CNN.com posted an interesting article, originally featured in Health magazine, about the top 10 best diets. The new year is here and if you’re like the estimated 80 million Americans who go on a diet every year, you might be interested to see the list that was compiled. According to the article, Health magazine collected some experts in the field of nutrition and examined 60 well-known diets and narrowed them down to the top 10.
1. The Structure House Weight Loss Plan
This is structured after Gerard J. Musante’s (the author of the diet) work at the actual Structure House, a Durham, North Carolina-based residential treatment center for obese adults. This book/diet offers a holistic approach to weight loss with motivational components. This diet helps followers understand the ‘why’ behind overeating and helps them to put their lives in balance. This book wants you to find other things than food, i.e. time with friends, outdoor activities, etc., and includes many recipes!
This diet really focuses on walking to help motivate you to lose weight and slim down your waist, and it even comes with a pedometer. It incorporates easy things for losing weight from intentionally going for a walk or making small changes in your life like parking farther away from the store and in turn burning more calories. The plan puts emphasis on calories burned rather then cutting calories, while nutritionally this diet asks you to “Cut food intake to 75 percent of what you currently eat.”
The plan is flexible, provides generous support and teaches you how to live life during and after this not-diet. Learn more about this 45-year old weight loss plan, and why its revolutionary Points system works so well.
Released in 2024 by author Jean Harvey-Berino, PhD, RD, to help dieters focus on behavioral changes – including finding and facing eating triggers, eating and shopping mindfully, etc. This behavior modification is combined with a 28-day mix-and-match menus to maximize lower calorie intake while maintaining weight-loss-rate criteria.
5. The Volumetrics Eating Plan
This diet is based on the idea that when we eat we like to feel full. This diet promises weigth loss based of focusing on the energy density of foods. Author, Nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, uses her Volumetrics plan to explain how low-density foods like fruits and vegetables, as well as soups and stews, fill you up without overloading you with calories. The diet also focuses on exercise a second, but key component in the Volumetrics plan encouraging the dieters to log a guide for their 30 to 60 minutes of daily activity claiming that this will help provide motivation.
Bob Greene is forever linked with superstar/dieter Oprah Winfrey, and that’s exactly where this diet came from. It’s a balanced and moderate approach to changing your lifestyle for the better.
7. The Solution
This program helps people figure out why they’re overeating. Author/Dietitian Laurel Mellin’s developed this method which is based on The Shapedown Program, a successful weight-management plan she created for overweight children and adolescents in the late 1970s. The focus of obesity is not so much in terms of diet and exercise, but as another expression of the interaction of mind, body, and lifestyle.
From the famous Dr. Oz on Oprah, this diet teaches and motivates you about weight (and waist) loss with a sense of good humor and fun, as well as trusted expertise about health. This book includes recipes, easy-to-understand nutrition, teaches you how the body works, and helps the reader calculate how many calories they need each day.
Based on Mediterranean eating: consuming plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, fish, and nuts while incorporating different phases of weight loss.
10. The Spectrum
Dr. Dean Ornish, MD, offers a program that moves you along four separate paths to health – nutrition, exercise, stress management, and personal relationships. This plan provides a holistic approach (including how to reduce stress and includes a meditation DVD). This whole-body approach, includes a vegetarian lifestyle, stress management, and exercise, is on target in terms of health, disease prevention, and reaching a healthy weight.
I read this CNN article with great interest and it led me to try a diet I’d never even heard of: The Structure House Weight Loss Plan. I’ve only been on it a day and a half–so far, so good. I think it’s interesting that unlike many diets out there now, this plan allows for three meals per day and no snacks. At first I was uneasy about that, but now I think it might be a good idea. The whole of idea of “healthy snacking” that other diets push never worked for me. My healthy snacks inevitably led to unhealthy ones. I’ll be blogging about how I do on this diet at my blog, My Makeover Year