If you made weight loss one of your New Year's resolutions, you'll want to make a diet and exercise plan and stick with it. But with so many different kinds of diets out there, how can you know which one surpasses all others? Well, a new ranking from U.S. News & World Report has removed some of the guesswork.
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The publication recently released its ranking for the Best Diets of 2020. U.S. News evaluated 35 of the most popular diet plans and broke them down into several categories, including Best Diets Overall, Best Weight-Loss Diets, Best Diets for Healthy Eating and more.
To compile the rankings, the publication created a “diet roster” and then wrote in-depth profiles for its selections by researching medical journals and government reports. From there, U.S. News gathered a panel of nationally recognized experts in diet, nutrition and more to review the profiles.
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The experts also added their own research and rated each diet based on the following categories: how easy the diet was to follow, its ability to produce short-term and long-term weight loss, its nutritional completeness, its safety, and its potential for preventing and managing diabetes and heart disease.
For the third year in a row, the diet that ranked No. 1 overall was the Mediterranean Diet. "The popular and easy to follow Mediterranean diet focuses on eating less red meat, sugar and saturated fat while incorporating more produce, nuts and whole grains into your daily regimen," wrote U.S. News in a press release. The diet also took the top spot in four other lists: Best Diets for Healthy Eating, Easiest Diets to Follow, Best Diets for Diabetes and Best Plant-Based Diets.
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When it comes to weight-loss specifically, Weight Watchers ranked No. 1 for the 10th year in a row. "Although still used to shed pounds, WW (formerly Weight Watchers) is also focused on inspiring healthy living and improving overall well-being," said U.S. News. "Its WW Freestyle program, launched in late 2017, builds on its SmartPoints system, which assigns every food and beverage a point value, based on its nutrition."
U.S. News said the goal of the rankings was to help people “clear the noise” and to avoid harmful fad dieting. The full report is available here.
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