Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with your quick and

dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous this month I'm taking a closer

look at some popular theories about diet and weight loss.

As I pointed out in last week's show, there are several prevailing but conflicting concepts,

and each has a lot of evidence to back it up.

My take is that no single approach to diet is going to work for

everyone. Rather than debating whether low-carb diets work better than low-fat

diets or diets made up predominantly of purple foods or whatever, I think the real trick is

finding out which approach is the best fit for your lifestyle, your preferences, and yeah,

your biochemistry.

And one way to do that is to do a little experimenting and that's what we're going to be doing over the next few weeks.

The traditional approach to weight loss or weight gain for that matter is a mathematical one.

When the number of calories taken in is greater

than the number of calories burned, the excess is stored as fat. Conversely, if the

number of calories consumed is less than the number of calories

burned, you lose weight.

And when calories in equals calories out,

your weight stays the same.

So traditional weight loss diets have always focused on cutting calories.

Theoretically, it wouldn't matter whether you cut out fats, carbohydrates, alcohol, or protein

as long as you reduce your total caloric intake, you'd lose weight.

But because fat contains roughly twice as many calories per gram

...