diet
Best Fast Weight-Loss Diet: HMR Program
Best Heart-Healthy Diet: a tie between the Mediterranean Diet and the Ornish Diet
Best Plant-Based Diet: Mediterranean Diet
Easiest Diet to Follow: Mediterranean Diet
To see which diets came in 2nd, 3rd and so on, you can view the full list here, but what we found most surprising was how low some very popular diets ranked.
In the category of Best Diets Overall, out of 41 diets total, the South Beach Diet tied for #20, the Zone Diet tied for #23, the Paleo Diet tied for #33, and the Keto Diet tied for #38 with the Whole30 Diet. Yikes! No wonder weight loss is so hard.
With that in mind, the worst diets for weight-loss are the Alkaline Diet and the Body Reset Diet, which tied for last place. Just above those diets, tying for spot #36 are the Whole30 Diet, the Glycemic Index Diet, the Fertility Diet and the Abs Diet.
With the Mediterranean Diet winning in so many categories, including best “overall” diet, we had to know more. For more details about the Mediterranean Diet, watch the video below.
Do the U.S. News and World Report best diet winners (and losers) surprise you? Have you ever been on any of these diets?