The primary determinant of weight loss and body fat loss is a reduction in calorie intake which can be both achieved through energy restriction(reduced calorie diet) or increased energy expenditure through non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) or exercise or both. A lot of people I believe are being mislead by the fitness industry to sell supplements such as thermogenics, appetite suppresant etc. I'm not saying that all of them were completely useless but their effect is very minimal at it's best without mentioning their placebo effect on the dieter.
A lot of us probably know people around us doing diets of any sort: low carb diets, low fat, soup diets, paleo diet etc. Try googling the word diet and you will come up with thousands of different diets. The question is which diet is the best? Most people may say the best diet is a healthy diet. IMO, this is a confusing, misleading advice. Everyone will have their own interpretation of a healthy diet. Some may say that it's a diet where fruits and vegetables are abundant, low in meat, foods are mostly based on non-refined sources, no processed foods, etc. While this type of technique may have the potential morbidly obese individual to lose weight up to an extent without worrying about counting calories, some people may find this type of dieting very strict because of food elimination.
I believe that the best fat loss diet is a diet that a person will be likely to adhere to. A diet that is non-restrictive, flexible enough to provide results even if you don't follow it 100% of the time. What matters most on a fat loss diet is to create an energy deficit. People can eliminate sugars, soda, all the refined stuff but without calorie deficit, no fat/ weight loss. People were also confused that they need to eat healthily to lose weight. Please don't get me wrong but losing weight has nothing to do with eating healthy. Most goals often just overlap to each of the goal but IMO, the best goal is to do both. Personally, I don't really like taking the extreme approach, I like somewhere in the middle. A compromise of everything. I can eat what ever I want but at the same time, being aware of the positive and negative consequences of which ever food I drove into my mouth.
We don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how physiology works but knowing a tidbits of it is like equipping ourselves with an arsenal of fat destruction. Simple changes can often lead to big results. Since the goal is simple effective fat loss without worrying much about too many details, things like switching to diet soda, switching to fat free/ low fat/ low calorie variety can often save a person from ingesting too many calories. Please never ever think that it's fat nor carbs or cake or doughnuts is what make people fat nonsense get you. It is simply not true, you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight if you're in an energy deficit. Just because you eat a "junk food" doesn't necessarily mean that you're not eating healthily. Maybe your diet is not the most nutritious but it certainly can help you lose weight if the food will help you satiated thus keeping you eat less foods. While I like achieving both goals of fat loss and being healthy, we can achieve this by basing the majority of our foods among whole foods with occasional free meals depending on the diet set up. Another option is through counting calories, numerous websites now allows us to record our daily/ weekly calorie intake for free. Just simply type in the food, amount of each and it will tell you the rough estimate of the food.
Refer to energy balance chart for more details about thermodynamics
http://www.exrx.net/FatLoss/EnergyBalance.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16476868
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