Today there are many diets to lose weight. It seems like every time summer rolls around, the newest and latest revolutionary diet to lose weight fast and get in shape appears. However, the truth of the matter is that losing weight is simple, and the best diet is the one that loses the most weight while still being possible to follow.

There’s no point in going on a diet that you can’t stick to for more than a couple of days. While crash diets can cause rapid weight loss in the short term, they are much more difficult to follow for more than a couple of weeks and can cause a number of problems such as metabolic slowdown and malnutrition. Your body still needs a certain amount of micronutrients per day to function, so just drinking cabbage soup will starve your body and make it impossible to keep up for more than a few days. Therefore, it’s important to maintain a balanced diet, even while cutting calories to ensure you’re getting all the vitamins and minerals you need to function on a cellular level.

When dieting, it is important to keep protein, nutrients, amino acids, and enzymes high. The best way to achieve this is with lean cuts of meat, lots of green vegetables, and some fruit. However, you should avoid fruit juices as they are mostly lacking in fiber and contain large amounts of sugar. Fruit smoothies are still great though, since you’re eating the whole fruit along with some yogurt or something similar. Just try to keep carbs and sugars low in general, as this is where many of the hidden calories that people eat each day are found. In the past, people focused too much on fat intake and still consumed a lot of hidden calories in the form of carbohydrates. Once your body’s glycogen stores are full, it will happily start adding these calories to your fat stores. This is the last thing we want.

You should focus on consuming one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. So if we’re taking a 185lb man, he could get this from, say, 2 meals with a lean cut of meat and a post-workout protein shake with 2 scoops of whey. The protein shake would provide around 50g of protein, leaving around 60g to get from each meal. One could have a grilled chicken breast or some fish.

Since we’re trying to lose weight, it’s important to keep calories low (about 500 below maintenance per day). However, once you’ve reached your daily protein intake requirements, it doesn’t really matter that much where the rest of your calories come from. This principle is called IIFYM, or if it fits your macros. As long as you’re getting your required daily protein and staying at least 500 calories below your maintenance level, you can eat anything else you want. Although it is best not to go crazy and eat ice cream every day to offset the calories. Keep it varied and nutritious with the occasional cheat meal here and there. This is the best diet to lose weight fast, without losing your mind.