Losing weight seems to be a national obsession.  There are diet supplements, weight loss pills, diet drinks, herbal concoctions, and aromatherapy blends.  There are diet gurus waiting to teach us their secrets; internet weight-loss videos, and advice-filled websites.  We should all be as skinny as Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oil!  Guess what?  We’re not.  Obesity is fast becoming the number one health issue of our day.  There is a huge market for any diet which seems even remotely doable and which promises to help us shed those unwanted pounds; whether the diets themselves are healthy and effective is perhaps debatable.  Here are a few of today’s favorites:

1. Special Ingredient Diets: The Green Tea Diet, for example, provides that tea’s antioxidants, which act to destroy free radicals and fight cell damage. It also has ingredients which suppress the appetite, block fat absorption, and increase the metabolism; and is a powerful diuretic.
2. Restricted Carbohydrate Diets:  Chief among these is the Atkins diet, which starts out with severely restricted carbohydrates, adding them back a bit at a time.  Since carbohydrates provide the body with most of its energy, care must be taken to maintain a good balance.
3. Glycemic Index Diets:  The South Beach diet is the big one here.  As with the Atkins diet, this one limits carbs; it uses the glycemic index to separate ‘good’ carbohydrates from ‘bad’ ones and measures the rate at which food increases blood sugar.
4. Restricted Foods Diets:  Diets in this category include the Ice Cream Diet, the Raw Veggies Diet, and the Apple Cider Diet and many others, each with its own claim to fame.
5. Cleansing Diets:  One current cleansing diet is the Lemonade diet, which started out as a healthy, short-term detox diet and grew into a ten-day marathon not for the faint-hearted.
6. Specified Time Diets:   Examples include the 3-hour, 1-day, 3-day, and 7-day diets.  The 7-day diet is actually a twofer: it lasts a specific time and totally restricts what you can eat on each day.  The 1-day diet is predicated on the assumption that you won’t last more than one day on any diet, so why not be successful right from the start?
7. Health Issues Diets:  These include the Arthritis diet, the Acne diet, the ADHD diet, the Cholesterol Lowering diet, and others, each designed to help you deal with health issues by regulating the foods and amounts of food that you eat.
8. Children’s Diets:  It is a sad commentary on our times that such diets have even come into existence.  The need for them is universal and growing, and should include both counseling and an exercise component.
9. Name-Brand Diets:  Dr. Bernstein Diet / Dr. Feingold Diet / Dr. Kushner’s Personality Diet / Mayo Clinic Diet – these and many others gain their followers through their association with a known person or place that inspires confidence – in itself a main ingredient in successful dieting.
10. Health and Wellness Diets:  The Food Pyramid Diet, Eating For Life diet, the Dash Diet, each of which is well researched and backed by reputable associations such as the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, etc.  They tend to be less flashy than some of the others, and more realistic in the expectations they advertise.

There you have it – an attempt to identify and categorize most of the diets making the rounds today.  If you go online, or if you visit a bookstore, you will likely find more.  The point is, diets are a tool.  The real results come from a combination of commitment and effort over time; if any particular diet works for you, great!  If not, develop your own plan – there’s plenty of advice available, for sure – and then develop the confidence to stick to it.  Good Luck!

Time to do away with all those ‘This is the one!’ diets: throw them away, out of your house and out of your mind and prepare to go about losing weight in a way that you can really enjoy.  Sound impossible?  Not at all: the enjoyment comes as you watch the slow but steady loss of pounds you thought were yours for life.  You’re going to look and feel better, so get ready to take charge:  here are four ways to eat healthy; one or more of them can be your roadmap to permanently losing those pounds.

The USDA Food Pyramid  In this system, foods are placed in a pyramid according to their importance in your daily food plan.  The largest group, grains, forms the foundation of your day’s food plan, providing 6-11 servings per day .  Fruits and vegetables provide 5-9 servings per day.  The dairy group supplies 2-3  daily servings.  At the top we find the fats/oils/sweets group, to be used sparingly.  You will need a food values guidebook to give you relative nutrition information for each food so that you can make wise choices; with this information and perhaps the help of a dietician, you can build a successful eating plan.

The Plate System   With this approach, you mentally divide your plate in half, then divide one of the half spaces in half again, giving you three spaces, ½, ¼, and another ¼ .  Fill the ½ size portion with a variety of vegetables – tomatoes, green beans, salad greens, squash, etc.  Fill one of the ¼ size portions of the plate with a serving of meat or other protein such as eggs or cheese; and fill the remaining portion with grain products such as bread, rice, or pasta.  Fruits can take the place of desserts if you like, or can be included with the vegetables for variety.  Dairy can be a glass of milk, butter and sour cream for your potato, or a serving of cottage cheese.  In both of these eating plans, it is up to you to control portion size: you can eat any healthy food you want, but if you want to lose weight you will need to eat less.

The Exchange Lists System  This system is designed to more closely control the amounts of fat, protein, and carbohydrates you are allowed.  The lists provide several food choices that you can “exchange” for other foods in that same category, giving you more choices while still keeping your food plan on target.  The lists themselves are divided into these categories: Starches, (beans/peas; Grains ( bread/rice/pasta; Fruits and Vegetables; Dairy; Meat and other Poteins; and Fats.  The amounts of foods in each category are adjusted to fit the given carb, calorie, and fat allowances for that category.  Your dietician can provide you with an exchange list chart and can help you plan how much of each food group you need in order to both stay healthy and lose weight.

The Carbohydrate Counting System   This is the most tightly controlled of the four systems, and requires that you chart nutrition values for everything you eat.  It also is the most accurate, showing you exactly how many calories, fat grams, carbs, and protein grams you are eating.  You can easily obtain nutritient information for most foods, either from its packaging or from one of the many of the ‘calorie counter’-type  reference books available.  You and your dietician can set goals, deciding how many calories and carbs are good for you.

Your job now is to choose a diet plan, add in regular exercise, and start your journey to a new, healthier you.  You have the tools.  Once you have the motivation, there is not much to stop you, so get started, and good luck!