Do-It-Yourself Diets

EDIETS REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

eDiets.com offers customizable popular diet and fitness plans that feature innovative motivational and support tools. By offering over 20 diet plans, eDiets.com has something for everyone. The eDiets.com plans combines recipes, expert support, general guidelines, and a fitness plan into one package. The eDiets.com plans are based on portion control and the selection of proper food choices. The plans are highly personalized and based on your own preferences. The weekly menus allow you to create instant shopping lists to take to the grocery store. If you are going out, eDiets.com helps you prepare by having the nutritional information for many restaurants stored in the system. eDiets.com offers both phone support and online support with their experts, as well as the online community for peer support. Also included in your membership is a subscription to a daily tip newsletter. Using your membership, you can keep track of your weight and other measurements to gage your progress, journal your weight loss, or track your food intake. The fitness portion of the diet is also highly customized to your individual needs, laying out a weekly program for you to follow that is complete with a virtual trainer to demonstrate. The eDiets.com consist of diet plans such as Fall's Best Diet, Glycemic Impact Diet, New Mediterranean Diet, Atkins Diet, Bill Phillips Eating for Life, Slim-Fast Optima Diet, The Blood Type Diet, Perricone Diet, eDiets.com Alternative to Jenny Craig, and Trim Kids. In addition, eDiets.com covers healthy lifestyle diets like the Wheat-Free Plan, Low-Fat Plan, Living with Diabetes Plan, Heart Smart Plan, the Low-Sodium Plan, High-Fiber Plan, Vegetarian Plan, and the Lactose-Free Plan. For an additional fee, subscribers can download eDiets Mobile, a special weight loss program for you PDA that gives you a variety of diets and exercises while away from your computer.

The eDiet.com program costs $17.96 every four weeks. This program automatically renews until you cancel. There is an early termination fee of $25.00 if you cancel before the third four week billing cycle.

GLYCEMIC IMPACT DIET REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

The Glycemic Index is a ranking system that tells you how much a particular carbohydrate food item will affect your diet. Carbohydrates that break down rapidly have the highest GI, while slowly digested carbohydrates have the lowest GI. A low GI diet has been proven to be effective in regulating blood sugar, losing weight, and managing diabetes. The Glycemic Impact Diet is a healthy nutrition diet plan that balances unrefined complex carbohydrates (high GI foods) with lean protein and healthy fats (low GI foods) to help stabilize blood sugars, increase energy, lose weight, and feel fuller longer. With the Glycemic Impact Diet there is no need to count calories or keep track of points. The Glycemic Impact Diet provides 40% of calories from mostly low Glycemic impact carbohydrates. Another 30% of calories come from lean protein, including fish, chicken and occasionally lean beef and pork, with vegetarian options including soy protein; tofu and textured vegetable protein. The approximately 30% of remaining calories are from healthy fats including nuts, fatty fish, avocado and olive oil. A sample meal from this plan would include an egg and cheese burrito with honeydew melon for breakfast, a curried turkey salad with walnuts and flatbread for lunch, yogurt with raspberries and almonds for a snack, and foiled fish with couscous and balsamic tomatoes for dinner. Since this diet plan is part of the eDiet.com list of customizable plans you get the benefits of expert support, general guidelines for the Glycemic Impact Diet plan, and a fitness plan. Also included in your membership is a weekly newsletter which gives you daily tips for keeping the weight off. Using your membership, you can keep track of your weight and other measurements to gage your progress, journal your weight loss, or track your food intake. The fitness portion of the diet is also highly customized to your individual needs, laying out a weekly program for you to follow that is complete with a virtual trainer to demonstrate. Finally, the Glycemic Impact Diet will not harm your health like many of today's diets, but rather will actually reduce your risk from heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, colon and prostate cancer.

SOUTH BEACH DIET REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

The South Beach Diet is a plan created by Dr. Arthur Agatston as a way of helping his cardiac patients get their diets under control and engage in a healthy lifestyle. The diet consists of three phases. Phase 1 is the diet's kick start, designed to get your body off bad carbs and geared towards weight loss. Phase 2 is when you reintroduce good carbs and continue to lose weight until you reach your goal. Phase 3 is where you turn the diet into a lifestyle, maintaining your weight and continuing to make responsible food choices. The South Beach Diet online portion includes a wealth of tools, including a recipe database, meal planner, shopping list generator, food guides, registered dietitians to answer your questions, answers from Dr Agatston, a 'Beach Buddies' program which gives you a dieting support partner, message boards, a private online journal, daily newsletter, calendar tool to help you plan your diet, and a weight tracker to help you track your progress. The online tools are simple to use, and provide a nice at-a-glance dashboard of your progress and helpful tips once you log in. The journal sorts your entries according to phase so you can track your food diary and progress at each stage. The South Beach Diet website also offers a 'Fitness Club' with tips, videos, and instruction -- but we were disappointed to learn that this came at an additional charge ($38.87 quarterly). This online offering would be more well-rounded if the meal planning portions were integrated into the exercise portions. Overall, the diet is a healthy approach to weight loss and eating in general, and provides a solid foundation for continued success.

WEIGHTWATCHERS REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

[Editor's Note: WeightWatchers is offering an additional month free when you sign up for the discounted three month plan. To take advantage of this promotion, simply click any WeightWatchers link on NextAdvisor.com.]

WeightWatchers has two basic plans to choose from. The 'Flex Plan' is the classic WeightWatchers points system of assigning points to foods that you eat, and the 'Core Plan' consists of foods that fill you up but are lower in calories. The Flex Plan does involve a form of calorie counting, with a daily allowance of points and a weekly allowance of extra points, but the online tool makes it easy because it will do the counting for you as long as you remember to record your meals. Extra points are given for exercise and nursing moms. (WeightWatchers is one of the only plans with a special program for nursing moms.) The Core Plan is for people who feel they need more food and who would rather have a list of foods instead of tracking or counting. You can switch between the plans at any time, but they recommend you do it at weigh-in instead of mid-week for tracking purposes. With both plans, WeightWatchers helps you to establish healthy goals for weight loss including helping you to determine a healthy range for your final weight goals. Weigh-ins are done weekly on the day of your choice. WeightWatchers offers the a wide array of exercise options for all fitness levels, including online exercise videos, tips, and workouts. The sign-up process was relatively quick, and the user interface is simple and easy to understand. The core of the WeightWatchers online plan is the password-protected area where you can track your points values, find recipes, get meal ideas, track your weight, switch your meal plan, read motivational success stories, and watch videos. The online portion has several interactive tools to assist you with your diet: a food search, a recipe builder, a points tracker, and an activity search. The food tracker lets you save common meals and tracks your daily points intake. The activity tracker lets you determine the points allowance for your exercise activities and automatically factors that into your daily points allowance. The recipe builder where you input the ingredients and it calculates the points totals for your meal; recipes can then be saved for later use. The food search lets you find the points values for a variety of foods. The activity search allows you to see how different activities will affect your points totals. Overall, the program is very well-rounded, promoting sustainable weight loss and a healthy lifestyle, and the online tools are very effective in helping you track and manage your goals.

JOY'S LIFE DIET REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

Joy Bauer, the resident nutrition and health expert for the Today Show, has been providing nutrition advice for over 15 years. She has also created Joy Bauer Nutrition, one of the largest nutrition counseling practices in the United States. Joy's LIFE Diet distills her extensive knowledge into a simple, easy to follow plan.

Joy's LIFE Diet includes all the basic tools that one would expect to find in any online diet program, such as weight, measurement, and goal trackers, a food log, a custom meal planner, and a shopping list generator. There are also calorie and activity calculators, and a database of nutrition information, as well as hundreds of recipes, including vegetarian and kosher options. Members also have access to a nutritionist whenever you need advice or encouragement, as well as a supportive online community, where you can share news on your progress with other members, and with Joy herself, who maintains her own blog.

What makes Bauer's program unique is its simplicity and the emphasis on positivity and common sense. While each member has a personalized profile and custom fitness plan, all members follow the same basic program consisting of four steps. The first step, "Release," is a seven day introductory period, during which you'll focus on discarding unhealthy habits and negative attitudes. There is a 1300 calorie limit per day and a minimum of 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise per day during this first week. The second step, "Relearn," focuses on the creation of new, positive patterns, particularly with regard to dietary choices. During this phase of Joy's LIFE Diet, you'll be able to integrate healthy snack options into your diet. You'll continue doing low-impact cardiovascular activity, but during this second step, you'll add a series of seven stretches that relieve soreness and stiffness. The third step, "Reshape," adds resistance training to your existing fitness routine, to build strength and burn calories. Joy Bauer designed the exercise aspect of her program to be simple but effective, without requiring any expensive equipment. The fourth step, "Reveal," is a celebration that occurs once you have reached your diet goals. It also focuses on transitioning into a maintenance phase.

Joy's LIFE Diet costs $4.00 per week, and members are charged once every 13 weeks. After a nonrefundable initial five week minimum commitment of $20.00, members can cancel at any time and receive a refund for the unused portion of the subscription.

This program is practical and straightforward, making it relatively easy for anyone to follow. With Joy's LIFE Diet, you'll learn to make healthy choices and develop a positive attitude toward nutrition and exercise.

JILLIAN MICHAELS REVIEW:Go to Site | Back to Chart

Jillian Michaels is best known as a trainer and life coach on NBC's The Biggest Loser, but has also created a brand that includes her website and online program as well as books, DVDs, video games and a radio talk show. Her online diet program differs from the other programs reviewed on NextAdvisor.com by placing a greater emphasis on exercise as opposed to nutrition.

Michaels' program does offer many tools that are similar to those offered by other online diet services. There are trackers to record your weight and measurements, calculators to help you set goals, and a meal planner, shopping list and food log. Meal plans are created based on one of three metabolic types. Upon sign up, members create a personal profile, which includes self-identifying as either a slow oxidizer, balanced oxidizer or fast oxidizer. There is an optional quiz to help direct this self-assessment, but it is simplistic and limiting. (For example, users must select one of three body types: short and stocky, average, or tall and thin.) The meal plan tool is similarly rigid and unrealistic. There is no option to create an entire meal plan around a specific dietary requirement, so vegetarian, diabetic or lactose intolerant users are unlikely to find this feature useful.

In many ways, this program functions as an online replacement for a personal trainer. There is a daily fitness plan, similar to the meal planner tool, which focuses primarily on circuit training. Like the meal planner tool, the daily fitness plan is somewhat rigid, requiring members to choose one of three workout schedules, all of which require you to exercise five days a week. Members must select Sunday and Wednesday, Monday and Friday, or Tuesday and Saturday as rest days. There is an exercise index that lists the various movements, the muscles involved, how to perform the exercise, as well as tips, progressions and variations. Michaels' workout plan devotes one day per week solely to cardio, and she provides advice on how to make your cardio workout as effective as possible. There are also suggested playlists to listen to while you exercise, and fitness advice videos.

Members have access to advice from experts, message boards and peer support, and a database of Jillian's responses to frequently asked questions. Personal diet and fitness coaching via email is available for an additional fee of $5 per week. The base program is $4 per week, and members are charged once every 13 weeks. After an initial nonrefundable five week minimum commitment of $20, members can cancel at any time and receive a refund for the unused remainder of the subscription.

Jillian Michaels' fitness and nutrition program relies strongly on one woman's personality and image, rather than basic diet and exercise fundamentals that will apply to the majority of dieters. Some may be put off by the inflexibility of this program, while others are likely to find it uniquely motivating.