Saturday, September 26, 2015

The 3 Hour Diet

The 3-Hour Diet - The Promise:
The opposite of those extreme plans that call for fasting, The 3-Hour Diet by fitness expert Jorge Cruise, requires you to eat five times a day, including a tiny dessert. All your favorite foods, including carbs and sweets, are allowed, as long as you eat them on a strict timetable.

Eating small, balanced meals every 3 hours boosts your body’s fat-burning potential, Cruise says.
If you don’t eat often enough, he explains, your body goes into “starvation protection” mode, conserving calories, storing fat, and burning muscle (not fat) for energy. Cruise says that if you eat every 3 hours, you repeatedly reset your metabolism so it stays in high gear, and you burn fat all day long.

His rules around meal timing are:
Eat breakfast within 1 hour of rising.
Eat every 3 hours after that.
Stop eating 3 hours before bedtime.

Stick to the recommended portion sizes. Meals should average 400 calories; snacks, 100 calories; and dessert, 50 calories (like a Reese’s Mini), for a total of about 1,450 calories a day.
He says you’ll drop up to 10 pounds in the first 2 weeks, and 2 pounds a week after that, without losing any fat-burning muscle tissue.
You’ll also curb your levels of cortisol -- the “stress hormone” -- and flatten your belly in the process, Cruise says. And you’ll have more energy and less hunger, because eating every 3 hours keeps your blood sugar levels steady.
That's not proven, though some research suggests that eating smaller, more frequent meals can help manage hunger.

What You Can Eat and What You Can't

On this diet, there are no bad foods, only bad portion sizes. In other words, you can eat whatever you want -- carbs, meat, fast food, frozen foods, sweets -- as long as you stay within your calorie limits and eat at the right intervals.
Meal suggestions included in the book are designed to provide “balanced portions of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.”
Though you can choose your own foods, Cruise does favor lean proteins and flaxseed oil or extra-virgin olive oil.
To keep portion sizes in check, he encourages you to picture a Rubik’s cube for a serving of carbs, a deck of cards for meat and other proteins, and a water bottle cap for salad dressing and other fats.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Dukan Diet

Dukan Diet - Drop 10 pounds in one week and never gain it back. You can do it if you follow the Dukan Diet's rules, claims French general practitioner and nutritionist Pierre Dukan, who created the diet in 2000.
Lean protein, oat bran, water, and a daily 20-minute walk are at the heart of the plan. The theory is that limiting carbohydrates forces your body to burn fat.
Basically, you can eat unlimited quantities of food, as long as they’re on the approved foods list, which includes very few carbs, if any.
You will be eating a lot of protein and oat bran.
The diet has four phases.
During the “Attack” phase (1-10 days), you eat all the lean protein you can handle, plus 1.5 tablespoons of oat bran and at least 6 cups of water daily.
In the “Cruise” phase (which can last several months), you add unlimited amounts of non-starchy veggies every other day, plus an extra half-tablespoon of oat bran.
When you get to the third stage, “Consolidation” (5 days for every pound you've lost), you can have veggies every day, plus one piece of fruit, 2 slices of whole-grain bread, and 1 serving of hard cheese. During this phase, you can also have 1 or 2 servings of starchy foods and 1 or 2 “celebration” meals where you can eat whatever you want.
The final phase, “Stabilization” (ongoing), is all about maintenance. You can eat whatever you like, except for one day a week when you follow the all-protein rules from the diet’s “Attack” phase. In this phase, you also eat 3 tablespoons of oat bran a day and walk 20 minutes every day.
Sugar-free gum, artificial sweeteners, spices, and unsweetened coffee and tea are allowed. As for alcohol, you can have a glass of wine per day during the consolidation and stabilization phases.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

The Sonoma Diet

The Sonoma Diet -
The Promise is that you will have a trimmer waist and better health in just 10 days, without depriving yourself. That is the promise of the Sonoma Diet, named for California’s wine country and influenced by a Mediterranean plant-focused way of eating.
Besides losing weight, the plan will help you break your sugar addiction and teach you to how to satisfy cravings with healthy foods.

What You Can Eat: The emphasis is on a cornucopia of flavorful, nutrient-dense “power foods,” including almonds, bell peppers, blueberries, broccoli, grapes, olive oil, spinach, strawberries, tomatoes, and whole grains.

The diet is divided into three "waves": The first wave lasts 10 days and is designed to promote quick weight loss. It is the most dramatic phase of the diet, when you are encouraged to get rid of all processed foods and some fatty foods like chips, butter, and bacon. Other banned foods in this wave include items that contain natural sugars, like wine, fruit, juice, and some vegetables. The long list of allowed foods include lean beef, eggs, asparagus, soba noodles, olive oil, walnuts, and spices.

 In the second wave, you eat the same foods as you did in Wave 1, except you can add some fruit, more veggies, sugar-free treats, and up to 6 ounces of wine daily. You stay with this phase until you reach your goal weight.

Once you have reached your ideal weight, you can jump into the third wave of the program, which focuses on making the Sonoma Diet a part of your lifestyle. You can experiment with different fruits, enjoying full-fat sweets as a rare treat, and adding fitness into your daily life.

The diet utilizes portion management via plate size -- you eat off a 7-inch plate for breakfast and a 9-inch plate for lunch and dinner.