Better Homes and Garden Diet
A diet plan you can count on... as long as you don't mind counting calories.
BACKGROUND
Dust off those old home-ec skills and shed some pounds in the process. The Better Homes Diet, from the popular magazine Better Homes & Gardens, offers its take on diet and weight loss in a way that gives you plenty of opportunity to cook.
It's a very calorie-centric diet, in that you'll be doing a lot of math and a lot of counting. Daily caloric intake is based on a few calculations and incorporates weight, age and sex. You'll calculate calories almost daily to stay as accurate as possible, which also means stepping on the scale each day.
Better Homes offers its decades of expertise and insight from women for a fairly balanced weight loss program.
FOOD & RECIPE
This will be the most stringent part of the Better Homes Diet. You'll use several charts, graphs, calculations and some of that math you thought you'd left far behind to determine your daily caloric intake. You'll use that information and the former USDA Food Guide Pyramid (not the newly published one in 2005) to determine calories, portions and what you'll eat each day from six food groups.
There aren't groups of food that are eliminated completely. You'll likely modify the amount you're consuming from each of these six food groups:
- Meat
- Dairy
- Vegetable
- Fruit
- Grains
- Fats, sweets
Some of the delicious and health-conscious meals created and tested by Better Homes include:
- Stir-Fried Shrimp and Broccoli
- Quiche
- Casual Fish Salad
- Chicken Fiesta Salad
EXERCISE
You're definitely encouraged to keep moving with the Better Homes Diet. The diet offers an extensive library of guidance for staying active and exercising. Whether you're just beginning or looking for some new tricks - there's something here for you. Yoga, Pilates, running, walking and other tips for staying fit can all be found at Better Homes & Gardens.
EXPENSE
The Better Homes Diet is offered through a free membership at the BH&G website.
PRO
- Free membership
- Better Homes & Gardens trusted brand
- 100+ recipes created by BH&G, including 30-minute dinners
- Thorough Web component including daily menus, shopping lists, four programs to choose from, exercise guides
- Doesn't exclude any group of food
- Vegetarian friendly
CON
- Relies on the outdated USDA Food Guide Pyramid
- Weigh yourself daily
- Heavy calorie counting
- Math intensive
CONCLUSION
Better Homes offers its decades of expertise and insight from women to offer a fairly balanced weight loss program. The inclusion of the Web tools definitely makes this diet modern, but doesn't overshadow the roots of the magazine with its hearty catalog of delicious and nutritious recipes. The Better Homes Diet is almost all aces, except that it requires so much math. Counting is one chore that usually scares people away from diets. Start including charts and graphs, and it might become too complicated for some.
Common misspellings:
Better Homes & Gardens Diet, Better Homes Deit
Anonymous: Too much counting. I got put off by all the math b4 I seen any progress
Marion Lee: This is definitely old school dieting. there's a ton of counting involved, but I lost about 2-2 /1 lbs per week for the first couple of weeks.
sue: Is this the work in the garden and around the house and lose weight diet :-)
