How does the Nurtisystem diet work?

The Nutrisystem diet focuses on getting its clients to eat balanced meals in appropriate portion sizes.  Without limiting what you can and cannot eat, the Nutrisystem diet promotes a healthy lifestyle by providing prepackaged meals in the appropriate size.

In addition to the balanced meals that are delivered to your doorstep, the Nutrisystem diet helps dieters change their mindset which will help them be successful in reaching their weight loss goals.  Nutrisystem diet clients will receive a 12-week, self-guided “Mindset Makeover” behavior guide which addresses everything from curbing cravings to the importance of social support when it comes to reaching your weight loss goals.  Also, clients will also receive support through online communities and over the telephone.

The Nutrisystem diet can be customized for both men and women as well as people with type II diabetes, vegetarians, and older dieters that may require certain nutrients.  There are no requirements such a weigh-ins, counting calories, or preparing certain meals associated with the Nutrisystem diet.

What kind of food can I eat?

The best part of the Nutrisystem diet is that it does not limit the types of food that you can and cannot eat.  As long as you find a meal listed among the Nutrisystem prepackaged meals, you can eat whatever you like.  With more than 120 entrees and desserts to choose from, the Nutrisystem diet offers a comprehensive list of meals that you are able to eat.  These meals promote a balanced diet and typically contain 55% carbohydrates, 25% protein, and 20% fat.

The prepackaged meals are designed to be supplemented with six servings of fruits and vegetables a day to help satisfy your hunger with low calorie foods.  Dieters will eat five meals per day while on the Nutrisystem diet, which will also help further control hunger.

How to be successful with the Nutrisystem diet

The Nutrisystem diet is one of the easiest diet plans out there.  However, in order to reach your weight loss goals you will need to make some changes in your daily life.  Only eating the prepared meals is the first step you will need to take.  Eating these meals will ensure that you stick to a healthy, balanced diet.  Once you are in a routine of eating healthy meals in the right portions, you will then need to introduce daily exercise into your routine.  Without any physical activity, you will be unlikely to see the weight loss you are seeking.  Even a modest 30 min of exercise per day will help you lose the weight you desire.

What is the goal?

The main purpose of the Mayo Clinic diet is to get you to change your daily routine so that you can lead a longer, healthier life.  Other diets try to get you to lose as much weight as possible in a short amount of time without thinking about the long term.  This is why so many people lose a little bit of weight when they go on a diet and then gain it right back once they are off of it because they did not change their lifestyle.  The Mayo Clinic diet will help show you how to choose healthy foods and portions which will lead to a healthier lifestyle.

While you may have a short term goal of losing excess weight, the main reason to partake in the Mayo Clinic diet is because of the long term positive effects it will have on your body.  Using the Mayo Clinic diet’s Healthy Weight Pyramid, you will be able to plan your daily meals with the main goal of leading a healthy lifestyle.

How does it work?

The Mayo Clinic diet is a mixture of eating healthy and increasing physical activity with the end goal of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  Rather than try and lose as much weight as possible in a short amount of time, the Mayo Clinic diet focuses on changing your lifestyle so that you can lead a healthy life.  The Mayo Clinic diet has two main parts: Lose It! and Live it!

Lose It!

This portion of the diet is a two-week phase that helps you jumpstart your weight loss goals.  During this two-week period you will focus on removing five unhealthy lifestyle habits and replacing them with five healthy habits.  Doing this simple task, along with 30 minutes of exercise a day, can help you lose as much as six to ten pounds in just two weeks.

Live It!

During the Live It! phase of the diet, you will learn more about healthy food choices, portion sizes, menu planning, and sticking to your new healthy habits that will allow you to live a healthier lifestyle.  The purpose of this phase is to help you to continue your weight loss at a rate of 1 to 2 pounds per week.  Once you reach your ideal weight, you can then focus your efforts on maintaining your weight by using the healthy lifestyle techniques you have gained during the Live It! phase of the diet.

You can go here to find a sample menu of the Healthy Weight Pyramid.

While the Raw Food diet can certainly help you lose weight, it is more of a lifestyle than a short-term weight loss plan.  The Raw Food diet consists of a lot of preparation time in the kitchen, which is something that needs to be considered before immersing yourself in this diet.  You will find yourself chopping, peeling, straining and blending a lot of fruits and vegetables.

How does the Raw Food diet work?

The Raw Food diet is different than most diets in that you will never have to cook your food.  Rather than cook their food, raw foodists use food dehydrators that lend crunch to fruits and vegetables.  The main belief behind the Raw Food diet is that cooking food at high temperatures robs it of its valuable enzymes and vitamins.  All meals planned under the Raw Food diet cannot be prepared above 118 degrees.

Benefits of Raw Food

While there is not much medical literature on the subject of the Raw Food diet, a few studies do exist that appear to back up the claims that cooking food at high temperatures kills important nutrients.  One research project showed that eating raw, cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and kale may reduce the risk of bladder cancer.  Cooking these vegetables at high temperatures rids them of their isothiocyanates, agents that alter proteins in cancer cells.

However, on the other side of the argument, the American Dietetic Association argues that preparing food below 118 degrees does not kill harmful, food-borne bacteria, leaving yourself vulnerable to other food relate illnesses.

Is the Raw Food diet healthy?

As is the case with diet that focuses on eating one type of food, the health benefits can affect every person in a different way.  Replacing a balanced diet with a Raw Food diet can deprive you of some essential vitamins such as B12, which is found naturally only in animal products.  A B12 deficiency can lead to anemia and neurological impairment as B12 assists with red blood cell development.

If you ensure that your body is getting the required vitamins and nutrients that are lacking in the Raw Food diet, this particular diet plan can be healthy and lead to significant weight loss.  Taking additional supplements to make sure that your body receives these vitamins and nutrients will help you realize the biggest benefits when going on the Raw Food diet.

How does it work?

The Jenny Craig diet plan is broken into three different levels.  The first level teaches dieters how to eat small, frequent portions of the food that they love.  It is through theses smaller portions that the Jenny Craig diet is able to not limit the types of food that you can eat.  The second level of the program teaches clients how to increase their energy levels through simple exercise.  The third level of the Jenny Craig diet teaches dieters how to install more balance into their lives so that they can maintain a healthy lifestyle that will enable them to maintain their weight loss goals.

What sets the Jenny Craig diet apart from other weight loss plans is the 24/7 support offered through the program.  Clients of the Jenny Craig diet are able to get information and support through a telephone hotline at anytime during the night or day.  This support is unprecedented when it comes to diet plans, and is one of the reasons why so many people have success with the Jenny Craig diet.

In addition to the telephone hotline, the Jenny Craig diet offers two different programs.  One is centered around physical Jenny Craig centers.  There are over 650 centers in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Puerto Rico, so clients should not have too much trouble finding a diet center nearby.  However, if you do not think you will be able to attend a Jenny Craig center on a regular basis, the Jenny Craig diet also boasts an at-home program that offers diet information by telephone and mail.

What can I eat while on the Jenny Craig diet?

The centerpiece to the Jenny Craig diet is its prepackaged meals.  The diet plan offers frozen breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and even desserts consisting of your favorite foods.  While the diet program does not limit you on what you are allowed to eat, the Jenny Craig diet teaches its clients to focus on moderation, balanced diet, and increasing physical activity.  The prepackaged meals encourage dieters to familiarize themselves with correct portion sizes, with the end goal of weaning clients off of the prepared meals.  By getting its clients to first recognize correct portion sizes, the Jenny Craig diet then teaches its clients how to cook for themselves in such a way where they are not overindulging and able to reach their desired weight.

Will You be successful with the Jenny Craig diet?

To be successful with the Jenny Craig diet you will need to be willing to change your current lifestyle.  Recognizing that you can eat whatever food you wish as long as it is in moderation is one of the main goals of the Jenny Craig diet.  Correct food portions coupled with regular exercise is how the Jenny Craig diet gets its clients to lose weight.  As long as you are willing to follow the instructions of the Jenny Craig diet and seek help from the many support options that the diet plan offers, you will undoubtedly lose the weight you wish to lose when on the Jenny Craig diet.

How does it work?

The Weight Watchers diet is one of the easier diet plans to follow.  Using the Weight Watchers PointsPlus program, you are easily able to see which foods you should and should not eat.  The PointsPlus program assigns a point value to every type of food that you can eat in a day.  Then, based on your body type, you are given a total number of points that you can consume in a given day.  Every time you eat something you will need to mark down the number of points it consists of, never going over your daily allotment of Weight Watcher Points.

The PointsPlus program is a great way to watch what you eat while not limiting the food options at your disposal.  By paying close attention to the types of food you are putting into your body, you will be able to successfully limit the amount of calories you eat in a given day, and ultimately how much weight you lose.

What kind of food can I eat?

The beauty of the Weight Watchers diet is being able to eat whatever you want whenever you want.  Unlike other diet plans that restrict your meals to raw vegetables and whole grains, the Weight Watchers diet allows you to continue to eat your favorite foods, as long as you do so in moderation.  Following your personal point allotment closely, will allow you to continue to eat your favorite foods while still losing weight at the same time.

Join a support group to help you lose weight

An added benefit of the Weight Watchers diet is the support group that comes with the diet plan.  The Weight Watchers diet offers both online and offline support groups to help you reach your weight loss goals.  The support groups are run by trained leaders who have lost weight with the Weight Watchers diet.  These leaders are able to offer their ideas and tips for weight loss, allowing you to get the most out of the diet plan.  Also, sharing success stories and ideas with other Weight Watchers members in your area can serve as a great motivational tool to help encourage you to stick with the diet.

The support groups are held in convenient locations with flexible hours, making it easily accessible to anyone looking to lose weight.  Also, each time you attend a support group meeting you will take part in a confidential weigh-in, allowing you to track your weight loss progress.  The Weight Watchers diet is more than just a diet plan, which is why so many of its members have been successful in losing their unwanted weight.

Why should I go on the Paleo diet?

If you are looking to lose weight and get in shape, you will need to change the way that you eat.  Making changes to your daily diet is the easiest way to start to lose weight.  The Paleo diet offers an excellent combination of low-fat foods that will help you cut back on your caloric intake while also offering enough variety that you will not get bored with the diet quickly.

What exactly should I eat when on the Paleo diet?

The main components of the Paleo diet are fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains.  Substituting fresh fruit for your traditional mid-afternoon or evening snacks will get you started on the right track when trying to follow the Paleo diet.  Broccoli, bell peppers, tomatoes and other fresh vegetables should accompany the majority of your meals as well.  You will be surprised how filling a plate of vegetables served over steamed rice can be.

In addition to fruits, vegetables and grains, the Paleo diet does allow for lean meats such as top sirloin steak, flank steak, lean pork, chicken breast and turkey breast, allowing you considerable variety when planning meals to follow the Paleo diet.  Also, you may substitute fish for any of the lean meats mentioned to create a balanced meal.

Foods to avoid

When participating in the Paleo diet, you should try and avoid as many dairy products as possible.  This includes the obvious choices of ice cream and frozen yogurt as well as cheese, butter and low-fat milk.  In addition to dairy products, cereal grains (oats, barley and corn), legumes (peas, beans, lentils), and salt containing foods (bacon, processed meats, ham) should be avoided when following this diet.  While you may think it is impossible to cut these foods out of your diet, you may be surprised how easy it is to stick to the Paleo diet once you get started.  As soon as you get in the habit of creating meals that follow the Paleo diet, you will quickly fall in to a rhythm and find yourself eating healthy foods on a consistent basis.

By simply changing your eating habits, some people are able to lower their cholesterol by as much as 10% to 20%.  Because changing your diet can have such an effect on your cholesterol levels, this is usually the first step you will need to take before introducing medicine to lower your cholesterol.

What is the TLC diet?

The TLC diet is recommended by the National Cholesterol Education Program of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.  The main goal of the diet is to lower your cholesterol levels by reducing your saturated fat intake.  A high level of saturated fats elevates your cholesterol, which is why you need to reduce your level of saturated fats that you eat if you hope to lower your cholesterol levels.

What can I eat when on the TLC diet?

If you know that your cholesterol level is much higher than it should be, you will need to make drastic changes to your daily diet.  The first change you will want to make is replacing most of the animal fat in your diet with unsaturated fat.  The TLC diet requires that less than 7% of your daily caloric intake comes from saturated fat.  Also, you may not eat no more than 200 milligrams of dietary cholesterol a day to help maintain your desired weight and avoid gaining any additional weight.

Here are some recommended foods that you can eat while on the TLC diet.  As you can see, there is a wide variety of options from which to choose, allowing you to be creative when planning your meals when on the TLC diet.

• Lean meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, and dry peas
• Eggs
• Low-fat milk
• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Pasta and Rice

By avoiding food that is loaded with saturated fat, you will start to see your cholesterol levels decrease without doing anything else.  Once you add a regular exercise routine to your diet, you will really start to see the health benefits associated with the TLC diet.

How to be successful with the TLC diet

As is the case with any diet plan, you must stick to the requirements of the diet.  Since the TLC diet requires you to reduce your saturated fat intake, you need to make every possible effort to follow this rule.  Planning your meals in advance will help you prepare a well balanced meal every day and avoid being tempted by quick, easy meals that are often loaded with saturated fats.  Preparing meals a day or two in advance will still allow you to quickly eat your dinner without having to spend too much time in the kitchen.

The Volumetrics diet is based on the principal that people love to eat.  And given the choice between eating more or less, people will choose to eat more almost every time.  Rather than limit the amount of food that you can eat, the Volumetrics diet enables dieters to eat as much as they want of certain foods while still losing weight.  The diet’s creator, Barbara Rolls, figures that people who are on a diet that limits the choices and amount of food they can eat will just become unhappy and unsatisfied and revert back to their old, unhealthy ways.  By allowing people to eat a large amount of food while still losing weight, Rolls feels that dieters will become less discouraged with their diet and stick with what is working for them.

What can I eat while on the Volumetrics diet?

While the Volumetrics diet does not limit the type of food people can eat, it does encourage dieters to evaluate food based on its energy density.  In simple terms, energy density is the number of calories in a specific amount of food.  Some foods are very energy dense, and therefore have a high amount of calories.  Fats are a good example of a high energy dense food, while water is a perfect example of a low energy density food.  The basis behind the Volumetrics diet is that if you focus on eating low energy density foods you can eat more and get fewer calories while doing so.  Below are some more examples of low and high energy density foods:

Low energy density foods:

• Non-starchy vegetables
• Nonfat milk
• Soup broths

High energy density foods:

• Crackers
• Chips
• Cookies
• Chocolate
• Nuts
• Butter
• Oils

The Volumetrics diet encourages you to eat foods that have high water content such as fruit.  These types of foods will help fill you up without eating a high number of calories.

How does it work?

The Volumetrics diet is one of the easier diet plans to follow.  With its modest goals, the Volumetrics diet is not for those people looking to lose 10 pounds in a week.  Rather this diet plan is for people looking to lose 1 to 2 pounds of fat per week while developing a long term healthy lifestyle.

To help you be successful with the Volumetrics diet, Rolls suggests eating foods with low energy density.  Rather than counting calories, which can be difficult for most people, focusing solely on eating foods that are low in calories will help jump start your weight loss goals.  Rolls also suggests keeping records so that you know where to make changes in your daily routine.  Tracking the foods that you eat as well as the physical exercise that you get will help you see which parts of your daily routine need to be altered so that you can actually lose weight.  Keeping records of your diet and exercise habits from the start is the only way to truly know what is and is not working with your diet.

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and is a lifelong approach to healthy eating that’s designed to treat or help prevent high blood pressure.  Most people are concerned with losing weight when they go on a diet, but lowering your blood pressure offers many health benefits as well.

How does the DASH diet work?

The DASH diet focuses on getting you to reduce the amount of sodium in your diet while also introducing more foods rich in nutrients such as potassium, calcium, and magnesium.

By eating foods that contain these healthy nutrients, you have the possibility of reducing your blood pressure by a few points in as little as two weeks.  Over time, it is not uncommon to see your blood pressure drop by eight to fourteen points.  This can have a serious impact on your overall health and reduce your chances of suffering from heart disease.

While the DASH diet is centered around lowering your blood pressure, there are other health benefits associated with the diet because of the healthy food that you will eat.  The DASH diet can also help your body ward off other negative health effects such as osteoporosis, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.  You may also see a reduction in weight simply because you are following a healthier daily diet.

What can I eat while on the DASH diet?

The DASH diet is predicated on reducing the amount of sodium you ingest daily.  The Standard DASH diet limits you to 2,300 milligrams of sodium in a day, while the Lower Sodium DASH diet will restrict you to just 1,500 milligrams per day.  Making a conscious effort to reduce your daily sodium intake will greatly increase your odds of lowering your blood pressure.

The main types of foods recommended to eat while on the DASH diet include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.

You can also eat some fish, poultry, and legumes as well as small amounts of red meat, sweets and fats.

It is recommended that you eat 6 to 8 servings of grains (bread, cereal, rice and pasta) per day along with 4 to 5 servings of vegetables.

Add in 4 to 5 servings of fruit and 2 to 3 servings per day of dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and cheese and you will be well on your way to creating a balanced meal plan that follows the DASH diet.

This unique home fitness program does not require any weights or expensive equipment, but rather uses short interval exercises to work out every part of your body.

One of the best reasons to participate in the Insanity Workout Program is that you can do these exercises in the comforts of your own home.  No longer do you need to go to the gym and worry about other people judging you while you work out.  Simply pop in the DVDs that accompany this workout program and you will be starting your trek to a better you in no time.

What does the Insanity Workout Program Accomplish?

The Insanity Workout Program is a great way to get you off the couch and exercising – taking the proper steps to get into shape.  Many people struggle with working out because they cannot find the time to go the gym on a regular basis.  The Insanity Workout Program makes it extremely easy to exercise daily as all you need is some extra space in your living room and a DVD player.

The Insanity Workout Program uses a combination of interval exercises that focus on strength, resistance, power, and core training moves to help get you in shape.

As you move through the ten DVDs that come with the program, you will start to notice changes in your body because of the concise, specific exercises you are doing to target your trouble areas.

Is the Insanity Workout Program Difficult?

The Insanity Workout Program is as difficult as you want to make it.

While some of the exercises may seem advanced to some, the beauty of the program is that since you are doing it in the comfort of your own home, you can go at your own pace.  If you have not exercised in a long time, you may need to go through the workout program once to help get into a little better shape.  Once you go through the program one time, you will undoubtedly be able to perform all of the exercises contained on the DVDs and get more out of the workouts the second time through.  Also, since this workout program does not require any weights, everyone should be able to perform all of the exercises even if you need to cheat a little bit.

Is the Insanity Workout Program Right for Me?

If you have trouble staying motivated with your workout programs, the Insanity Workout Program is right for you.

In addition to the DVD workout videos, this program comes equipped with a diet plan and calendar to help you keep track of your progress.  When you are able to see the progress that you are making, you will be more likely to continue with your exercise routines and not become discouraged.