Safe Diets

We live in a world bombarded with diets. Blood type diets, protein diets, detox diets and juice diets are just a few of the choices that we confront daily. Many diets promise lots of things and safety isn't always one of them. Looking for a safe diet can be difficult, so it's best to know what to look for.

Safe diets promote good health.

Features

A safe diet will include all of the food groups. If it excludes any particular group, it is putting you at risk because you will not receive all the vitamins and nutrients your body needs. Safe diets will also allow you have some of your favorite foods. Maybe not as much as you'd like, but prohibiting certain foods (especially if you enjoy them) will only lead to failure. Safe diets will not severely restrict calorie intake. Women need at least 1,200 calories per day and men need at least 1,600 calories per day, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Benefits

Healthy eating habits that last a lifetime are the biggest benefit of a safe diet. Once you learn these techniques, maintaining weight becomes easier. You will not learn how to maintain weight on a cabbage soup diet. A safe diet will also recommend exercise as part of a healthy weight loss regimen. To lose weight, the Department of Health and Human Services suggests you exercise moderately at least 60 to 90 minutes daily. Maintaining weight should be a significant aspect of any safe diet because success lies in keeping weight off. This includes guidelines on how to eat after you've lost weight.

Time Frames

A safe diet will encourage you to lose weight gradually. Losing more than two pounds per week could lead to malnutrition and throwing the body into starvation mode, which makes losing weight more difficult. Any diet that boasts of quick results should be viewed with skepticism.

Considerations

A significant aspect of losing weight safely is learning about good eating habits that you can use for the rest of your life, reports the Department of Health and Human Services. Safe diets will also teach you proper amounts of carbohydrates, proteins and fats to consume instead of focusing on a particular food.

Warnings

Diets that promise quick results don't always claim to be safe. Pills and other supplements might be available for purchase but "most haven't been proved safe and effective. And some are downright dangerous," according to the Mayo Clinic.