Posts tagged: Weight Loss

Medifast Diet Review, a Scam or Does it Work?

The Medifast plan is a meal delivery service that offers to takes all the guess work out of shopping, counting calories, even cooking.  For over 20 years, the plan sends meal replacements directly to dieter’s homes.  The meal plan consists of shakes, bars, and soups.  Medifast boasts a menu of over 70 choices.   To follow the plan you will consume 5 prepared meals and 1 “Lean and Green Meal.”  This is known as the Medifast 5 & 1.  The meal consists of 7 ounces of lean protein with a tablespoon of your favorite condiment.  Then you have a choice of a side item, including salad greens, raw or cooked vegetables with the meal.  Followers must eat every 2-3 hours, drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water, and find time for daily exercise. The website helps guide you through the process, although the medifast plan suggests having your doctor supervise your stay on the plan.  The plan can meet many needs, low-glycemic, lactose-free, kosher, and even vegetarian.  More than 15,000 doctors have referred medifast to their patients.  The  medifast basic plan cost 140.50 for 70 meals.  This will last for two weeks.  The Medifast Diet has an online weight loss diet program that acts as a diet center.  Members pay a fee for access to meal trackers, message boards, physician search, bmi calculator, live chat, and various support material downloads.

What we like about this plan It is perfect for the very busy dieter.  The meals are pre prepackaged, somewhat reasonable in cost, with a wide variety of menus.  The diet is doctor recommended.  It has an easy to use website with support and success stories.  It supports exercise.  It is clinically proven to support the 2-5 pounds a week claim.  The plan aims to help the dieters plan a maintenance plan.

What We Dislike about this Plan This plan is very low carb and low in calories.  It is a very strict plan.  Some people find the taste of medifast products bland.  While others find them mildly repulsive in the beginning.  Some people find it hard to follow the medifast plan in the first few days of the program.  There is no eating out with this plan.

How healthy is this plan? Technically, it is healthy.  The meals have sufficient minerals and vitamins to be healthy.  The Lean and Green meal will give you a whole foods meal that provides fiber and non processed eating.  It’s rare to find a medically based weight loss company that’s been around this long. Medifast has helped people lose weight for 28 years.  The Medifast program was developed for medical reasons by Johns Hopkins doctors for patients who had to lose weight fast before undergoing cardiac surgery.  John Hopkins University study suggests that the Medifast plan helps participants quickly and safely lose weight by decreasing the amount of calories consumed.  The study also suggests that participants with Type 2 Diabetes lost twice as much as much weight compared to individuals following the American Diabetes Association’s recommendation.  Additionally, Medifast shows results in participants with other illnesses.

Here is the Bottom Line The Medifast Diet is the best diet for dieters who have trouble controlling their portions and what they eat. With pre-made meals that dieters order online, dieters have their meals with the correct portions and nutrients already planned out for them.  Once dieters get a perception of correct portions and nutrients, and see the results through their weight loss, they can reduce the number of Medifast meals they eat and start cooking healthy foods for themselves. It is important that dieters leaving the Medifast Diet find nutritious diet recipes to help them in their healthy cooking.  Pre-packed engineered food is not the best way to go, but Medifast seems to be the best one in this class of diets.  So, if you are very overweight and struggling with portion control, give this plan a try.  But do not forget to explore the emotional aspects of overeating before you begin to eat a normal, healthy maintenance plan.  It might just make you the next Medifast success story.

© 2008 – 2009 Which Weight Loss

South Beach Diet, A Scam Or Does It Work?

Overview. Dr Agatston, a leading American cardiologist, initially created the SouthBeach diet for his heart patients.  While his diet was to improve his patients heart wellbeing, he discovered that a side effect of the diet was that they lost considerable amounts of weight.  He claims this isn’t a low-carb or low-fat diet – instead it focuses on eating the ‘right’ carbs and the ‘right’ fats.  In fact, the South Beach Diet is based on the Glycemic index.  It begins by severely restricting carbohydrates in the first two weeks, before gradually re-introducing those with a lower on the glycemic index. In addition, it recommends swapping saturated fats for unsaturated fats. The South Beach Diet follows the same principles of other diets based on the Glycemic Index.  SouthBeach is divided into three phases.  In Phase One, most carbohydrates are banned to give your body a complete rest from fluctuating blood sugar and insulin levels.  The theory is this will help to resolve insulin resistance.  During Phase One, the banned foods list includes bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, fruit, milk, sweets, cake, biscuits, ice cream, sugar and alcohol.  A few low GI vegetable such as broccoli and cabbage are allowed, but the focus is on eating lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs, low-fat cheese, some nuts and olive oil.  You follow this phase for 14 days. In Phase Two, low GI carbs including most fruits, Granary bread, wholegrain cereals and pasta and low-fat milk are reintroduced. The idea is to stay with this phase until you’ve reached your target weight.  Finally, in Phase Three, you introduce an even wider variety of foods.  This phase is aimed at keeping your weight steady and the diet recommends you stay on this for life.What we like about this plan. The South Beach Diet differs from its low-carb competitors, like Atkins, in that it restricts saturated fats, which are associated with health problems like heart disease and high cholesterol.  The plan reduces the cravings for sugars, sweets and other carbohydrates because the diet is supposed to keep blood sugar levels sustained.  Its importance on fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and heart-healthy fats is an eating plan that is full of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids.  Dr Agatston has great support from the medical science community.  There is a new updated book released in 2008, “South Beach Diet: Supercharged”.  The book does an excellent job getting a dieter started and includes great recipes.  There is also a complete line of South Beach Diet foods that can be purchased in your grocery store from cereals to frozen meals.What we dislike about this plan. The plan is tough for a vegetarian and a non-fish eater.  The science behind Dr. Agatston’s assertions about certain foods and their ability to raise blood sugar levels or put on weight is inaccurate.  Alcohol is forbidden in the induction phase and limited in the long-term diet.  The book contains no exercise guidelines.  Recipes rely on a lot of NutraSweet and sugar alcohols, which many find difficult to digest.  To become a member of the website you must join for 6.00 a week.How Healthy Is This Plan? It is a overall healthy plan after the first phase. Its encouragement of eating vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats is marvelous.  Its elimination of white sugar and refined carbohydrates is equally creditable, but not so easy to follow.  Many people have been successful losing weigh following the South Beach Diet and have been able to keep it off.  The South Beach Diet has some scientific flaws and many nutritionists would argue that its promise of losing 8-12 pounds in 14 days is a bit aggressive and is certainly water weight and some muscle, especially since exercising is not addressed.Here Is the Bottom Line. The South Beach Diet only requires serious willpower for the first two weeks during Phase One.  Nevertheless, this phase is extremely restrictive. If you can get past the initial phase, then it will get easier.  No major food groups are eliminated, plenty of fruit and vegetables are recommended and generally the diet follows the use of the glycemic index and taking heart health into consideration.  If you can handle the restriction of carbs, this plan will be a plan for you. © 2008 – 2009 Which Weight Loss

Watch Out for Acai Berry Scams

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years, you have probably heard about the Acai berry. Hailing from South America, the Acai berry has been touted as a “superfood” that can help you lose weight, keep fit, and possibly live longer.

Acai berry juice is high in antioxidants and vitamins and, when used as part of a healthy diet with moderate exercise, can help you drop unwanted pounds and stay healthy. While claims of dramatic weight loss often are nothing but exaggerations, there is some evidence that Acai berry juice is beneficial.

A sizeable percentage of the The country’s population suffers from obesity, so it would seem that any product that offered any kind of health benefit to those who used it properly as part of a healthy lifestyle would enjoy a good reputation in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, the benefits of the Acai berry have been offset by the evils of questionable marketing tactics. Many Acai products are offered for sale with a “free trial” offer, which provides a month’s supply of the Acai product with only a small shipping fee for the buyer. Such offers are quite legal, but many unscrupulous companies are failing to disclose on their Web page that ordering a trial offer will register you for regular monthly shipments of the product, often at a price of $50 or more per month.

Visa recently announced that they will no longer do business with some 100 companies that do not disclose to buyers that they are ordering a product on a subscription basis, or “forced continuity”, as it is known in marketing circles. Visa’s refusal to do business with these companies stems from the many complaints they have received from customers who ordered trial products, only to be billed later, again and again, for monthly shipments that they do not recall ordering.

As a result of this negative publicity, the public has begun to take an unfavorable view of all Acai weight loss products, when the problem isn’t the product itself, but rather with those who market it.

It is possible to purchase Acai weight loss products without becoming a victim of a scam. All it takes is a few simple precautions and some common sense. Here are some suggestions that might help:

Thousands of people have reported that they are happy, healthy and fit after using Acai products. Manyf people have also lost excess pounds while using them in conjunction with a healthy diet and exercise. They may very well help you, too. Just make sure to read the fine print carefully when you make your purchase, as you want to lose fat, and not your money, too.

Weight Loss Myth Revealed! Healthy Weight Loss Supplements are not a Scam!

Lifestyle modifications are the foundation of any successful long-term weight loss plan (eating less and moving more), but requires daily focus and discipline. It’s not surprising that Americans want some sort of miracle cure packaged nicely in one little healthy weight loss supplement. As time goes on and technology improves, people become more and more willing to look for a fix rather than a solution.

Since there are too many choices out there to compare regarding healthy weight loss supplements, it all comes down to two questions: Are Weight-loss supplements safe? and Do they work? The answer is in the ingredients and the testimonials of people who have taken them.

All -natural products will not get people addicted to anything outside of wanting to live healthier. So many medications and drugs people take come wtih complications and side effects. What happens when your body gets something all-natural is that it begins to heal itself in a non-addictive way.

Many weight loss programs encourage users to reduce their calories and exercise more for the best results. While most people can benefit from both of these lifestyle changes, what you want are all-natural healthy weight loss supplements that work regardless of physical activity. After all, some of us can’t exercise due to an injury, and some of us have severe asthma, or other health challenges.

You must also stay away from any one miracle product claiming to solve all of your problems. The human body is complex and requires targeted products that focus on individual areas in order to aid the body as a whole. Doctors can only give people the best estimate of their problems, so how could a little pill perform mircales that humans can’t?

Since the soil today is depleted of minerals and animals are injected with hormones, the foods that we once thought were healthy aren’t so much anymore. Fruit and vegetables get picked way before they have had a chance to properly grow just do they can make it to the grocery stand, and we are missing out on all the nutrition we should be getting. Healthy weight loss supplements are the only way to finish the job.

Most of the time people try to take shortcuts by taking weight loss pills without eating properly, thinking it’s better to find an easy way out tha to get to the root of the problem. When it doesn’t work out, they blame the pill instead of themselves for making poor choices. This is how people have come to think that weight loss supplements are a scam.

There is nothing wrong with being skeptical, but most companies that provide good quality healthy weight loss supplements have scientists developing their products for your benefit. Take advantage of that. They are providing you with something you cannot find in stores. It always amazes me how people can be so skeptical about products that contain all-natural ingredients, yet they will devour double cheeseburgers and french fries without even thinking about it…and they already know it’s bad for them!

With proper nutrition and targeted healthy weight loss supplements using all natural ingredients, your body has the ability to do amazing things. It can heal itself quicker than someonewho is eating poorly, and it is the only way a person can become well enough to stop using medications. I personally lost 70 pounds and have kept it off for over 15 years and stopped taking my prescription asthma medications simply by providing myself with proper nutrition using healthy weight loss supplements.

Losing weight is definitely possible with all-natural healthy weight loss supplements, but in order to keep it off for good you must learn to make it a lifestyle change and continue on a healthy path to overall wellness. You cannot take supplements designed to help you lose weight, then go out and eat junk food all day long. It just will not work.

The best thing you can do to begin to understand how all-natural healthy weight loss supplements work for weight loss is that they provide proper nutrition, and what happens when you give your body the right nutrients and vitamins? It naturally begins to lose weight and heal itself. The only scam going on is when you try to trick your body into thinking it can function properly without proper nutrition.

Acai berry pills – Advantages of taking acai berry pills

Acai berry pills are relatively new in the market and have really quickly picked celebrity from press as many stars have selected Acai berry pills to lose weight. On TV Acai berry has been claimed as the top most super food. Amazonian clans consider Acai berries as the most valuable treasure of Amazon. When Acai berries are employed in tablets to form Acai berry pills we get an incredible solution that boosts up our energy level to the maximum and also reinforces our immune mechanism. Acai berry pills also kill our appetite, this makes Acai berry pills a dynamic dietary element and is the first emphasis of people who want to get rid of some weight. Advantages of Acai Berry Pills? There are plenty of advantages of Acai berry pills but the most surpassing ones are mentioned below : – It augments the energy levels – It decreases getting older – It gives eases to joint pains – It increases your immunity – It makes your heart strong In the Acai berry pills you may find highly concentrated compound known as anthocyanin. But no-one understands this philosophy, the only reason folk need to take in enormous amounts of Acai berry pills because stars eat them and yes, also thanks to the exposure the pill has received through reliable resources like fox reports. Are Acai berry pills a scam? You will find many trusted companies in the market selling result oriented Acai berry pills, but at the same time you may find many fraud firms selling Acai berry that doesn’t show any positive results. Such Acai berry pills have become the source of creating a feeling of mistrust amongst the people. Acai berry pills is everywhere! When my chum suggested it to me I made up my mind to give it a try, there was nothing to lose I mean I was getting it for free. I accepted the terms and next few days it was at my stoop. My intentions were to use this pill for weight loss, but the other benefits that the sales rep told me further inspired me to keep on eating the tablets. It was all true, in the following couple of days I did not only lose pounds gathered on my stomach and legs but I also felt young and energetic again. Many thanks Acai berry pills!