Do brands pay for a better score?

No. No company can buy a score, a placement, or a mention inside a protocol, and none of the programmes audited here has any say in what we publish about them. Some sourcing pages elsewhere on the site carry affiliate links, and those are disclosed at the top of the page. Audits are kept structurally separate from that: a commercial relationship has never moved a number on this page and never will.

Which programmes actually hold up?

Of the 29 audits in this index, 3 score 7/10 or higher on sustainability, 16 land in the mixed 4–6 band, and 10 score below 4. The ones that score well tend to share a boring trait: they can be run indefinitely without a purchase, a rule you resent, or a taper. The current top of the sustainability index is Mediterranean Diet, Bariatric Surgery, Intermittent Fasting (16:8). The bottom is occupied by short crash protocols — Cabbage Soup Diet, HCG Diet, Juice Cleanse — which produce fast scale movement and almost no durable change.

Why audit fad diets nobody seriously defends any more?

Because they keep coming back with new packaging. The cabbage-soup structure returns as a 'reset', the HCG protocol returns as a 'metabolic activator', and the juice cleanse returns as a subscription. Naming the mechanism once means you can recognise the next version of it. It also matters for safety. Several of these approaches carry documented risks — electrolyte disturbance, muscle loss, gallstone formation with very rapid loss — that marketing copy never mentions.

So which diet is best?

None of them, as a universal answer. The research on head-to-head diet comparisons is unusually consistent: when calories and protein are matched, the differences between named approaches shrink dramatically, and the variable that actually predicts your outcome is whether you can keep doing it. That is why this site routes people to a protocol rather than selling one. The right question is not which diet won a trial, but which approach fits your metabolic situation, your kitchen and your calendar well enough that you will still be running it next year.

How current are these audits?

Each audit is reviewed against the literature and re-dated when the evidence base moves — a new randomised trial, longer follow-up, a safety signal, or a regulatory change. Pharmacological entries change fastest, because the trial pipeline for GLP-1 receptor agonists is still producing new data.

Is any of this medical advice?

No. These audits are educational summaries of published research, not a diagnosis, a prescription, or a substitute for your own clinician. They are written to help you ask better questions in the room, not to replace the room. If you take prescribed medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a history of disordered eating, or manage a diagnosed condition, treat every approach on this page as something to discuss with your physician before you change anything.

Do brands pay for a better score?

No. No company can buy a score, a placement, or a mention inside a protocol, and none of the programmes audited here has any say in what we publish about them. Some sourcing pages elsewhere on the site carry affiliate links, and those are disclosed at the top of the page. Audits are kept structurally separate from that: a commercial relationship has never moved a number on this page and never will.

Which programmes actually hold up?

Of the 29 audits in this index, 3 score 7/10 or higher on sustainability, 16 land in the mixed 4–6 band, and 10 score below 4. The ones that score well tend to share a boring trait: they can be run indefinitely without a purchase, a rule you resent, or a taper. The current top of the sustainability index is Mediterranean Diet, Bariatric Surgery, Intermittent Fasting (16:8). The bottom is occupied by short crash protocols — Cabbage Soup Diet, HCG Diet, Juice Cleanse — which produce fast scale movement and almost no durable change.

Why audit fad diets nobody seriously defends any more?

Because they keep coming back with new packaging. The cabbage-soup structure returns as a 'reset', the HCG protocol returns as a 'metabolic activator', and the juice cleanse returns as a subscription. Naming the mechanism once means you can recognise the next version of it. It also matters for safety. Several of these approaches carry documented risks — electrolyte disturbance, muscle loss, gallstone formation with very rapid loss — that marketing copy never mentions.

So which diet is best?

None of them, as a universal answer. The research on head-to-head diet comparisons is unusually consistent: when calories and protein are matched, the differences between named approaches shrink dramatically, and the variable that actually predicts your outcome is whether you can keep doing it. That is why this site routes people to a protocol rather than selling one. The right question is not which diet won a trial, but which approach fits your metabolic situation, your kitchen and your calendar well enough that you will still be running it next year.

How current are these audits?

Each audit is reviewed against the literature and re-dated when the evidence base moves — a new randomised trial, longer follow-up, a safety signal, or a regulatory change. Pharmacological entries change fastest, because the trial pipeline for GLP-1 receptor agonists is still producing new data.

Is any of this medical advice?

No. These audits are educational summaries of published research, not a diagnosis, a prescription, or a substitute for your own clinician. They are written to help you ask better questions in the room, not to replace the room. If you take prescribed medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a history of disordered eating, or manage a diagnosed condition, treat every approach on this page as something to discuss with your physician before you change anything.

29 programmes · every claim cited

We audited every major fat-loss programme. Here's why they failed you.

Restrictive, calorie-based, commercial, fasting, fad, pharmacological, surgical — we worked through the literature on all of it. A few are genuinely useful. Most of what gets sold does not survive the evidence.

Browse the index Find your fit

Audits

One scoring sheet. Every programme.

A crash cleanse and a surgical intervention get read against the same three questions. That is the only way the numbers on this page mean anything when you compare them side by side.

Weighted heaviest

Sustainability

Can an adult with a job, a family and a social life still be running this in month twelve? This score carries the most weight, because adherence predicts outcome more reliably than macro split.

First 12 weeks

Short-term effect

What the first 12 weeks look like in controlled trials. A high score here on its own means very little — glycogen and water move fast, and almost every restrictive protocol scores well early.

12–24 months

Long-term effect

What is left at 12–24 months in the trials that bothered to follow people that long. Where short-term and long-term diverge sharply, you are usually looking at a regain mechanism, not a willpower failure.

No brand can buy a score. Nobody audited here pays us, previews the copy, or has any influence over the number. Every audit ends with its reference list so you can check the sources yourself.

02The index

Search it. Filter it. Sort it.

Order by sustainability to see which approaches survive contact with real life — and which only look good for six weeks.

Search the index

Filter by type

Order by sustainability

29 audits shown

03The pattern

29 audits. Three repeating failures.

Read enough of these back to back and the same structural problems surface, whatever the branding on the front of the box.

Early loss is not evidence

Nearly every protocol in this index produces visible change in the first few weeks. Glycogen carries roughly 3g of water per gram, so the first pounds are largely water. Nothing about that predicts month twelve.

The comparator is usually missing

Marketing cites the trial where a diet beat 'usual care'. The harder comparison — calorie-matched, protein-matched, run past a year — is where most macro-magic claims quietly disappear.

Stopping is the design flaw

Approaches that depend on a drug, a shake or a rule you cannot keep have their failure written into them. What happens when the intervention stops is part of the audit, not a footnote to it.

Score 7+ on sustainability

Land in the mixed 4–6 band

Score below 4 and rarely last

04Method questions

Straight answers

How this index is built

Every programme is read against the same three-part rubric — sustainability, short-term effect, long-term effect — and every claim we make about it has to be traceable to peer-reviewed literature. We do not score on how much we like an approach, and we do not adjust a score because a programme is popular.

Where the literature is thin or contradictory we say so in the evidence rating rather than splitting the difference. An honest 'contested' is more useful to you than a confident number we cannot defend.

Read the literature

Trials, meta-analyses and the follow-up data, including the studies that did not flatter the approach.

Score against the fixed rubric

Same three axes for a fad cleanse and for bariatric surgery. No bonus points for novelty.

Publish the citations

Every audit ends with its reference list so you can check the sources yourself.

Educational summaries of published research. Individual response varies and no outcome is guaranteed.

05Your turn

So what works for your body?

The honest answer is that it depends on which metabolic pattern you are actually fighting. The assessment reads your situation and points you at the protocol the research supports for that profile — not the one trending this quarter.

Take the assessment Read the method

Free, and there is no email wall on the result
Roughly two minutes, fifteen questions
Returns a starter protocol matched to your profile
Every recommendation links back to its research

Educational only, not medical advice. These audits summarise published research and are not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Consult your physician before major dietary changes or altering prescribed medication. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Individual results vary; no outcome is guaranteed.

We audited every major fat-loss programme. Here's why they failed you.

One scoring sheet. Every programme.

Sustainability

Short-term effect

Long-term effect

Search it. Filter it. Sort it.

Mediterranean Diet

Bariatric Surgery

Intermittent Fasting (16:8)

5:2 Fasting

IIFYM / Flexible Dieting

Mounjaro / Zepbound (Tirzepatide)

Ozempic / Wegovy (Semaglutide)

Paleo Diet

South Beach Diet

Vegan Diet

Weight Watchers (WW)

Atkins Diet

Calorie Counting (CICO)

Noom

Whole30

Jenny Craig

Ketogenic Diet

OMAD (One Meal a Day)

Orlistat (Xenical / Alli)

Carnivore Diet

Optavia

Phentermine

SlimFast

Extended Fasting (3-7+ days)

Military Diet

Cabbage Soup Diet

HCG Diet

Juice Cleanse

Master Cleanse (Lemonade Diet)