With the holiday season bringing upon us the dark cloud of over-indulging in too much food and alcohol, we’re all striving to distinguish the silver-lining to it, which is as expected, a weight-loss diet so as to begin the year healthy and fit.

Losing weight is, especially to women, a very sensitive issue nowadays, since they all wish to be able to wear a curve-hugging dress without fearing people would think they have definitely made the wrong choice and had better stuck to a pair of baggy pants and a T-shirt.

In the United States, an estimated number of 80 million people go on a diet every year, which burns a whole of $30 billion in their pockets for programs and products.

Nevertheless, a panel of experts has recently tested over 60 well-known diets, short-listing them to the best ten, which are the most prone to help people do away with their extra pounds.

The winners were the Structure House Weight Loss Plan, the Step Diet, Weight Watchers, the EatingWell Diet, the Volumetrics Eating Plan, the Best Life Diet, the Solution, You:On a Diet, the Sonoma Diet and the Spectrum.

What all these diets have in common can be summed up in only one word: motivation.

It’s not about how little or how much you eat, or about how many times a week you exercise, it’s about finding the reasons that stand behind your urge to over-eat. Only after you have discovered why you feel an uncontrollable desire to ravage your fridge every day, can you truly move on to the next step and choose a diet that best suits your needs and your life-style.

Without knowing the root of a problem, there is no hope for finding a long-term solution that promises to make your body steer clear of the much feared yo-yo effect.

So don’t let your top new year’s resolution be to lose weight, but to have a heart-to-heart talk with yourself and face the issues that are making you turn to food for comfort and solve those first. The weight-loss will be sure to follow.