What is the One Best Diet?

Hi, I’m Dr. Craig Primack from Scottsdale Weight Loss Center. Today, I’m going to be talking about another Medical Minute. The topic is very important. It’s, what is the one best diet? And so for a minute, I’m going to put that question aside and go towards blood pressure.

Blood Pressure

We know blood pressure is a disease that’s been around for a long time, and if you ask a physician, “What is the one blood pressure medicine that they prescribe?” They’re going to give you their absolute favorite. It’s probably something called an ACE inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. But that’s their personal favorite so they get very comfortable at prescribing it. But it’s not the only one that they use, it’s one of many. There are a couple of different classes. Another is water pills. There are beta blockers. Another class is alpha blockers.

There’s a few other classes of blood pressure meds, and in all, there’s over 140 different medicines that we have at our disposal, which is great. So some people start with one blood pressure medicine, and then you add a second one to it, or a third one to it, a fourth one to it. And there’s some people that even need a fifth one added in to help keep their blood pressure under control. Well, let’s go back. Let’s go back to diets. What is the best way to lose weight? What diet is that one? And so, is it the keto diet? What about a form of intermittent fasting?  Meal replacements? Is it a raw vegan, no meats diet?

So those are just a few diets, and there probably aren’t 140 different diets, but there are a lot. And the answer to the question, what is the one best answer, is there is no one best diet. Studies have not shown that out.

Structure and Efficacy

There are some better ones, and when the physician or the medical provider gets good at helping administer a diet with structure in it, which is both doable, meaning it’s a diet you can adhere to, and is efficacious, meaning it helps you lose weight, you’re going to do better.

So I practice in Scottsdale, Arizona, and most of my patients come from Arizona or the Greater Phoenix Area. Many people hate cooking, many people hate counting calories, and we have chosen since the beginning to use meal replacements. There are many studies looking at meal replacements over longterm. One of them being the Look Ahead Study. It was a 10 year study on people with diabetes using meal replacements as part of their diabetes and weight loss treatment, and they were able to use meal replacements for 10 years. Now, they used it in a partial strategy. So they used some regular food and roughly two or three meal replacements a day.

Full Meal Replacement-

We can choose to start out with meal replacements fully. It gives you a super structure. You know exactly what you’re going to eat and when you’re going to eat. After the third day, it actually becomes quite easy, because it’s very predictable. You get hungry at about three hours. You eat and you’re full again for about another three hours, and so forth. And you know exactly what we’re going to eat and when you’re going to eat. There is almost no cooking involved, unless you want to add a few vegetables or do a little few tweaks that I like. And then after that, we start adding in regular food.

My goal is not to take food away from you.

My goal is to give you a tool that’s going to help you lose weight fast, quick, and successfully, and keep you healthy the entire time.

The ones we use are made as a full meal replacement.

All your Macros and Micros

A full meal replacement means it’s been studied that when used as your sole source of food, it gives you all the macronutrients you need, all the micronutrients you need, as well as the vitamins and essential minerals that you may need to keep you healthy. The stuff you buy at Costco or in your local grocery store that is a meal replacement, so the numbers look quite the same, has, number one, not been studied and most likely there are some small but yet key pieces that make it a non-full meal replacement. It may taste good, and that’s not what we’re only looking for.

The ones we use here in the office have been taste tested over time to be also tasting good. So at the end of the day, there is no one way to lose weight. When you see a clinic that specializes in weight management, although we do have our favorite ways to lose weight, it’s not the only way to lose weight.

And so I do have people on many different diets, on many plans inside those diets, and changing it depending if it’s January and we’re getting reestablished after the holidays, depending if it’s middle of the summer and you’re traveling with your family. There are different ways to put together your diet. But a diet, again, is not the only way to lose weight. We use medicines, we use exercise, and we also use classes.

So that’s hopefully a quick overview on what is the best diet, knowing that there’s not one, but I do have my favorites.

Thanks. Thanks for being here today.