More about diet types
Classified by other criteria than the ones used in the previous article, diet types also exist in the following:
Fixed-menu diet allows you only to eat certain types of food. Can get boring really easily and it does not teach you principles of healthy nutrition. Eating only a few types of food can do more harm than good on the long run.
Exchange-type diet consists of meal plans with pre-established servings from several groups of food, usually each serving having roughly the same number of calories. Provides more options that you can choose from and you can learn healthy food selection habits.
Prepackaged-meal diet involves buying prepackaged meals. May be considered an expensive diet by some. You should also have basic meal preparation skills.
Formula diets replace one or more meals with a weight loss “drink” based on powders or liquids that contains balanced mixes of nutrients. Usually works as long as you keep using them. Once you stop taking formulas, you start gaining weight back again, mostly because it does not teach you how to eat healthy, just allows you to replace some meals.
Questionable diets such as the ones that suggest you to eat only one type of food, such as an only-protein food diet can expose you to serious health risks and can only provide short term weight loss.
Flexible diets are the ones that focus on controlling only fat intake or caloric intake, or combinations but neglects others that could easily provide more extra calories than imagined, eventually not leading to the expected weight loss targets. You have to be extra careful when taking on a flexible diet plan.