Archive for the 'DIET PLANS' Category

Despite the considerable amount of scientific research that shows the food cooked at home is generally low in fat and  calories than meals found in restaurants and fast food outlets, there is still a preference for pre-cooked food in the US. [low fat diet]

There are numerous companies that offer “diet” food that fits this category – cooked, packaged and frozen food that is delivered to your door.

All you need to do is heat and eat your meal, designed to help you lose weight without all the hassles involved in shopping, selecting the right foods to eat and worrying about portion sizes.

The Zone Diet at Home plan is one such as these. It provides meals based on the Zone Diet Plan that holds the premise that certain people have a genetic predisposition to weight gain.

The plan states “You can’t change your genes, but in the Zone you can change the expression of your genes.” The Zone Wellness Pyramid is the model used to show the ratio between macronutrients, exercise and dietary supplements.

“The Zone”, as described in the best-selling book by the author of the program, Barry Sears, is “a place where we find ourselves feeling alert, refreshed, and full of energy.”

The Medifast diet plan consists of three stages.

You start with the very low calorie weight loss phase; when you have reached your ideal weight you move into the Transition phase and re-introduce normal foods into your diet; then you go to the Maintenance phase and Exercise phase.

The Medifast diet is fairly unique in that it is recommended by 15,000 physicians across the US who supervises their own patients on the program.

It has been researched and proven in studies conducted by major teaching hospitals in the US.

The products are available through four methods – Medifast Weight Loss Centres, internet and national call centres, the network of physicians and direct-sales distributors, called health coaches.

Five of the six meals allowed in a day feature Medifast products. These are basically meal replacements, based on whey protein, and there are more than 60 choices like shakes, puddings, bars, oatmeal, soups and eggs.

The sixth meal is one you prepare yourself – Medifast call it Lean and Green, referring to the controlled portion of lean meat or fish accompanied by salad or vegetables.

Michael Phelps may be well known for breaking Olympic records and earning the most medals in history, but he’s even better known for his diet.

Well, maybe well known among diet fanatics. Phelps’ diet secret is that he’s on the dream fad diet: the pizza diet.

Pizza nutrition

A slice of a generic cheese pizza has 483 calories, 17 grams of fat, 28 mg of cholesterol, 812 mg of sodium, 57 grams of carbohydrates and 25 grams of protein. For the pizza diet, Phelps recommends that the dieter eat 13 slices of pizza.

If the dieter gets sick of pizza, the diet can be supplemented with a couple of fried egg sandwiches and other similar foods. That is only 6000 calories a day.

Breakfast

To begin the pizza diet, start off with three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, mayonnaise, an omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast with powdered sugar, and three chocolate-chip pancakes. Of course, this is a lot of food, so Phelps recommends that you eat quickly.

Lunch

Lunch time is where the smoothies come in. Since you will be consuming a lot of food, you will need calories that leave the stomach quickly in order to fight the feelings of bloatedness.

Why go to Okinawa in order to diet? Okinawa has some of the world’s oldest living residents.

The indigenous people of Okinawa eat 20% fewer calories than others in Japan and they have 300% of the vegetables.

In fact, in Okinawa, meat is not even considered a food but a condiment. Okinawa food is very light, nutritious and low calorie.

Okinawa right in your dining room

You do not have to travel to Japan in order to try the Okinawa diet. All you have to do is eat many of the foods that those in Okinawa eat.

Those in Okinawa place the same importance on grains as the American food pyramid, but they ask for an equal number of vegetables in one diet.

Fruit intake remains relatively the same as the recommended American diet. For fish, the Okinawa diet recommends at least one serving.

But the Okinawa diet recommends that you avoid other forms of meat altogether. If necessary, only one serving of meat should be incorporated. Like usual, sweets should be kept to a minimum.

Okinawa concepts

A lot of the principles in the Okinawa diet are similar to other diets. You must consume fewer calories than you take in. But different foods have different calorie density.

Raw foodists are convinced that raw food diets are absolutely necessary in order to maintain a healthy weight.

While everyone’s body is different and while people actually need a variety of foods in order to maximize health, raw vegetarian diets are great for weight loss and the body.

These foods are usually low in the types of fats that stick to the ribs while being high in nutrients that will help keep you energized to finish your daily workout. But grilled hamburgers and hot dogs can be so delicious.

And switching to a vegetarian diet can be so exhausting for some reason. Our bodies just can’t seem to adapt.

Also, how do we eat vegetarian diets when the whole rest of the world seems to want us to eat meat? Where do we get our protein from?

Delicious meats

Sometimes, delicious meats are extremely difficult to give up. We often experience extreme food cravings that we know shouldn’t be on our menus. In order to give up these delicious meats, we must be aware of why we want to eat meat in the first place.

Are you planning to start up with the cabbage soup diet, but not very sure of its results and benefits? Then let me help you.

Cabbage soup diet is not a new trend that weight watchers follow.

This diet has been working for weight losers since a very long time; recently it has just been modified to get the best out of this diet.

It is said to have originated from the sacred heart hospital, though nobody is quite sure of its origin.

It was used for heart patients in hospitals before their surgeries where they had to lose weight quickly to reduce complications during surgery.

Cabbage soup diet is recommended to all those who want to shed those extra pounds quickly. Some people who have tried the cabbage soup diet claimed that they have lost up to 10 pounds of weight within a week.

But before starting this diet care has to be taken that it should not be continued for more than seven days as it can have nutritional side effects and it should not be done more than once in a month.

In a recent study of over 2,500 young adults, the resulting data seems to suggest that those with a vegetarian diet are more prone to odd behavior and even eating disorders.

The pupils of schools in Minnesota were aged between fifteen to twenty three years old, were studied by the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota.

A team lead by Romona Robinson-O’Brien looked at their weight levels, drug and alcohol usage and their diet.

Mainly girls were practicing vegetarianism and this was not necessarily chosen for its healthiness. Often it was used as an alternative for weight loss.

In fact almost a quarter of this group had tried and followed bad weight loss practices such as binge eating, laxatives, diet pills and forced vomiting.

It would be worth noting, especially parents of female adolescents that a vegetarian diet taken up may have a hidden agenda and can be an indication of a longer term problem. Doctors too should make a note of this finding when seeing patients of this type.

Scientists in California have made an interesting discovery that may mean that in the future diet books and weight loss programs may be made redundant.

Good news perhaps for our future generations who will not have to spend a lifetime fighting the flab.

Our bodies contain an enzyme known as MGAT2, which essentially makes all the decisions about how the food we eat is dealt with.

It is located in the intestines and can convert our fat intake into either energy or as is the case more often it adds extra pounds to all the wrong places.

A series of experiments performed on mice at the University in San Francisco, compared those with the MGAT2 gene against others that it had been removed from.

The results were quite revealing. When both specimens were given a low fat diet no differences could be found in regard to weight or behavior.

However this was a very different story when the food given to the mice was changed to a more typical average American diet of 60 percent fat.

Surprisingly the altered test subjects, those without the MGAT2 enzyme, weighed in fifty per cent less than the normal mice. Further more they had over half the amount of fat in their bodies as well.

Including a wide variety of fresh veggies is one of the most basic steps to making your diet healthy.

Follow these simple tips to achieve it:

1. Take them as snacks: Particularly if you have a habit of snacking between meals, use this as a way to get more veggies in your regular diet. You can eat as many carrots and cucumbers as you want in between your meals, and even go so far as to spread celery with peanut butter.
2. Make vegetable omelets: Add a wide variety of vegetables to your omelet in the morning. It not only adds taste, but also provides you with a great way of including a variety of vegetables in your diet. You can add mushrooms, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes and many more.
3. Prepare creative salads: Salads are one of the best ways to add different vegetables to your diet. Eating salad before every meal not only promotes portion control but also offers a great opportunity to add lots of veggies to your diet. [Vegetarian Diet]
4. Prepare vegetable juices: Along with fresh citrus fruit juices at breakfast, you can also add fresh vegetable juices like carrot juice as a part of your breakfast menu.

The kind of diet you choose is important, for what you are aiming at is fat loss, not muscle loss, your objective should also be to decrease the level of triglycerides, this is the most effective way to avoid developing heart diseases and diabetes.

Not all diets are successful; they may leave with a constant sense of hunger, tempting you to eat between meals, while others will not help you keep the weight you lost off once and for all.

A new research paper published in the Journal of Nutrition proved that diets with slightly higher protein content are more likely to succeed than others over a long term.

Two groups were analyzed, one having double the intake of protein with respect to the first and major differences were found in the resulting weight loss.

At the end of the research the two groups had lost basically the same weight, the difference being that those following a diet higher in protein had lost more weight in terms of fat than the other group with a lower protein intake.