Prepare For Weight Loss, Part 8: Choosing a Program
I listed most of your weight-loss program options in Part 1 of this series. Now it’s time to make a choice. And it’s not easy sorting through all the options.
Straight away, I must tell you that women over 300 pounds (136 kg) and men over 350 pounds (159 kg) rarely have permanent success with self-help methods such as diet books, meal replacement programs, diet pills or supplements, and meal-delivery systems. People at those high weights who have tried and failed multiple different weight-loss methods should seriously consider bariatric surgery.
I respect your intelligence and desire to do your “due diligence” and weigh all your options: diet books, diet pills and supplements, bariatric surgery, meal replacement products (e.g., SlimFast), portion-control meal providers (e.g., NutriSystem), Weight Watchers, fad diets, no-diet diets, “just cutting back,” etc. You have to make the choice; I can’t make it for you. Here are some well-respected sources of advice to review before you choose:
- WebMD’s Choosing a Weight Loss Program
- MedicineNet.com’s Comparing Popular Weight Loss Diets, by Betty Kovacs, M.S., R.D.
- DietsInReview
- The Mayo Clinic’s Weight-Loss Options: 6 Common Diet Plans
- About.com’s Weight Loss Guide
- Jennifer R. Scott’s Before You Choose a Diet or Weight Loss Program
- Tracee Cornforth’s 6 Steps to Choosing a Safe, Successful Weight Loss Plan
For me personally, the “diet book” option is appealing. Why? Convenience. Low cost. Effectiveness. If I forget or don’t understand something, I can re-read it.
Since I am a diet book author, you may consider me biased in favor of my own book, which is more of a lifestyle modification book than a diet book. If I didn’t think I could do better than the other books on the market, I wouldn’t have bothered to write my own.
So, please consider my Advanced Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight, Feel Better, Live Longer. Click here for a description of the book. Click here for customer reviews. You can order the book at the AMD website, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or check it out from your local library.
I’ve also published a free, online, stripped-down version of my healthy lifestyle program: the Do-It-Yourself Mediterranean Diet.
Also free and brand-new for 2010 is my Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet, which is very low-carb. It’s at my Diabetic Mediterranean Diet Blog, but it works as well for non-diabetics as for diabetics.
[I’m doing everything I can to help you live longer and healthier.]
Whatever your choice, I wish you success and good health in 2010 and beyond!
Updated December 19, 2009
December 12th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Thanks for the book and info. I agree about the >300 lb who have tried and failed may be surgical candidates. Of course they need to be educated about side effects and know that, even with surgery, they will need diet and exercise.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the astute observations, Dr. Hubbard.
Too many in the general public think the surgery is a panacea. Even 1-2 years after “successful” surgery, most bariatric surgery patients are significantly overweight. The successful ones lose about 1/2 their excess weight (fat), not half of their baseline weight.
-Steve
December 12th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
oo, I just skimmed thru the online short version of your approach and don’t understand what grains are doing there as the daily food? ( coming out: I am a paleo-diet believer and guess we haven’t had enough time to get used to grains (well don’t get me wrong it’s a good source of energy for the folks building pyramides but if you don’t make such an effort or/and can afford to intake something more nutritious - just should avoid grains whole or otherwise (imho).
December 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hi, zbiggy.
I’m not yet very familiar with the paleo diet. But I’m getting the distinct impression that grains are not favored!
I think it’s too soon to reject all grain consumption. The science isn’t there yet. Rather than get into a lengthy debate right here, I promise to do some reading at Mark’s Daily Apple blog when time allows:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
Is that a good source?
As it stands now, I am very favorably disposed towards whole grain consumption in moderation. I’m not in favor of highly processed, refined grains, especially in someone trying to lose weight. It’s way to easy to overeat the refined products such as chips, bread, crackers, pastries. And the refined product has less fiber, phytonutrients, minerals, and vitamins, etc.
Here’s a link to an old blog post of mine, “More Evidence of Whole Grain Goodness”: http://advancedmediterraneandiet.com/blog/?p=41
-Steve
December 15th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
In short the ‘paleo’ diet is an attempt to emulate the diet of hunter-gatherers (before the agricaulture was introduced). The major “no-nos” are things that require cooking to be edible (like grains, beans, potatoes.
And dairy (which I personally neglect and eat cheeses, cream and butter)
There are still debates within the paleo about the saturated fat or the importance of fiber so there are not just one official standard, as I have gathered.
Marks Sisson at MDA developed a wholistic approach to diet and exercise called “Primal Blueprint” - so it’s one flavor of paleo, so to say.
(and the reward for following its principles is looking like this at 55: http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg158/MDA2008/Frisbee2-1.jpg
So you might want to look at his site starting with a post called
“What’s the Difference Between Primal and Paleo?”
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/whats-the-difference-between-primal-and-paleo/
as for the article on grains, I will look there later.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Thanks for the info, zbiggy.
-Steve
December 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’m familiar with MDA and the paleo approach. You could do a lot worse than Mark’s approach. However, given the choice, I believe the Mediterranean diet as you describe is a better, healthier way to go.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Thanks for your comment, Dr. J.
The paleo diet rationale seems to be based on an evolutionary argument: Certain foods were available to us during 99% of our evolution, so our bodies adapted to work optimally with them. I.e., humans/humanoids/higher primates who were not suited to the available food did not survive and reproduce, so their genes were not passed on to us.
For most of human existence, maximum lifespan was probably 25-30 years, on average. If that’s as long as you’re going to live, it may not matter much what you eat. Eat paleo, vegetarian, McDonald’s, Atkins, or Mediterranean. Most diet related conditions except overweight are not going to be an issue before age 30.
But now we live to be 80, long enough for diet-related diseases to appear. We have cancer, heart attacks, and strokes that paleo man never saw because he died of trauma or infection. We see the expression of genes that were not subjected to survival pressure: Alzheimers disease, Huntingtons chorea, some breast cancers, etc.
In other words, we carry genes that don’t matter if you die at age 30. If you live longer, they express themselves, and I believe we can modify their expression through diet and lifestyle. And not necessarily the paleo diet.
I’m still thinking it through.
I wonder which insects Mark Sisson recommends eating?
-Steve
December 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Well stated, Steve!
I think Mark likes the ones with a high saturated fat content, and no carbs
December 30th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Grubs and grasshoppers?
I don’t think they’re in the USDA Nutrient Database.
I saw SurvivorMan roast and eat some grasshoppers one episode.
-Steve