10 Best Weight Loss Diet Trends of 2021

Every year introduces us to a new weight loss diet! They all have rules and restrictions that emphasize losing weight and keeping it off by building healthy eating habits.

This article lists 10 Weight loss diet trends of 2021 to pick and choose from to achieve your weight goal.

1. Plant-Based Diet

Plant-based doesn’t equal veganism. It is a flexitarian diet that emphasizes consuming as much plant-based produce as one can.

Plant-based food, food coming from the soil, are nutrient-dense products that provide all the macro and micro-nutrients our body needs. 

In addition, eating more vegetables will allow for a lower calorie intake while eating more amounts of food, making this diet perfect for weight loss purposes.

A plant-based diet benefits your digestion, immune, and cardiovascular system, improves your cholesterol levels, and decreases the risk for stroke and cancer.

This diet is also sustainable and environmental-friendly since plant-based products have a smaller carbon footprint than animal produce.

2. Intermittent Fasting Diet

As with many eating regimes, there are many ways to do intermittent fasting, the most popular being the 16/8. 

You can eat in a window of 8 hours, let’s say, from 12 am to 8 pm, and fast the rest of the day.

While some people have to eat every few hours, others are okay with eating once a day. So, you can also narrow the eating window to 6, 5 or even 4 hours and eat as many meals as you see fit.

Intermittent fasting helps lose weight and improves metabolic health by increasing your human growth hormone and decreasing your insulin levels.

In addition, this diet is very efficient for busy people that don’t want to interrupt their working schedule.

3. Volumetrics Diet 

This diet is all about volume- tons of food with dense nutritional value, low in calories, and high-water content.

“Volumetrics promise to make you lose weight and keep it off while managing your hunger!” -as the pioneer of this diet, Ph. D Nutritionist Barbara Rolls, mentions in her book The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet.

This diet divides food into four groups based on their density (calories per nutritional value):

• Very low-density- nonstarchy fruits and vegetables, nonfat milk
• Low-density- starchy fruits and veggies, grains, low-fat meat, legumes 
• Medium-density- meat, cheese, pizza, french fries, salad dressing, bread, pretzels, ice cream, and cake
• High-density- chips, candies, cookies, butter, and oil

You have to consume most of your calories from the first and second category, and as little as possible from the other two.

4. Keto and Keto Lite

The Ketogenic diet was designed in the 1920s but gained popularity in the last decade, and its still going strong.

Keto is all about consuming low-carb, high-fat foods and meals. The focus of this eating regime is consuming most of your calories from healthy fat foods and a moderate amount of protein.

The purpose of Keto is to enable the body to enter the process of ketosis, burning fat instead of glucose. If restricting carbs is not a big deal, you should give it a try to lose some pounds or reap other health benefits.

Recently, ‘Keto Lite’ or ‘Lazy Keto‘ has become very popular. This modified version is less restrictive than the original and focuses more on protein intake.

5. Paleo Diet

The Paleo diet is simple and has been around for a long time. It consists of a simple rule: to eat as our cavemen ancestors would.

Meaning, consuming only food that is found in nature– from plant-based to lots of animal produce. Paleo recommends avoiding all processed foods. This way, you will consume fewer calories and avoid many diseases.

Apart from that, Paleo doesn’t have many restrictions and can be customized for every budget. These two reasons make this diet one of the most loved and popular diets out there that has survived all the new fad diets.

As for the macro ratios, Paleo doesn’t have a proper rule for the percentage of protein, carbs, and fat intake. So, each can focus on whichever macro they want, of course, taking care of the portions.

By eating only whole foods, the body will get all the nutritional value needed and feel satiated for longer.

6. The Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet consists of foods from the Mediterranean region, such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, seafood, and extra virgin olive oil.

This diet tries to avoid processed products or foods ‘that your grandmother would not recognize’. Many studies have proven its many health benefits.

Following the Mediterranean regime, you will be able to substitute meat with fish and eat tons of wholegrain starchy foods such as potatoes, bread, rice, and pasta.

Of course, everything should be cooked with Mediterranean spices and flavors like in these recipes.

7. Poke Bowl Meals and Asian Diet

Even though this weight loss trend is not a standardized and tailored diet, Asian cuisine and especially Poke Bowls are getting extremely popular due to the nutritional values they represent.

Poke Bowls are the definition of health in just a bowl: whole grains like quinoa, whole-wheat pasta, chickpeas, lentils, lean protein sources, tons of vegetables, and healthy fat like avocado and olive oil.

They are light, delicious, and so versatile.

The Asian Diet consists mainly of vegetables, strong spices, rice, noodles, seafood, and soy products.

8. The DASH Diet

DASH- ‘Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension’ diet helps improve blood pressure and ‘bad’ cholesterol levels. Hence, people use this medically proved diet for specific health conditions.

DASH consists of foods rich in potassium, calcium, magnesium, fiber, and proteins such as fish, whole grains, legumes, seeds, vegetables, etc. On the other hand, DASH limits sodium intake to 2,300 mg per day.

This diet is a relatively easy one to follow. You can also check many DASH meals online.

9. The Gluten-Free Diet

A gluten-free diet restricts you from foods with gluten such as wheat, barley, and rye.

Designed for people with gluten sensitivities, allergies, or coeliac disease this diet, will benefit everyone.

Gluten promotes inflammation, damage in the intestinal tracts and has little to nothing nutritional value. So, excluding it from your diet will help you heal your gut and digest easier all the nutrients.

The gluten-free diet is not as restricting as you might think. 

There are many gluten-free substitute foods available in the market today. However, this diet is considered part of a more expensive lifestyle since most of the substitutes are fairly more expensive than the original version.

Some gluten-free foods and grains are amaranth, arrowroot, buckwheat corn, rice, soy, corn, potato, legumes, red meat, olive oil, dairy produce, coffee, coconut, etc.

1. Immunity System Supporting Diet 

Due to the pandemic situation and all the health problems the world had to deal with in the last two years, the Immune System Supporting diet became very popular for good reasons.

This diet consists in incorporating more foods that boost the immune system in our diet, such as citrus fruits, peppers, broccoli, kiwi, garlic, spinach, etc.

Consuming few servings of different vegetables and fruits daily will provide us with the micronutrients like vitamins and minerals that we often ignore but help our body function properly and protect itself from illnesses.