Diet

This Slim-Fast Optima Plan delivers the right number of calories every day to help you lose weight, while delivering the balanced nutrition your body needs. Slim-Fast offers stats on all their meal replacement products, including the nutritional breakdown to help you determine the proper products for your weight loss needs.

The Slim-Fast Optima Plan also promotes physical activity. Because exercise burns excess calories, it's a vital component of successful weight loss and control. Slim-Fast will help you find the exercise plan that meets your weight loss goals at the fitness level you are comfortable with.

Eating Plan

To make this diet your own, choose plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, limit red meats, eat lots of fish (without rich, high-cal sauces or dips), substitute olive oil in your daily cooking, snack on some nuts, and eliminate trans fats and hydrogenated oils.

Here are some specific steps you can take:

• Eat natural peanut butter, not the kind with hydrogenated fat added.

• Use butter sparingly.

• Don't think that "low fat" or "cholesterol-free" on the label means a product is necessarily good for you. Many of these items are made with trans fats.

Foods that can be eaten daily on this diet include small portions of:
• Bread (without butter or margarine) (whole grain is best)
• Cereal (whole grain is best)
• Polenta
• Pasta (whole wheat is best)
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Grains
• Potatoes
• Rice
• Olive oil/olives
• Low-fat cheese, milk and yogurt

This diet combines the traditional cooking styles of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The fundamental parts of the diet include the basics of healthy eating, a little wine drinking, incorporating olive oil, and limiting “bad” fats.

Many nutritionists and health care providers express concerns over the macrobiotics diet, particularly if it is followed strictly. Extreme macrobiotic eating can be very low in calories, posing a risk for starvation. The diet is also very low in essential vitamins and minerals, including:

• calcium
• iron
• vitamin D
• the B vitamins

Macrobiotic eating follows the principle of balance (called yin and yang in the east). Products that are extreme are not suggested for regular use. No foods are forbidden but better quality natural foods are always suggested.

Foods that are over-stimulating can exhaust the body and mind. These are classified as extreme yin (stimulating) in their effects.

• sugar

• Whole grains -- 50-60% of each meal
Whole grains include brown rice, whole wheat berries, barley, millet, rye, corn, buckwheat, and other whole grains. Rolled oats, noodles, pasta, bread, baked goods, and other flour products can be eaten occasionally.

• Soup -- 1 to 2 cups or bowls of soup per day

There appear to be numerous health benefits that the macrobiotic diet can offer. When paired with a healthy fitness routine, the macrobiotic diet can help you to lose excess weight. And, because this diet focuses on foods that are low in saturated fats and high in fiber, it can also help you to lower your risk of:

• heart disease
• high cholesterol

The macrobiotic diet and philosophy were developed by a Japanese educator named George Ohsawa, who believed that simplicity was the key to optimal health. Michio Kushi expanded on Ohsawa's macrobiotic theory and opened the Kushi Institute in Boston in 1978. Together with his wife Aveline, Kushi published many books on macrobiotics and was responsible for popularizing the diet in North America.

If you can’t join meetings, a representative will send you plan information and resources so you can follow Weight Watchers TurnAround at home.

Visit www.weightwatchers.com for more information.

You can follow the Weight Watchers plan all day everyday, even when you’re on-the-go:

• It goes everywhere you do: Your favorite tools are there when you need them - on vacation, dining out, at the gym, etc.

To supplement your meetings and to track your progress at home you will have on-line help with eTools.

Manage your food and weight:

Weight Watchers is based around attending meetings, and then you follow the plan at home using on-line resources.

How Weight Watchers meetings work:

• You attend meetings once a week for less than an hour. There’s no contract, so you pay as you go.
• Each week you have a confidential weigh-in to help you track your progress.

On the Core Plan focus on healthy foods without counting

• Eat healthy foods from all the food groups, including fruits and vegetables, grains and starches, lean meats and poultry, eggs and dairy products.
• Enjoy satisfying eating without empty calories.
• Have the occasional snack in controlled amounts.

Eat all the foods you love on the Flex Plan

• Enjoy the full range of food options, while making better choices with the POINTS system.
• Choose any food as long as you control how much you eat.
• Easily handle any challenge, even when choices are limited.

Weight watchers helps you make positive changes to lose weight and keep it off. There are two new and improved Weight Watchers TurnAround plans where you choose the approach that fits you best. Both approaches allow you to eat real food, and there’s no need to purchase pre-made or frozen meals. Each plan is nutritious and satisfying.

At Jenny Craig the goal is to help you learn not only how to lose weight, but how to effectively maintain your weight loss for long-term success. The maintenance component of the program helps transition you from Jenny&undefined;s Cuisine to planning your own menus. There are also various tools and consultations to aid you in long-term weight management success.

It is advised that at first you order the food from the Jenny Craig Menu. Jenny Craig offers a wide variety of delicious and nutritious breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack items. Because they're so easy to prepare in either a microwave or traditional oven, Jenny's Cuisine can fit into even the busiest lifestyles.

The goal of the Jenny Craig Program is to help clients acquire:

A Healthy Relationship with Food
Along with balanced food choices and portion control, the program emphasizes the importance of tuning into physical/emotional eating cues and the pleasure of eating via Jenny menus and online journal.

An Active Lifestyle

Founded in 1983, Jenny Craig, Inc. is one of the largest weight management service companies in the world. The Company offers a comprehensive weight management program that helps clients learn how to eat the foods they want, increase their energy level through simple activity, and build more balance into their lives for optimal weight loss and well-being.

Fat

Assessing portion size is one of the main skills of mastering this plan. Like any other new skill, it takes practice. This plan is more of a lifestyle change, not a diet. After meeting your goal weight, you can maintain this healthy lifestyle by staying in the Zone. Visit www.zoneliving.com for more details.

Since the Zone boosts your energy level you may find exercise easier and more enjoyable than ever before. Just 30 minutes of moderate exercise 3-5 days a week in conjunction with the Zone approach to eating can help decrease inflammation within your fat cells and simultaneously help control insulin levels.

Ideally, protein sources are low in saturated fats, carbohydrates are low glycemic, and fats are primarily monounsaturated, with a lot of Omega-3 fatty acids.

Conversely, the diet is low in fatty meats, other sources of saturated fat such as butter, most vegetable oil (except for olive oil and similar), grains, added sugars, starchy vegetables, and egg yolks.

There are several Zone snacking options in cereal, shake, bar and powder form as well as Zone supplements to help you achieve your goals and optimize the benefits of Omega-3’s and eating In the Zone.

• Eat a Zone meal or snack within one hour after waking

• Eat every 4 to 6 hours after a meal or 2 hours after a snack, whether you are hungry or not

• Assess your hunger level and mental focus before every meal or snack. Lack of hunger and clarity of mind are signs you are staying in the Zone.