5 Types of Diets You Will Hear About in 2020

We promised to eat healthy on new year’s eve after gorging on what not to bring in the New Year. Halfway into the first month of 2020, we have already started working on making changes in our lifestyle. As time will pass, this new year, new me fervour will begin to fade and we will get back to, well, being us. In an attempt to recoup from this digression we will start searching for new ‘trends’ in the world of food.

 

It is your life and you can eat whatever you want to (without compromising on your health, of course) because body positivity is our norm. Though, if you are looking for something new, let Nutritionist and Diabetic Educator, Harshita Dilawri of Know Your Nutrients, Delhi and Ambika Tyagi, Nutritionist, Healthy Souls enlighten you about the 5 types of diets to watch for in the year 2020.

 

1. Plant-Based Diet - This diet is sustainable and realistic and something we have been doing since aeon. The plant-based diet focuses on foods derived from plant sources. This diet is, thus, mainly composed of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, soy and whole grains. People who follow the plant-based diet majorly consume fruits, vegetables and legumes to fulfill their need for essential vitamins, fibre, and minerals. Moreover, a plant-based diet will be a big part of the year 2020 because most people are converting into vegetarian or prefer to eat veggies to meats. 

 

2. Mediterranean Diet – This diet, as the name suggests, is common in countries that surround the Mediterranean Sea, such as Greece, Italy, and Spain. Mediterranean Diet is a wholesome diet, which allows you to have vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, olive oil, meat, fish and dairy. The main components of a Mediterranean diet are daily consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats; weekly intake of fish, poultry, beans and eggs; moderate portions of dairy products and limited intake of red meat. In the Mediterranean diet, people are allowed to have wine, tea and coffee as per the suggested quantity. 

 

3. The Blood Type Diet- The blood type diet is all about eating right according to your blood type, which helps in reducing fat from your body. It also helps to keep away from food allergies. The Blood type diet has gained popularity over the last two decades. 

 

4. Raw Food Diet- In this diet you eat uncooked, unprocessed and mostly organic food. Nutritionists say heating food destroys its nutrients and natural enzymes. Raw food diet believes that cooking makes food toxic. This regimen also helps in losing a significant amount of weight as we eat food, which is low in calories, fat, and sodium, and high in fibre. One also gets nutritional perks as what we eat is high in vitamins, minerals, fibre.

 

5. Intermittent Fasting: Periodic fasting periods have been popular religious tools for centuries. Now, a growing number of non-religious dieters are trying their hand at fasting for health and weight loss. There are dozens of different ways of doing intermittent fasting, but all involve splitting the day/week/month into distinct eating and fasting periods. During the fasting periods, the dieter eats nothing (or very little, depending on the version). These are the three most popular intermittent fasting types right now:

 

·    The 16/8 method: (Most popular!) Dieters restrict their daily eating period to a strict 8-hour block (i.e. noon-8pm) and fast the other 16 hours (i.e. 8 pm till noon the following day). Mostly, this means skipping breakfast and cutting food off strictly post-dinner.

·     Eat-Stop-Eat: Dieters eat normally except for 1-2 days each week during which they eat nothing. 

·     The 5:2 diet: Dieters eat normally 5 days of the week and severely restrict calories on the remaining two days (i.e. eating just 500 calories or so on each of the fasting days). By reducing your calorie intake, all of these methods should cause weight loss as long as you don't compensate by eating much more during the eating periods.

Ultimately, all fasting diets aim to cause weight loss through caloric restriction. And caloric restriction works… as long as dieters don’t accidentally compensate for lost calories during open eating periods.