DIET COLUMN

A recent article by Forbes magazine asked the question “How much is your diet costing you?” and took a close look at seven of the most popular weight loss programs. They figured out how much these plans set you back during your first week of testing them. The presumption is that your first is your most expensive since you have to buy the food, pay any membership costs, or purchase a device like a juicer.

The results may surprise you.

The study looked at the following diets: NutriSystem, 5-Factor Diet, Zone diet, Abs Diet, South Beach Diet, Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox and Weight Watchers.

At first glance, you may think that the most restrictive of the diets, like Martha’s Vineyard Diet which consumes the least amount of food, would come in as the least expensive. But Forbes reported that this diet ranked up just as high in dollars for your first week as Weight Watchers, namely about $380.

Dr. Judith Beck, the daughter off the founder of Cognitive Therapy Aaron Beck, wants to help you take it off and keep it off by creating all new habits with her book The Complete Beck Diet for Life. Dr. Beck is a therapist who works with dieters and has gone through the journey herself. She is able to anticipate those thoughts that keep you stuck and help you consider a new way of thinking. This book helps readers to feel less isolated by sharing stories from other dieters to which you can relate and instills hope by showing changes that have occurred in Dr. Beck’s clients.

The Complete Beck Diet for Life is divided into five stages. Prior to Stage one, there are ten preparation tasks to complete. Stage one teaches nine Success Skills; these help you practice changing your behavior prior to taking on the task of changing your habits surrounding food. It is not until Stage two that readers start to alter their actual eating, using the Think Thin Initial Eating Plan. Stage three, The Challenging Situations Plan, provides strategy for addressing weekends, restaurants, social events, family dinners, holidays, traveling, stress, and people pushing food on you.

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!

2. The Step Diet

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.”

For any woman who has gained 5, 10 pounds or maybe even more after finding the guy of your dreams, you must read the book, Your Big Fat Boyfriend. It is a delightful but informative guide on how to stay thin (or get thinner) even if your guy is a pancake-eating, burger-chomping, sweat pant-loving couch potato!

Author Jenna Bergen arms you with oodles of information on what to eat, why to eat it and why and how to exercise. Rather than telling you to give in to your boyfriend’s less than healthy ways just because you love him, she encourages you to become accountable for your own health (and size) by learning the self rewards of healthy eating, consistent exercise and all of the goodness that flows from these essential healthy lifestyle behaviors.

Just in time for New Years, Weight Watchers has recently launched a new program called Momentum to help you lose weight, stay in control of your hunger and keep cravings at bay.

Using the trademarked Weight Watchers Points System, Momentum centers around fueling your body with fiber-rich foods, lean proteins and good fats. Certain foods like those high in fiber keep us feeling full longer because it takes longer for the body to digest them. We fall into problems when we’re dieting when we starve ourselves and let our blood sugar drop. Our knee-jerk reaction then becomes to reach for a quick fix like foods that contain white sugar or refined flours or even the fast-food drive-thru.

The Diet Blog at DietsInReview.com is where you’ll find the latest health headlines, interviews with those making an impact in the diet world, and informative articles about fitness, nutrition and mental health from our dedicated team of professionals. You’ll find new articles throughout the day, seven days a week. We don’t stop publishing because you never stop needing a reliable resource to manage your health.

In 2008, we published hundreds of articles, but these are the 10 that made the biggest impact to you.

Top 10 Blogs of 2008

1. Understanding Weight Watchers Points

2. Kettlebell Training

3. Obama’s Diet vs. McCain’s Diet

Bill Romanowski is a 4-time Super Bowl champion who spent years on the field and in the training rooms working out and eating right so that he could compete against and triumph over some of football’s most elite and strong athletes. As a linebacker who played an unprecedented 243 consecutive games, he knows a thing or two about nutrition. So he teamed up with a few of his favorite scientists, researchers and nutritionists and developed his own company and line of dietary supplements called Nutrition 53.

Nutrition 53 contains a small, but quality, line of three different health products. There is the Lean1, which is designed to help you create lean muscle mass and control your hunger, Neuro1, a supplement that improves mental acuity and focus and Sleep1, a product that helps you get to sleep fast and stay asleep so you wake up feeling refreshed.

For the first time we’re honoring 10 sites in the DietsInReview.com Diet Awards. Each of these sites share a common thread - a desire to help people live healthy lives. That’s what drives DietsInReview.com everyday, and we know it’s a priority for all of them, too. We selected a winner and a runner-up in each of five categories: Best Diet Blog, Best Healthy Recipe Blog, Best Fitness Blog, Best Diet Community, Best Health Site.

Please join us in congratulating each of these sites and the talented people behind each of them. Without further ado, the 2008 winners are:

Best Diet Blog

Winner: DozenDiets.com
For Joel’s 2008 New Year’s Resolution, he resolved to lose weight this year, and to do so tried a different diet during each month of the year. He was able to capture the entire dieting experience over the course of a year. He’s currently following 8 Minutes in the Morning, and has completed Weight Watchers, South Beach Diet, Hydroxycut and eight others.

Runner-Up: RonisWeigh.com
A few years ago Roni was a new mom, had a full-time job and was trying to lose weight. She blogged her Weight Watchers journey, and developed a loyal following of fellow dieters. She’s completely candid, divulging everything from her two tummy tucks to triumphs in the gym. Roni’s site is a friendly place on the Web where you’ll find a real woman, facing real challenges, sharing her successes (and even hurdles) in a very real way.

If there’s one thing that women will not divulge, it’s the number on the scale. But Oprah isn’t your average woman.

She’s one of the most powerful and successful women on the planet. But if there’s one thing that Oprah has had trouble with in her life, it’s her weight. She’s notoriously yo-yoed over the years, and now she’s actually being very candid in saying that she is tipping the scales at 200 pounds again.

She slimmed down to 160 pounds in 2006. But in the upcoming January issue of O magazine, Oprah is spilling the beans on her recent 40-pound weight gain: “Yes, you’re adding correctly. That means the dreaded 2-0-0,” Oprah admits.

There’s never a better time than right now to start a weight loss plan, and make healthy changes in your life. Not tomorrow, not Monday and not after the holidays. Right now. It’s all too easy for any of us to continue justifying these changes the longer we go. You’ve got about eight weeks until the new year, imagine how you could look in time to not have to make a drastic resolution!

Weight Watchers wants to help you get started with that healthy new commitment to yourself today, with a 35% off coupon. Sign-up for the Weight Watchers Online three-month plan, and with the discount you’ll pay $50.85. That gets you well into the new year.

For more than 40 years, Weight Watchers has remained a tried-and-true weight loss leader- accommodating the needs of women, men and those with unruly schedules. It’s a no-nonsense approach to weight loss and will teach you the skills you need to maintain that weight loss for the rest of your life. We invite you to learn more about Weight Watchers with our Weight Watchers diet reviews, Weight Watchers recipes, Diet Blog posts, videos and more.

Valid through 11/30/08.