This Man Tried 10 Popular Diets in 50 Days... See Which One Actually Worked!

{Article adapted from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2907176/The-man-did-10-diets-50-days-one-really-worked.html} Andy Leeks was sick of being called "the big man" by his co-workers. At around 224lbs-definitely overweight for his  5ft. 11in. frame, he decided to lose the weight once and for all-despite the fact that he had never been able to follow a diet completely on through. He failed to finish his diet due to one of the most popular reasons why anyone would abruptly quit a diet: boredom. He decided to do an experiement to keep him from getting sucked into diet boredom-he decided to try out ten different diets in 50 days-to prevent him from getting bored. This meant, he would only be committing to one diet for every 5 days. Before beginning any of his dieting, he saw a doctor for a health screening in which his starting blood pressure was 136/81 and his overall cholesterol reading was 4-all normal values, but could be improved. The ten diets in order were:

1. The 5:2 diet
2. The Special K diet, where two out of three meals are replaced by Special K cereal or snack bars.
3. The NHS guidance for a healthy diet
4. A juice fast
5. The high-fat, low-carb Atkins diet
6. The raw food diet
7. The baby food diet (replacing two out of three meals a day with tiny jars of baby food, in order to cut calories)
8. Calorie counting using a mobile phone app
9. The grapefruit diet, which involves having either grapefruit or grapefruit juice before or after each meal, supposedly to boost fat-burning
10. The cabbage soup diet.

While on the 5:2 diet, he restricted calories drastically for two days and ate normally for 3 days (for his case-normally it would be to eat a normal diet for 5 days). On the fasting days, he ate tomato soup for lunch, one slice of toast (with crusts cut off to shave off some calories) with a small helping of beans for dinner and an apple. He ended up losing 5lbs in 5 days, BUT he then realized that he was following the female version of the program and eating a little less calories than he was supposed to. On the second diet, the Special K diet, he also lost 5lbs in 5 days, but claimed it was so much more boring. The fourth diet-the Juice diet-was a nightmare as Andy states because "all the juices had to be made fresh and took ages to prepare." But, he did lose 4 lb on it-the same amount that he lost following the guidance for a balanced diet on the NHS website (diet three). Andy stated that the NHS diet was pretty enjoyable with whole grains, fruits, veggies, meat, and fish, but no sugar or fat really. He was surprised that the NHS diet worked because it didn't feel like he was on a diet. Counting calories using a tracker app on his phone (diet eight), the grapefruit diet (diet nine) and the baby food diet (diet seven) only shifted 1lb each and he stated that he hated all 3 of them pretty much. On the Atkins diet, he lost about 1.5lbs, a little more than the previous diets listed in the above paragraph, but he felt bored and miserable. Diet six, the raw food diet, was the worst for Andy. He had to consume all of his foods in a natural, uncooked state. While on this diet, he felt weak and his throat became so sore that he had to make a trip to the ER and was diagnosed with an infection. He spent the next two days in bed not eating much, and ended up losing 3lbs total on the raw diet. Though most of the weightloss was most likely due to being ill, he said the diet was super hard to follow. After his dieting experiment was over, Andy stated : "For the first time in years, I'd managed to stick to my plan to diet for more than a couple of weeks - and in total I lost 30½ lb. I could see my feet for the first time in years and my waist had gone from 38-40 inches to 34-36 inches." "I felt happy and healthy - although my doctor had news for me on that front. For while my blood pressure was a tiny bit lower, at 130/80, my cholesterol had gone up to 4.3, and this increase was down to a rise in so-called 'bad' LDL cholesterol." "My doctor explained that extreme diets essentially shock the body; and in its confused state subtle changes can happen - not all helpful - which might explain why my LDL was slightly up."

"There were other lessons too. Around the four-week mark, I stopped weighing myself every day - something I always used to do when I was on a diet, and then not at all when I fell off the wagon. Weighing myself daily meant I would often see no change or even a slight increase and it was demotivating.

This time, perhaps because of the variety of the diets, I could stick it out long enough to see other changes that are more important than the number on the scale - my double chin was receding, my skin was better, I was finding my weekly run easier."

"There was only one way of eating out of the ten that I could stick to long-term - and that's the diet set out by the NHS."  You can follow Andy on his website or checkout his book Minimize Me on Amazon!   Want to try a 7 day clean eating diet that works? Click the image below!