Online Diet Programs Reviews and Prices

eDiets Review: Online Diet ProgramsGo to Site | Back to Chart

[Editor's Note: Editor's Note: For a limited time, eDiets is offering an exclusive "one week free" deal to NextAdvisor.com visitors. To take advantage of this offer, click on any eDiets link on NextAdvisor.com and enter coupon code SAVE25.]

eDiets.com offers a wide range of different diet and fitness plans, each with innovative motivational and support tools. eDiets will help you select the personalized plan that best fits your needs by taking you through a survey about your current health, weight loss goals, and other pertinent information. All eDiets.com plans combine recipes, expert support, general guidelines, and a fitness plan into one package.

Meals

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. Each week, a new menu is generated with from over 6,000 recipes, so you don't need to worry about getting bored with the options. If you don't like a particular meal, you can easily swap it with another one from their substitution list.

The weekly menus allow you to create instant shopping lists to take to the grocery store. These shopping list are a huge convenience, and take the guess work and planning out of going to the supermarket. The list indicates what you'll need for each meal during the week, and the quantity of that item. There is an option to remove items you already have in stock, so if you're stocked up on tomatoes and don't need to buy any, you can check the "remove" box and delete that item.



Support

eDiets.com offers phone, email and online chat support with their nutrition 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 gauge your progress, journal your weight loss, or track your food intake. There are support forums and chat room to touch base with other eDiet members. You can even share photos and videos. The entire package acts as sort of an online support group and social network for dieters, which is a strong component of any successful diet plan.

Fitness

The fitness portion of the diet is 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 plan includes both cardio and weight lifting, and you can quickly change any exercises you don't like to a suggested substitute. If the plan says you should plan tennis for 45 minutes, but you feel like a brisk walk, it's easy to swap it out. The entire plan is even printable so you can bring it with you.



Options

eDiets.com consists 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.

Cost

eDiets is currently offering a special 7-day free trial to NextAdvisor.com readers. To take advantage of this deal, click any eDiet.com link.

After the 7-day free trial period, 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.

Bottom Line

eDiets is our top pick for a DIY program. The combination of tasty meal plans, strong online support and fleshed out fitness plan make a for a very compelling choice.

Glycemic Impact Diet Review: Online Diet ProgramsGo 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 Index 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.

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.

Meals

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.

Every week you'll receive a personalized meal plan, complete with a printable shopping list. The shopping list is a convenient way to plan ahead for trips to the grocery store. After checking your fridge and pantry, you can remove the items you already have, such as cheddar cheese. Then just print the list out and take it with you.



Support

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. You can contact their team of nutritionists via an 800 number, a live chat session, or email. 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 gauge your progress, journal your weight loss, or track your food intake.



Fitness

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 daily program can be changed or adapted, so if you don't want to go for a walk that day you can choose to play tennis instead. The virtual trainer is an excellent tool for those who aren't familiar with weight lifting, and will show you step by step instructions on how to do each exercise. The entire plan is even printable, so you can take it with you to the gym.



Bottom Line

We like the Glycemic Impact Diet because of it's flexibility, meal plans and strong support. For those in need of regulating their blood sugar, or just want a program that will increase their energy, Glycemic Impact is a good choice.

eDiets Living with Diabetes Review: Online Diet ProgramsGo to Site | Back to Chart

eDiets, our top reviewed DIY plan, has a plan targeted towards those with Type 2 diabetes or a family history of diabetes. The eDiets Living with Diabetes plan meets the recommendations of both the American Diabetes Association and the Joslin Diabetes Center. The plan is designed to keep your blood glucose levels under control, and provides daily guidelines for calories from a mix of 40% complex carbohydrates, 35% fat and 30% protein.

The Living with Diabetes plan is highly personalized based on information you provide, such as your weight-loss goal, current health, fitness level and food preferences. It even comes with the eDiets "Weight Loss Guarantee", which states that if you don't lose the weight you want in less than 6 months, you'll get the next 6 months of eDiets for free. The cost is $17.96 per month, and it includes all the online tools described in this review.

Meals

Once you've signed up, you'll get your very own weekly menu with a convenient print-and-go shopping list. If you hate fish, and Wednesday's dinner features mahi mahi, don't despair. The menu is editable, so if there is a meal you don't like, you can easily substitute another one from a long list of options. This flexibility was nice, and we used it on several occasions to switch out a meal we didn't want to eat for one we did.



The menus themselves are varied and tasty - even getting high marks from Epicurious.com, a site for foodies. They also weren't complicated to make, and each recipe is printable so you can take it into the kitchen with you. The recipes usually have between 4-10 ingredients, and the average preparation time was about 10-15 minutes. Every meal even comes complete with a nutrition breakdown, just like you'd see at the store on a label.

The printable shopping list specifies exactly what you need to buy for your meals. We found this shopping list to be a real boon, removing the hassle of putting together the dreaded grocery list. The quantities of every item you'll need that week are displayed, and you can remove what you already have. For example, if it indicates you need 1 cup of chicken broth and you already have a can on your shelf, you can delete that item from the list.



Support

If you have any diet or food questions, there is a team of nutritionists on staff to answer them. You can contact them via an 800 number, a live chat session, or email. This is a particularly nice feature, as not many of us have our own personal nutritionist to help us plan our meals or answer questions that tend to pop up.

For those that appreciate a little help from their (online) friends, eDiets has plenty of support forums and chat rooms. Need a new lower body exercise or want to chat with other dieters in your age group? They've got a forum for that! If you're the journaling type, you can use their online journal/blog tool to keep track of how you're feeling and your daily goals. You can keep your journal private or share it with your friendly neighborhood eDieters. They even have a section for uploading videos and photos to share. Basically, eDiets is it's own social network, enabling members to contact and share with each other.

Fitness

All complete weight loss or maintenance plans should include a fitness component, and eDiets won't let you down. Once you've completed your fitness profile, which includes your fitness level, interests (do you like to hike, swim or play tennis?), weight loss goal, and any injuries you may have, eDiets will generate a weekly exercise plan for you. The plan includes both cardio and weight lifting.

Each day will describe what type of cardio you should do, and for how long. It also indicates which weight-bearing exercises you should do, and provides illustrated examples of how to do them. The whole plan is printable, so you can take it to the gym - or wherever - with you. If you want to mix it up, you can make whatever edits you desire to the plan by selecting a different cardio routine, or choosing an alternate leg exercise.



When you log in each day, you're greeted by a summary of your menu and exercise plan for the day. We felt like this was a good way to keep members on track with their goals, and a nice way to motivate you to stick with the plan.



Drawbacks

One thing we didn't love about eDiets is their tendency to cross-sell other products. You'll see the first evidence of this during the sign up, and once you're a member, you'll see some ads for their product store within your online interface. It's pretty easy to ignore the ads, so it's not a big hassle, but it is something we noticed. On the positive side, they do sell exercise videos and fitness equipment, which might be convenient for those who like to exercise at home, so at least the ads are relevant.

Bottom Line

Overall, we felt eDiets Living with Diabetes plan was a solid and tasty choice for diabetics and pre-diabetics. The meals were nutritionally sound, and comply with the American Diabetes Associations guidelines. The full-fledged online community, robust fitness plan and access to licensed nutritionists round out the offering.

South Beach Diet Review: Online Diet ProgramsGo to Site | Back to Chart

The South Beach Diet was created by Dr. Arthur Agatston to help his cardiac patients get their diets under control and engage in a healthy lifestyle. Because the diet is low glycemic in nature, diabetics and pre-diabetics might also find it helpful.

Overview

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 offers 2 types of meal plans - "basic" and "vegetarian". Since the plan is already low glycemic, it should work fine for diabetics too, but as always, you should check with your doctor first. There aren't specific plans for men or women, but the recipes are filling enough that the majority of dieters won't feel deprived. In fact, many of the recipes contain enough food to feed 2-4 people, so if you're still hungry you can eat extra servings. They also provide very clear guidelines on how to adapt your meal plan if you'd like extra food or want to swap out ingredients.

Meals

A new meal plan is created every week, starting from the day you sign up. You can easily exchange any meals you don't like with alternate meals. So if a Light Spinach Frittata with Tomato Salsa isn't up your alley, just hit the "Change This Meal" link next to it and switch it to another meal option like Artichokes Benedict.



Along with the meal plans you also have access to a printable shopping list detailing the ingredients you'll need to make your meals. You can select the days and meals you need ingredients for, and remove ingredients you already have. It's a convenient way to make sure you have everything on hand you'll need when it comes time to whip up a meal.



Support

The South Beach Diet online portion includes a wealth of tools. Along with the previously mentioned recipe database, meal planner and shopping list generator, you also get access to food guides, 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.

They even have registered dietitians to answer your questions. This is a nice perk, but you need to pay an extra $2.99/week if you'd like this particular feature, something we felt was a little off-putting. Other DIY diet plans we reviewed, including eDiets, provide this service free of charge.

Fitness

The South Beach Diet website also offers a 'Fitness Club' with tips, videos, and instruction -- but we were disappointed to learn that this too 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.

Bottom Line

Overall, the diet is a healthy approach to weight loss and eating in general, and provides a solid foundation for continued success. However, the fact that you need to pay extra to talk to a dietitian or even to get an exercise program are definite negatives, especially when other diets plans include those features free of charge.

Weight Watchers Review: Online Diet ProgramsGo to Site | Back to Chart

[Editor's Note: Weight Watchers is offering a 25% discount on Weight Watcher Online when you sign up for a three month plan. To take advantage of this promotion, simply click here.]

Weight Watchers has a strong track record, with over 40 years of helping people lose weight under its belt. As they say themselves, "Weight Watchers works because it's not a diet. You'll learn how to eat right and live healthy."

Meals

Weight Watchers features the 'Momentum Program', a program that teaches it users how to make healthy and smart food choices. The backbone of the Momentum Program is the 'Points System', the classic Weight Watchers methodology of assigning points to foods that you eat based its calories, fat and fiber. It 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.

Weight Watchers has specific programs for both men and vegetarians. They also allow extra points are given for exercise and nursing moms. Weight Watchers is one of the only plans with a special program for nursing moms.

Meetings vs. Online

When signing up for the Momentum Plan, you are given 2 options. Users can elect to attend Weight Watchers Meetings, or they can go the strictly online route. With both options, Weight Watchers helps you to establish healthy goals for weight loss including helping you to determine a healthy range for your final weight goals.

Weight Watcher Meetings

Meetings provide a more interactive approach to weight loss, with confidential weigh-ins, and personal guidance, strategies and tips. Each meeting is chaired by a 'Leader', someone who who has lost weight with Weight Watchers and typically guides the meetings.

Meeting participants are also given the option of signing up for eTools, the online portion of Weight Watchers, at an extra cost of $12.95 per month. eTools will help track points and chart your progress online.

Weight Watchers Online

If meetings aren't your thing, you can choose to just sign up for the full-featured Weight Watchers Online program. Their online, password-protected site is 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.

It 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. They even have online exercise videos and and workout tips.

Bottom Line

Weight Watchers offers two solid choices for weight loss; Weight Watchers Meetings and Weight Watchers Online. Overall, both choices are 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: Online Diet ProgramsGo 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: Online Diet ProgramsGo 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.