Read on and find out why bodybuilding led the way in this pursuit to look lean and hard.
There have been so many diets over the years to lose weight, and most of them didn't work or keep the weight off. It's dedication and commitment for this to work. You just can't do a month and quit. Weight Watchers works if you stay with it and count points, and many use this but seem to gain the weight back after they go off. The issue with this diet is yes, you'll drop weight, but you also lose muscle and fat and end up looking "skinny fat." This means you're thinner but soft and not a hard body simply because you didn't eat enough protein or exercise with it.
The Atkins diet was the next to follow and worked simply because it was basically high protein and low carbohydrates. It wasn't complicated and gave good results.
Then came the Zone diet which was very similar to the Atkins diet just with minimal changes but again basically the same.
Then came the big hit which was the Beverly Hills diet and with that name alone sold many books and again many followers who believed in the diet because it became the diet of the film stars.
It got a lot of publicity and shot right to the top. BUT it was also a knockoff on the other diets above. High Protein and Low Carbs was the mainstay of the diet.
Okay, now this brings me to this point. Bodybuilding wasn't mainstream in the '40s, '50s or even the '60s but bodybuilders were the first to use the High Protein, Low Carb diet as they knew this would burn fat, lean out the muscle and also with working out retain the muscularity. Steve Reeves was a big fan of this diet and look at him in the '50s.
This diet consisted of (in any order you want) meat, fish, chicken, whole eggs, cottage cheese, cheese but no carbs or sugar. Nothing white was eaten such as pasta, rice, bread, white flour or potatoes.
Energy is based on eating fats as they are utilized fast in the body and not stored as fat. You can't have fats and carbs together because then you will get fat.
The second diet was different. It consisted of High Protein and Carbs but no fats. So basically all the meats and fish but you can have rice, some pasta and fruit but not fats.
I got very lean on this diet one year by eating mostly fish and rice and loved the results.
This is the diets that we used in the Golden Era and look how nice the bodies were.
So what I'm trying to convey is you have two diet choices here that really work. Anything other than that is a waste of time to me and I know bodies well and what works. This is the best free advice you will ever get and it's easy to follow. Also these diets that i mention were just imitations of the original bodybuilding diet because they knew that it worked and simply just put another name on it.
Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.