With 2014 upon us most people are making their New Year’s resolutions. The number one resolution is to lose weight.

Weight loss seems to elude many American’s – mostly because of our lack of knowledge, and due to the fad diets that plague our country – promising quick weight loss. We are short on patience, and much too trusting – as evidenced by the droves of fast food places on nearly every corner of every street – in even some of the most remote places in the U.S.

When thinking about losing weight – the successful dieter realizes that any diet that promises rapid weight loss cannot be healthy or sustaining – nor does it work. Weight loss takes time and effort, and entails eating right and not taking shortcuts.

Approximately 80 percent of people who lose more weight than 2 pounds a week, gain it back. Many gain back more weight and become heavier than when they started.

“Losing weight is one of the top resolutions made every year, yet only 20 percent of people achieve successful weight-loss and maintenance,” says Jessica Bartfield, MD, internal medicine who specializes in nutrition and weight management at the Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery & Bariatric Care.

The Paleo Diet states: the world’s healthiest diet – is based upon eating wholesome, contemporary foods from the food groups that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have thrived on during the Paleolithic era.

But there is one obvious problem in that statement – we are no longer hunter-gatherers. The Paleolithic period was a time when people spent an entire exhaustive day searching, and hunting for food. It was the cultural period of the Stone Age beginning with the earliest chipped stone tools, about 750,000 years ago.

They didn’t drive cars, shop at grocery stores and sleep in homes. Logic should tell you that this is a diet to avoid; we are long past the Stone Age.

With our lifestyles in the 21st Century, there is a way to lose weight, obtain optimum health and never have to worry about counting calories. It’s called a plant based diet.

Web MD says: If your diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and meat substitutes such as soy, you may be less likely to have certain risks for heart disease and other heart problems, such as:

High blood levels of total cholesterol
High levels of LDL “bad” cholesterol
High levels of triglycerides
High blood pressure
Overweight and obesity
Metabolic syndrome
Diabetes

Dr. Neal Barnard can get you started on the path to a slimmer you, with the added benefit of abundant health with his 21 day weight loss kick-start, using a plant based diet.

While losing weight and keeping it off by a lifestyle change – you can avoid most all diseases. What could be better than that!

Image via Wikimedia Commons