Diet Plan Recap





Quite a few diets have been reviewed on this blog.  In a somewhat futile attempt to bring order out of chaos, here is a recap of the diets that we have discussed so far:


DietQuick Description

The Sensa Diet
We have all experienced how our sense of smell affects how things taste.  The Sensa diet takes this one step further, using the sense of smell to affect how quickly we feel full.  Adding a new word to our vocabulary, "tastant," Alan Hirsch has formulated a shake-on additive for our food that he claims can lead to rapid weight loss.  And he's willing to sell you these tastants in convenient shaker dispensers.

The Cabbage Soup Diet


The cabbage soup diet is not complicated.  There are no real choices or decisions to make regarding your daily meal plan.  The inventors don't recommend that you follow this diet for more than a week at a time, so the end is always just around the corner. 

The Blood Type Diet
What is your blood type? According to Peter D'Adamo, this is the central question to be answered to achieve the proper choice of diet and exercise.  A naturopath, or alternative medicine practitioner, Peter D'Adamo has designed four complete and distinct lifestyles for proper wellness; all based on your blood type: A, B, AB or O.  In his book, Eat Right 4 Your Type, Mr. D'Adamo explains that evolution is responsible for producing four specific and distinct eating and workout requirements.

A Plant Based Diet
Eating a plant based diet may be the best way to control cholesterol and avoid health issues such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.  A new study, published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, showed the positive impact of avoiding meat and loving those veggies.

The Kim Kardashian Diet
Living every moment of your life in front of a TV camera can lead to insecurities.  It is no wonder that Kim Kardashian has had some personal issues with her appearance.  Viewers of her reality TV series watched her gain weight that miraculously disappeared before her recent press tour and wedding.  How does she do it?  Here are a few of her tips.

The Esselstyn Diet
Heart attacks can scare anyone into making drastic life changes.  Former President Bill Clinton had just such a life-changing event in 2004.  Following a heart attack, quadruple bypass surgery and the implantation of two stents, he changed his diet in the most profound way.  The president who became famous for his fondness for fast food burgers became a follower of the Esselstyn Diet.  That meant no meat, no fish, no dairy, and no oils of any kind.  Can this make anyone "heart attack proof" as the doctor claims?

The Raw Food Diet
Ever since the discovery of fire, we have cooked much of what we eat. None the less, there is a growing movement that advocates eating uncooked food exclusively. This is not intended as a weight loss program, although that typically happens as a side-effect, but rather as a path to better health.  Here is a quick overview.

The Cookie Diet
Losing weight and eating cookies do not appear in the same sentence very often.  That could be part of the appeal of the Cookie Diet.  Actually, there are several cookie diets (the Siegal Cookie Diet, the Hollywood Cookie Diet, and the Cookie-a-Day Diet), and they all depend on (wait for it) EATING COOKIES! So how does a person lose weight while eating cookies, you might ask?  Well, here is the scoop!

The Kind Diet
It seems that every celebrity eventually writes a diet book.  Alicia Silverstone is no exception.  Her book, The Kind Diet, explains her approach to healthy living and weight control.  Judging by the success of her book (it is a New York Times best seller), Alicia may be on to something!

The Rice Diet
The Rice Diet is another "blast from the past" diet, since it is based on a 1939 diet program.  Back then, a residential weight loss boot camp in beautiful Durham, N.C. was a resource for people suffering from heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, obesity and diabetes.  The book Rice Diet Solution, by Kitty and Robert Rosati, captures the key themes used back in Durham and packages up a strict dietary regimen that promises that you will shed 20-30 pounds in the first month and continue to lose 2-4 pounds a week thereafter.

The Vinegar Diet
Dr. DeForest Jarvis first proposed the vinegar diet in his book of folk medicine, "Folk Medicine: A Vermont Doctor's Guide to Good Health" back in 1958.  The book was a huge success and has been making a come-back.  The diet has no meal plans.  You are invited to eat anything you want.  There is just one rule: drink three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before eating.

The Grapefruit Diet
The grapefruit diet, or Hollywood diet as it is sometimes called, is a crash diet that promises substantial weight loss in less than two weeks.  In addition to grapefruit, you are encouraged to drink black coffee and water frequently throughout your day.  You diet consists of grapefruit (surprise!) and mostly protein, and not much of it.  You are allowed eggs and milk, meat and fish, vegetables and vegetable juices and, of course, grapefruit.  Sliced grapefruit and/or grapefruit juice grace every meal.  You are not permitted potatoes, celery or white onions.  In total, you are permitted about 800 calories per day.

The Four Hour Diet
Would you like to lose 20 pounds in 30 days?  Timothy Ferriss has published a book that promises exactly that.  In his "The 4-Hour Body" book, he details the small changes to your lifestyle that can let you lose weight, build muscle and improve your immune system.

The Reboot Diet
Dr. Oz calls this the Reboot Diet after the "three finger salute" that reboots personal computers.  As we know, rebooting a computer unlocks jammed programs and gives your PC a fresh start.  In the same way, the reboot diet unlocks our metabolism and gives us a fresh start on healthy living.  Instead of the 2 minutes that your PC takes to reboot, the reboot diet takes a week. 

The Alkaline Diet
If you have ever suffered through a chemistry class, you probably met pH, a measure of acidity.  The Alkaline diet attempts to achieve an optimum level of acidity in your body for better health.   An imbalance between acidic and alkaline foods is blamed for symptoms such as colds and flu, headache, anxiety and lack of energy.  This diet recommends fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes in an effort to rebalance our blood chemistry and enjoy a better quality of life and possibly weight loss.

The 17 Day Diet
The 17 Day Diet is called a "carbohydrate cycling diet."  This means that you vary your carb intake as you pass through four 17-day diet cycles.  Created by Dr. Mike Moreno, a California physician, the diet is based on metabolic confusion.  This means changing the rules every time your metabolism figures out your eating pattern.  Dr. Moreno states that weight loss of 10-12 pounds is expected over the 68 days of this diet.

The Paleo Diet
This popular diet suggests that we return to the eating habits of our distant ancestors.  If a caveman could hunt it or gather it, we can eat it.  If a caveman never ate it, neither should we.  By returning to our hunter-gatherer beginnings, the theory says, we can better match the capabilities and preferences of our metabolism and achieve optimal health.  After all, who ever heard of an obese caveman?

The Cinch Diet
Fresh from co-writing the Flat Belly Diet, Cynthia Sass has released another diet program, called the Cinch diet.  This is a one month path to a better metabolism, fewer cravings and a healthier outlook on food.  The diet emphasizes smaller portions of highly nutritious food and in a move that is sure to build a following, includes a daily snack of dark chocolate!

The 1,200 Calorie Diet
Losing weight is easy.  Just eat fewer calories than your body burns.  Every day.  For months.  OK, so that's not really so easy, is it?  There are many diets that promise radical results but demand radical lifestyle changes.  Most of them do more harm than good.  The 1,200 calorie diet is a different approach to weight loss.  There are no magic potions to drink and no fasting or cleansing.  You manage your eating, but to a level that is comfortable and sustainable.  Guess what?  You can actually lose weight and keep it off!

The Gall Bladder Diet
People rarely think about their gall bladder.  In fact, most people don't know where their gall bladder is located or what it does.  But remember the phrase "You don't appreciate what you have until it's gone"?  Losing your gall bladder can have serious effects on your health so a little love for the gall bladder goes a long way.

The Candida Diet
Not your typical "lose 30 pounds in 30 days" kind of diet, the Candida diet addresses a very specific issue: yeast infections.  Yeast, the tiny organism that makes possible everything from bread to wine, can be a plague to some people.  The Candida diet (named after a common strain of yeast) is one way to find relief.

The TLC Diet
Everyone could use a little Tender Loving Care.   People with high cholesterol need some TLC, too.  In those situations, TLC stands for Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes, and refers to an eating plan that claims to lower cholesterol by 10% to 20% without medication.  It turns out that the TLC diet can help you lose weight, too.

The Ornish Diet
Dr. Ornish set out to create a meal plan to reverse heart disease.  This was a controversial goal, in that accepted medical wisdom held that surgery was the only way to successfully treat heart disease.  His diet of low fat, high fiber foods actually did help his heart patients.  To their happy surprise, they also lost weight, an average of 25 pounds the first year.

The DASH Diet
Out of the hundreds (thousands?) of diets that compete for our attention, one has been selected by an august board of experts as the very best.  Ironically, it was not formulated as a weight loss plan.  Instead, it was created by the National Institutes of Health as a way to control high blood pressure.  But guess what?  It is great for losing weight!

The Flat Belly Diet
Could it be?  A diet that targets that spare tire around my middle?  The Flat Belly Diet promises that very thing, possibly the Holy Grail of dieting.  The new book Flat Belly Diet! describes a diet that attacks the midriff while it promotes healthy eating habits.  The book promises that you will lose as much as fifteen pounds in a month, much of it from your midsection.

The Carb Lover's Diet
After years of treating carbohydrates like toxic waste, a new diet comes along that actually promotes eating carbs as a way to lose weight. The editors of Health Magazine have published a book that seems to contradict years of diet doctrine: eating carbohydrates can lead to weight loss. Could this be the diet of your dreams?

The Master Cleanse Diet
The Master Cleanse diet, sometimes called the lemonade diet, is an aggressive, immediate results weight loss regimen. Purported to eliminate toxins in the bowels, the Master Cleanse diet limits your food intake to multiple glasses of a lemonade mixture and twice-daily laxatives.  Practitioners love it, nutritionists hate it. Is the Master Cleanse diet right for you?

The Dukan Diet
French nutritionist and doctor Pierre Dukan released a book on weight loss in 2000. Since then, his diet has swept France, and now the world. Similar in many ways to the Atkins diet, the Dukan diet reached new levels of popularity when it was rumored that Catherine Middleton used the Dukan diet before her Royal Wedding.

The Zone Diet
The diet called “The Zone” has been around for many years.  Dr. Barry Sears (PhD, not MD) first wrote about his revolutionary diet plan in 1995. His break-through idea was that the balance – not the quantity – of food groups is critical to weight loss.  Rather than count calories, Dr. Sears suggested that dieters control the ratio of fats to proteins to carbohydrates to put their bodies into a balanced “zone” for optimum health.

The Mayo Clinic Diet
The Mayo Clinic Plan is a diet that focuses on fruits, vegetables, proteins and dairy. Based on the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, menu planning is easy because of the breadth of foods available. Fruits and vegetables are the foundation. Complex carbohydrates and proteins are also well represented. The only area where you may feel some constraint is with fats and sweets. The diet emphasizes heart-friendly fats, from nuts, avocados, and the like. The diet even has a daily provision for sweets, with 75 calories every day set aside for those splurges that keep life worth living.

The South Beach Diet
The South Beach Diet is popular for several reasons. It is practical, because you don’t need special foods or medications or surgery. It is easy to adopt the South Beach Diet without making a public announcement, since the “allowed” foods are commonly eaten by non-dieters so you won’t stand out. Plus, there is a lot of variety to the meal options so that you don’t get bored eating nothing but one food for weeks at a time. This flexibility means that you are managing the diet instead of the diet managing you.

The Low Carb Diet
A low carb diet focuses on shifting the balance of food from carbohydrates to protein. Carbs are digested into sugar which becomes blood glucose, which bonds with insulin and powers our bodies. Reducing our intake of carbs causes our body to burn fat to make up the energy deficit. Ta-da! We can lose the fat without starvation. 

The HCG Diet
The HCG diet is quite the rage right now. HCG stands for “Human chorionic gonadotrophin” which is appropriately medical-sounding and very scientific on its face. It seems that every day another article appears on the HCG diet.  For anyone who has been off planet for a bit, the HCG diet consists of precious drops of liquid that purport to melt away fat. Some of the more legitimate purveyors include meal plans, low-calorie recipes and exercise suggestions. But every single web site selling the diet leads with a huge picture of the blessed drops. Rather than trading the family cow for some magic beans, we are prodded to trade between $100 and $200 for a month or two of magic drops.



1 comment:

  1. I’ve discovered many raw foods sit well with me. But soy, a staple of a vegetarian diet, bloats me up and makes me feel awful. Even though I love the taste and the idea of soy being a meat-replacement for protein, my body hates how it reacts inside of me. If I have a nibble here and there when I’m feeling balanced and strong in my immunity, I can sometimes tolerate it. But generally, soy makes me feel unwell.

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