A lot of Instagram influencers and celebrities are sharing their diet secrets to maintain a healthy body. That’s because a good, healthy body always depends on what you eat, what you do and what you think. These three elements are important to balance because your health depends on how you take care of your body (through exercise and adapting a good personal hygiene), support your immune system and resistance to illnesses (through the food and drinks that you consume) and how you see yourself (through the state of your mental health).

Each month, people decide that they’ll be adapting diet plans to reach their goals which are often connected to losing weight. However, if these diet plans were not properly studied before adapting, it often results in the other way around. That’s why if you are deciding this year that you want to make some changes with your diet, it is best to review about it before you apply it to your system.

To be properly guided about diet plans that work, here are some dietary lifestyles you should check out.

Mediterranean Diet

People who are living in the bordering countries of the Mediterranean Sea are believed to live longer and healthier than most of the people. Compared to most American, these people are less likely to contract cancer and cardiovascular illnesses. The secret of this diet plan is an active lifestyle, weight discipline and low diet on red meat, saturated fat and sugary food and drinks while taking a high diet on nuts and other healthy foods.

The fact of the matter is, the Mediterranean diet is not a structured diet but an eating pattern. It requires you to calculate the number of calories to take for you to be able to lose or maintain a desired weight. In choosing the food that will keep you active, the Mediterranean pyramid will be your ultimate guide to your food intake.

To make this diet plan work, it requires you to exercise. You can start with everyday brisk walking and add other moderate-intensity activities you can stick with. It could be dancing, Pilates or gardening as longs as it is muscle-strengthening. And it only requires at least two and a half hour per week.

DASH diet

This diet’s name stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute specifically promote this diet plan to stop and prevent high blood pressure or hypertension. This diet recommends foods that contain high blood pressure-deflating nutrients, such as whole grains, vegetables, lean protein, and low-fat dairy products. For you to identify which is which, these foods are those that are rich in potassium, calcium, protein, and fiber.

This diet plan strictly discourages consuming food and drinks that are high saturated fat, full-fat dairy foods as well as sweets and sugar-sweetened beverages. When you follow the DASH diet, you are also capping your sodium intake at 2,300mg a day to 1,500mg.

The DASH can’t provide overnight changes. However, your body will be able to adapt it by making small changes in your meals. For instance, instead of using commercially-made spices, using natural herbs and spices can help make your meals tastier. Walking for a few minutes after lunch or dinner or both can also help you maintain your health and lose weight while following the DASH diet.

Flexitarian Diet

Compared to other diet plans aforementioned, the Flexitarian diet is not as popular as the others. However, it’s a diet plan worth trying because of the principle it follows. It is highly recommended by a registered dietician named Dawn Jackson Blatner who first coined the term as a marriage of two words: flexible and vegetarian, back in 2009 in her book, “The Flexitarian Diet: The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease and Add Years to Your Life.”

What the diet plan emphasizes is that you don’t need to eliminate meat in your diet while being vegetarian at the same time. Most of the food combination in this diet lifestyle is vegetables, but if there’s an urge to eat meat, it doesn’t prohibit you but it should be in moderation.

When you follow this diet, you are most likely to eat more vegetables and less meat, which helps you lose weight but have overall improvement to your health. It lowers your risk of contracting heart diseases, diabetes and cancer. As a result, you will live longer.

This diet plan initially emphasizes home cooking and it could be difficult for people to follow if you don’t eat vegetable and fruits that much. This plan is about adding another food group to your system where beans, peas or eggs is your “new meat” and is eaten along with fruits and veggies, dairy, sugar, and spice. To keep you guided with your food preparation with this plan, it follows a three-four-five regimen, in which you should eat food with 300 calories during breakfast, 400 calories for lunch and 500 calories for dinner.

When it comes to exercise, if you engage yourself with this diet plan you’ll need to get at least a 30-minute moderate exercise, five days in a week as well as strength training at least 2 days a week.