NEW ORLEANS — If you've turned to social media to lose weight, you're not alone.
In fact, as you will see, billions look just on TikTok alone, for advice.
So, is that a good idea.
TikTok is not just where Gen Z posts dance videos, it's where people are turning to lose weight. So, we turned to the experts for the science.
“So, people are sharing mostly healthy diets, but the most healthy diets they aren't sharing enough,” said Dr. Melinda Sothern, Professor Emerita, LSUHSC School of Public Health.
“They are not going to have the best information for what your entire diet should look like, but they could give you some very nice specific recipe ideas,” said Dr. Jake Mey,
Assistant Professor of Research in Integrated Physiology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
YorkTest is a lab that tests for food sensitivities. And it rated the top 50 diet trends on TikTok, and number one with more than 10 billion curious viewers, is the extremely low carb, high fat keto diet.
“So, keto diets are extreme, but they have been studied and they have been shown to be safe if they're physician supervised, But it's not a long term lifestyle is the problem. People with disordered eating would never be on this type of restrictive diet,” said Dr. Sothern.
Good old fashioned calorie counting was second with around half the views, more than five and a half billion.
“Calorie counting is not recommended, because it's basically, it forces you just to ignore the nutrient value of foods. When you reduce calories and you're focused on only calories, that has been associated with disordered eating,” explained Dr. Sothern.
Third is the low carb diet, removing the starchy carb foods like rice, bread, and pasta, but keeping the nutritious carbs like veggies, and berries. That helps prevent spiking your insulin which promotes storing belly fat.
Fourth and fifth on the list are vegan and vegetarian diets, which are good, but need a dietician's advice on where to get good protein.
“There may be supplements that are going to be highly recommended for you, to make sure that you get the certain nutrients that you just can't get well out of a vegan diet. Some of those would be vitamin B-12 or your omega fatty acids, both of which are critically important for overall health and wellness,” said Dr. Mey.
On intuitive eating, LSU Health's Dr. Melinda Sothern says there is emerging research suggesting it is beneficial to think and plan, what and where you're going to eat, and to develop a schedule. It's about changing your relationship with, and behavior around food, and not mindlessly snacking.
But Dr. Jake Mey of Pennington Biomedical Research Center says this diet is not for everyone.
“That's probably great if you were an always skinny person, your body's just telling you the right ways to eat, but what we know about obesity now is that people that struggle with weight or have obesity, have a disruptive biology that's telling them to eat the wrong way, or too much,” said Dr. Mey.
Intermittent fasting only allows eating during a specific time window that you choose.
“Keto diet, combined with intermittent fasting, has recently been shown to be effective and that's because you can go on and off of it,” said Dr. Sothern.
And when it comes to the dairy-free diet, she says low fat dairy is recommended for weight loss with its high protein and calcium.
“The Dairy-free trends and the gluten-free trends are a little concerning to me. I would stay away from unless you have a known intolerance to something like dairy products or gluten products,” said Dr. Mey.
And both doctors say if science and health were to guide TikTok users, two proven diets would be high on the list, Mediterranean only ranked 26 and DASH ranked down at 47.
“And the first thing I thought was where is our Mediterranean diet trend. Where is our DASH diet trend? I mean those have the best evidence behind them and we know they're some of the healthiest dietary patterns out there, but they're just not trendy, right? That's the problem,” said Dr. Mey.
TikTok does not allow dangerous diets or ones that promote eating disorders, like the water diet where no food is eaten for 24 hours.
Here is the YorkTest complete list of the 50 trends: