Fad diets come and go with new versions out every week. Many of them are big on promises and small on delivery. So what’s a person to do? I for one have spent way too much money on the latest greatest diet plans over the years.

If a friend tells me they’ve lost a lot of weight on a diet and says how great it is I try it, only to find myself bloated, tired, grumpy or hungry all of the time. Then another friend will recommend a different diet and I’m right there, ready to try that one too.

It seems what works for one person, doesn’t necessarily work for another. But short of spending a fortune on diet plans, how do you know what will work best for you?

Well for starters, you put your wallet away and take a common sense approach to the problem. Basically, there are three and only three diet versions out there. They have different names and different menu types, but they all fall into one of these three categories.

1. The Low Fat Diet. This would include most of your calorie counting diets, Weight Watchers, DASH and the Ornish diet. These diets reduce calories and the amount of fat you take in; which is a very sound plan. But remember, there are only three types of food – proteins, fats and carbohydrates. When you reduce the fat in a diet, you have to raise one or both of the other two types of food. And because raising the amount of protein usually raises the fat level too, most low-fat diets are high in carbohydrates.
2. The Low Carbohydrate Diet. This diet would include diets such as the Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet. These diets increase the amount of protein you take in and lower the carbohydrates. But just like the Low Fat Diet, when you reduce the amount of one type food from a diet, you are going to raise another. When you reduce the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, you usually end up with more fat.
3. And the third type diet is something in between. We’ll call it a T’ween diet. This type diet includes the Mediterranean Diet, the G.I. Diet (Glycemic Index Diet), the Idiot Proof Diet and the Zone Diet. These diets reduce the amount of fat in the diet and get rid of simple carbohydrates while replacing them with fewer, but more complex carbohydrates.

And while it would be tempting to make a blanket statement that the T’ween diet would come closer to being the perfect diet for most people (and I do believe these diets are better for more dieters than the other two), not all dieters respond the same to all diets.