Posts Tagged ‘diet-programs’

Diet Plans: Is Corn Your Friend Or Foe?

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Most people naturally assume that corn is a good diets food, but you should be cautious in adding it to your diet plans.

It’s hard to imagine watching a good movie without some buttered pop corn or a great barbeque without corn on the cob, but it may be time to rethink these popular choices.

What a lot of people want to know is…

Does corn help or hurt diet plans?

Although it has been estimated that about 60% of crops are genetically modified, this is only a conservative figure and the numbers are much more likely to be higher. The practice was implemented to produce a bigger crop so farmers and national revenues from the agricultural sector were higher. Genetically modified corn could now kill insects that had become resistant to pesticides.

Sweet corn, now also called Bt-corn, has been altered to produce an insect-killing poison.

This may sound like progress–especially from the perspective of the farmer and the national income–but there is a reason to be concerned. The new foods may have long term effects on ruining our health.

Well, because the introduction of GMO (genetically modified organism) foods is still relatively new, we’re in a way being used as “guinea pigs” in a massive experiment (Yikes!). In April 2007, Arpad Pusztai, from the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, UK, announced that experiments had shown intestinal changes in rats caused by eating genetically engineered potatoes (and I don’t know about you, but I’m not happy about anybody trying to mess with my intestines).

In humans, too, intestinal problems are not uncommon. Doctors frequently treat people with irritable bowel syndrome and other digestive issues. It’s not too far fetched to consider processed foods and GMO foods play a part in these problems.

Since GMO rather than corn itself is the main problem, would diet plans with non-GMO work?

Weight Loss And Carbohydrates

The role of carbohydrates in your diet plans

First, your body reads corn as a grain, NOT a vegetable so if you are to include it into your meals, this will be the grain (carbohydrate) for your meal. So having corn and brown rice would be having 2 grains in one meal. This is not necessarily off limits and not “bad” in any way, just consider if you are someone who is sensitive to grains, you will lose weight faster by greatly reducing the number of grains you eat each day. You may want to take 2 - 3 weeks and follow the “no grain” meal plans in the Diet Solution manual and see if that helps break through any weight loss plateaus and/or helps your digestion.

What about microwave popcorn?

Even organic microwave pop corn is not healthy for you. The bag is lined with the same chemical coating that is used in non-stick cookware and the pop corn contains preservatives.

What about air popped popcorn?

This is the best choice, but it should only be eaten occasionally. Since pop corn is a grain, it is a carbohydrate, and having too many carbohydrates will not assist in weight loss.

In conclusion, then, it’s fine to include corn into your diet plans provided you take some precautions. Firstly, only get the non-GMO variety. Secondly, consider corn a grain rather than a vegetable and allocate it to the carbohydrate portion of your meals.

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Is Medifast Affordable?

Monday, November 29th, 2010

In reviewing any weight loss diet program, you will find that they do not explore pricing and that the cost of the food is only mentioned briefly. A more accurate Medifast review would focus more on the price because even if you love the program and want to try it, if you can’t show it is affordable, many people will pass it up. People who are already in a financial bind might look at the price of the diet plan and food and feel that it is more than they can afford.

Nevertheless, if you are looking for the help of a diet plan, then you already know that you are going to have to pay something. The Medifast program cost just like any diet plan. There is a price that you to pay in order to get your first month’s supply of food sent to you. The starting package is just under $300. Now, that sounds pretty expensive and might scare some people away from purchasing, even though it shouldn’t.

Let’s break that three hundred dollars down. That’s basically ten dollars a day. Within the Medifast program, you are provided with all of your meals and snacks with the exception of one lean meat and green veggie meal, which you will prepare on your own. Once you calculate in a snack, that is less than five dollars for each of the meals you are provided.

Is that really all that expensive? Once you really start to break down all of the figures, you will see that three hundred dollars really is not all that expensive at all. You probably spend more than that throughout your day on things you can’t even remember purchasing because you don’t need them, like that candy bar or pop from the gas station.

Another way to look at the price of the program is by thinking about saved future medical costs. If you drop the excess weight, you will not be at risk for so many medical problems. This will mean that you will not have to take a handful of pills, have doctors appointments every couple of weeks and you will not have to be faced with the thought of an early death. Just think of all of the money in medical costs alone you will be saving. Obviously, the Medifast program is truly a program that you can afford and should go for.

Don’t wait another minute! The sooner you get started the sooner you will begin to shed all of those unwanted pounds with delicious meals. Just click through to see what Medifast has waiting for you at a price that you can’t afford not to pay.

Is Medifast The Diet For You?

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Ho, Ho, Ho! St. Nick is not the only one who has a jolly stomach. The only difference is that you want to get rid of yours. Right? Well, read this review of Medifast to see if this diet is right for you. Whether, you want to eat right for the holidays or lose weight after you enjoy the turkey and gravy and apple pie. It would be great to look like you are 16 again for the summer. Well, I don’t know if any diet can make you look 16 year old again but they can help you lose the pounds.

Are you looking for a diet that is convenient, simple, and effective? Most of you women are probably wearing three hats - wife, mother, and working mom. There just is not enough time in the day to weigh and measure your food to make sure you are getting the right portions and the correct number of calories.

You will find out that by reading this diet review that all of the meals come prepackaged so that all of the guesswork is taken out about what you can eat and not eat. The key to this diet is to eat meals that are low in calories six times daily so that you will not get hunger pangs. Most subscribers drop two to five pounds weekly.

When you visit the Medifast website, you can access many helpful information reports on how to get prepared for your diet, a checklist for being on a diet, and many other resources to understand how the diet plan works. There are also testimonials from many happy and thin satisfied consumers.

After you begin to lose weight and a couple of weeks have gone by, it is suggested that you reintroduce fruits and certain vegetables into your diet that are good for you. The great news is that meal plans are now available for men trying to lose weight as well.

Compared to other popular diet programs, this weight loss plan serves as a leader in the weight loss industry as well as in healthy lifestyle management. Using a combination of low calorie, high protein meals coupled with exercise, people have lost weight at a remarkable rate and have managed to keep it off by changing their eating habits.

You are given healthy options on this diet so that you will avoid the diet blues because you get tired of the same old thing. You will be able to switch up this diet with various menu options, shakes, meal replacement bars, and, yes, even desserts.

Let’s compare a couple of other diets to see what a good deal you are getting. With the Jenny Craig diet, it can cost your wallet up to $400 the first month. The Nutrisystem 4 week meal plan will cost you about $352.23. However, with the Medifast 4 week meal plan, for men, women, diabetics and those who need a gluten free diet, the cost is only $299.50. This is proof that this is the only diet for you.

Stop wasting time! Kick start the new you at Medifast.com. You’ll find it quite easy to shed pounds with Medifast in a few weeks if you follow this meal replacement plan.

Diet Program Comparisons: Finding The Best Diet Plan Through Clinical Studies

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

If you’re about to begin a weight loss program, it’s wise to wonder which one works best. But you may be surprised to learn that it’s rare for popular diet programs to promote their true, average results.

Most popular diet products or programs use spokespeople, and focus on a single success story - sometimes of a celebrity - to promote the diet product’s quality. This rarely informs you of how well the diet plan works on average for its users. And those kinds of report or statistical data are hard to find.

With so much riding on a diet program’s success, it leaves you wondering why diet programs and products don’t do many studies. Unfortunately, it’s looking more like the reasons are because the results are less than impressive. Of the clinical studies we found from a variety of research journals, some diets seem to maintain only a precious few pounds of weight loss results after one or two years.

There are statistics and reports on what diets work best, but it takes some clever searching to find them. There aren’t a lot of diet studies relative to other research, but this article covers some of the clearest reports.

One of the diet programs best known for reporting its valid statistics is Weight Watchers. Because the participants in Weight Watchers weigh-in personally, getting the valid measurement data is somewhat easier than with other programs.

Four popular diet programs were examined in a study published by the British Medical Journal in May of 2006. The diets studied in this group included Weight Watchers, Atkins, SlimFast and Rosemary Conley (a well-known U.K. diet plan). The study included measurements of waist size reduction, and reported that dieters on Weight Watchers lost 2.16 inches on average, Atkins dieters lost 2.63 inches in their waists on average, SlimFast dieters lost 1.88 inches on average in their waists, and Rosemary Conley diet followers lost 1.77 inches average.

Zburn, a fat-burning product from Zonital International, was tested in a pilot study by the firm, and users lost an average of 2.5 inches in their waists in two weeks. Considering the British study of diets produced smaller results in eight weeks versus two, the pilot study proved promising. The Zburn study also measured dieters in hips, chest, neck, arms and thighs in addition to their waists.

The FDA and CDC consider “healthy” weight loss to be a loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week. Zburn produced healthy weight loss for participants, as did some of the diets in the British study, including Weight Watchers, Atkins, and SlimFast.

Additional studies on the subject of weight loss offer varying results measured in a variety of ways. Considering that muscle weighs more than fat, and exercise programs may be part of a weight loss effort, changes in body circumference measurements can be a great way of measuring results.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in February of 2006, in which various macro-nutrient types of diets were compared, such as high carb/low carb. This study did not compare brand name programs, just diet type. It turned out that reduced calorie diets were the only ones that resulted in meaningful weight loss, no matter what the macro nutrient focus. In other words, long-term, it was “low-calorie” that created success.

The website, the Daily Beast created an overall ranking of popular diets, including information from a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in June 2007. Volumemetrics was voted as #1 in effectiveness by the Daily Beast. That diet plan involves eating food with a high water volume content, which are typically foods like fruits, vegetables and soups. This plan leaves the dieter feeling more full because of the food volume.

CBS news featured a diet programs report which included information from a study published January 4, 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In this CBS report, the study confirmed what you might already suspect — that reported statistics are rare for many diet programs and products, and what statistics are available may be surprisingly unimpressive when you compare them to the highlighted spokesperson’s results. Reported results for Weight Watchers were that participants lost approximately 5% of their initial weight in six months (or about 10 pounds), and two years later, they kept off about half of that. Many other diet plans that were popular, did not offer much data that could be confirmed.

A study was also published by the American Dietetic Association in October ‘07, which focused on nutritional value of popular diets. The most nutritious in their report were Ornish, followed by Weight Watchers high carbohydrate, and then by the New Glucose Revolution diet. These were the top three. But it was not a ranking of weight loss results - only nutritional value.

Other than Weight Watchers and the Zonital Zburn study, few of the commercial diet plans offer any statistical evidence from their own studies about their success rates on average. Diet plans which use a famous spokesperson in their marketing are now required by the FTC to disclose what the “typical” results are. The spokesperson’s results are typically - quite unusual. When you evaluate a diet, you can usually find these disclosures in the fast moving, small print.

To do an internet search of diet results yourself, use a search engine and type in things like “published research studies - diets” or the diet product’s name, and combine it with “research” or “success statistics”. New studies are constantly happening, and it’s worth an updated search when you begin any diet plan.

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7 Diet Secrets Of The Stars

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Celebrities always look fabulous. Whether appearing in television or films or strutting down the red carpet during movie premiers and awards, they never cease to fascinate us with their larger than life presence. The truth is, it takes a lot of effort to look the way they do, and being the public figures that they are, they cannot afford to slack off when it comes to taking care of their physical appearances. Their livelihood largely depends on how they look. Aside from the clothes, the hair and the makeup, celebrities have to take good care of their bodies.

The Stars live in the spotlight, so it’s no wonder they all have their own individual secrets when it comes to staying absolutely gorgeous! Each star has other methods. Some take the heavy workout, some rely more on a well planned diet. Who doesn’t want to know their secrets ? The way they stay sexy and long-lived is sometimes ungraspable. If you’re interested in looking like a Star - here are some tips from the diets of seven women celebrities.

1. Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer is a prime star on a popular television show called Friends. She mesmerized the audience with her wonderful sense of humor and with her famous hairstyles. But that’s not all, as Jennifer was worshipped for having one of the sexiest bodies in Hollywood. She appeared on covers of dozens of magazines. Jennifer likes the 40:30:30 diet scheme. This diet is made of:

40% Carbohydrates (low glycemic)

- Foods such as beans, fruits and vegetables, legumes

30% lean proteins

- Tofu, fish, chicken, turkey, beef and low fat dairy products

30% essential fats, including omega 6 and 9

-nuts and seeds, fish and olive oils

Macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and healthy fats) are essential to keep the balance of hormones and ability to lose weight effectively.

2. Kate Hudson

Kate is a gorgeous daughter of Goldie Hawn. She gain much weight while being pregnant. Her childbearing months added 60 pounds to her weight! She had to lose all this ballast before the next movie. She didn’t give up though she has been made subject to a lot of flak. She took the heavy duty training with a protein diet. Taking frequent meals rich in protein and low in carbohydrates, she attended gym, did muscle and cardiovascular exercise. She managed to lose all baby fat in 4 months, but that’s not all. Her abdominal muscles became an object of desire of many in Hollywood.

3. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah is a star of one of the most renowned, world famous talk shows. She is known for constant battles with her weight. Oprah did find a good weight loss solutions constituted out of some simple habits. She manages to keep her looks great past her fifties. It’s very important, as she has thousands and thousands of fans. Oprah works out a lot. She can seen in the gym five days in a week. She does free weight lifting and treadmill. Her eating plan consists of legumes, fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables, chicken and dairy products that are low in fat. She avoids sugar and flour and states, that her trim figure is maintained thanks to the habit of not eating after seven in the evening.

4. Gwyneth Paltrow

A lot of people may find it hard to believe that the perpetually slim Academy award-winning actress actually needs to diet. Gwyneth actually follows a healthy eating plan that resembles Oprah’s, avoiding sugar and white flour. She usually follows a macrobiotic diet, eating foods like vegetables, brown rice, and lean meat. She also eliminated dairy from her diet, and does yoga everyday.

5. Madonna

Madonna stays fit and sexy even after years of successful music career. She always had a gorgeous body that many would die for. From the early years up till now, Madonna was admired for her looks. She established herself as the icon of sex. Madonna makes the most out of Ashtanga Yoga, and follows a strict macrobiotic diet. She eats organic foods rich in lean protein and shuns away all junk food.

6. Claudia Schiffer

The sexy German supermodel eats only salads and steamed vegetables for dinner. Before noon she takes fruits. On the set she eats black grapes, drinks tomato juice and herbal tea.

7. Christie Brinkley

Long-time supermodel maintains her all-American good looks by being a vegetarian. She does not keep junk foods of any kind inside her home to make sure that she does not eat them when cravings occur. She snacks on sweet potatoes in place of candy bars, and she adopts a liquid juice diet when she needs to slim down fast.

Celebrities are people just like you and me. They look a lot of better because of all the work they put in their fitness. They are successful because of constant pressure of being in the public eye that keeps the Stars motivated. Plus, they follow a effective plans to lose weight, based on knowledge about nutrition and human body. Following a good plan will make anyone red carpet worthy, so try out those tips. May they bring you health, happiness and that gorgeous body that you dream of!

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