Following a keto diet plan doesn't mean that you can't enjoy food. In fact, following this type of diet plan should mean that you get to experiment with some fun new recipes. You will be surprised at the wide variety of foods that you can eat following keto. While you may have to give you a few things, like your favorite dessert, you will be able to eat very well. Plus, you have the benefit of feeling better and losing that unwanted weight.
At its core, a keto diet eliminates almost all of the carbohydrates from your diet. You replace these carbs with fats, fruits and vegetables. Keto helps re-train your body by burning fat for energy. By starving your body of carbs, your body will turn to stored fat for energy. This is where the weight loss comes from, plus the added health benefits that come from reduced weight.
You Can Eat Well On A Keto Diet
The biggest failing of most diet plans is that they are boring. The meals are bland and it seems like you are eating the same foods every day. Keto is different in that it allows you to eat a wide variety of foods. If you can change up your meals, you will stay more interested in your diet plan. Staying interested will keep you focused on your goal-long term weight loss.
Here are three keto diet cookbooks that we really like. Each is different but all three have easy to follow recipes. Plus, the meals are really good tasting!
Keto Diet CookBook For Beginners
This is a great cookbook for someone looking to get started on a keto diet. Yes, it has 550 recipes, which is probably more than one person needs. However, it has a huge variety of recipes. There are tons of well written and easy to follow recipes for almost every kind of cooking. The Keto Diet Cookbook For Beginners is a great keto book.
Southern Keto Cooking
Keto cooking with a regional take. We had a lot of fun with this cookbook. Southern cooking is one of our favorites and we were thrilled when this book was published. There are over 100 recipes to work with and all of them are very well written. The author even includes a shopping list, helping to take some of the mystery out of buying ingredients. Your family will love Southern Keto Cooking.
Keto Comfort Foods
Comfort foods are called comfort foods for a reason. We want them, we love them, we enjoy eating them. Too often, these types of foods are restricted on a diet and people crave them. Luckily, this cookbook shows you how to make your favorite comfort while staying true to your keto diet. Great recipes with great photos, this is a fun cookbook. Keto Comfort Foods should be on your bookshelf.
There are hundreds of cookbooks available that focus on the keto diet plan. These are three that we really like, but you can find others that are just as good. The goal is to find recipes that are keto friendly, that taste good and will help you stay focused on your weight loss goal.
If you have been searching for a good diet plan you know that there are hundreds of options to choose from. Without some research it is almost impossible to figure out which plans are effective, which plans are healthy and which plans are just plain useless. Luckily, many of the most popular plans have been thoroughly tested by medical organizations and colleges and their reports have been widely published. Here are some brief recaps of the top 10 diet plans available in the US today. As with any well designed diet plan these plans will incorporate some physical activity and will aim for healthy long term weight loss and improved overall health.
eDiets.com
This diet plan is probably the most popular online diet program today, one that is used by millions of people. Users can take advantage of both the website and the eDiets app, both of which are very user friendly. First time users are offered one free week to try out the program, then the monthly charge is $9.95 per user. eDiets offers a wide variety of options and tools that are designed to help you with every stage of your diet plan. As you plan your meals you will get shopping tips as well as food preparation tips and the addition of the app makes it easy to always know what you are eating or how to prepare your next meal. Diet plans include healthy heart plans, diabetes friendly plans, healthy weight loss plans and hypertension friendly plans. All are well designed and easy to follow.
Diet.com
Many people use Diet.com as their go-to site for healthy, diet friendly meal planning. While the site is designed to encourage membership, a casual user is able to find quite a few menu plans, some excellent recipes and a variety of well written articles to give you guidance in many areas of health. Using the premium services will give you access to detailed information on different types of diet plans, excellent food preparation tips and well-designed meal plans for all types of cuisines. The focus of the site is on lifestyle changes that include weight loss and improving your overall health. The layout of the site is very clean and easy to use.
MediFast Diet
A group of physicians banded together to assist their patients with their weight loss struggles while trying to help them with their health issues at the same time. This effort resulted in the Medifast Diet, a unique program that directly attacks the problem of feeling uncomfortably hungry while dieting. The plan revolves around a series of six meals a day, helping to getting rid of the appetite pangs and feeling of sacrifice that many dieters suffer while trying to lose weight. The plan is really to help transition into a healthier lifestyle that includes smart meal planning and regular physical activity. There are some great support tools for people using this program and the results have been impressive.
Jillian Michaels Diet Plan
The genesis of this plan comes from the TV program and Jillian Michaels is the force behind it. Focusing more on exercise, the idea is that a person can follow the program in the comfort of their home and not have to spend money on a gym or use a personal trainer. A healthy diet is the other part of the program and is designed to work with the increase metabolic activity brought on by the exercises. This strategy can be very effective for long term weight loss as the user allows exercise to be a regular, daily part of their routine. This is also an excellent plan for people looking to get rid of cellulite, hoping to reduce their blood pressure and increasing their energy level.
Denise Austin Diet
Denise Austin is a well-known fitness specialist who designed her diet around a strategy that lets you eat almost everything that you want to, but with dramatically smaller portions. By eating many smaller meals, including some of your favorite foods, you can eliminate that feeling of deprivation that dieters can suffer with. There is an emphasis on healthy balanced foods and adding exercise to your daily routine is a part of this diet plan.
Sonoma Diet
Basically a version of a Mediterranean diet, the Sonoma diet focuses on power foods to speed up weight loss and improve blood pressure levels and cholesterol counts. Power foods include almonds, bell peppers, blueberries, grapes, olive oil and strawberries. The rest of the diet plan includes whole grains, omega rich fish and nuts. Alcohol and sweets are avoid for the first three weeks of the diet and then used sparingly.
South Beach Diet Plan
Named for a well-known part of Miami, the South Beach Diet is a popular commercial diet that is basically a low-carb plan. Meals are planned around foods that are tasty, low in carbohydrates and filling so that hunger pangs don’t derail the dieter. Eating healthy foods and living a healthy lifestyle are the core concepts of South Beach and there are many support sites and tools to help you plan meals and exercise plans.
The Duke Diet & Fitness
One of the most well-known Fitness and Health Centers in America, Duke Diet And Fitness has created a weight management plan to help people lead healthier lives. It is a complete lifestyle plan and each aspect is designed for the individual using the program. Originally designed for patients staying at the facility, you can know follow the plan at home and use their website for support.
Nutrisystem Diet Plan
This is a unique lifestyle and diet plan for females and males, generally over 60, vegetarians, and Type 2 Diabetics. Using tailored diet plans, Nutrisystem focuses on the types of carbohydrates in the users diet, along with fiber and Omega-3 fatty acids to help control a dieters appetite while creating meal plans that will help with weight loss and improving health problems that come with diabetes and high blood pressure. This has been shown to be a very effective diet plan for people with hypertension and diabetes.
5 Factor Diet Plan
An interesting diet plan that was developed for Hollywood stars, 5 Factor Diet is based upon physical fitness and a healthy diet plan. Typically with this plan a person will eat 5 small, well balanced meals that are high in protein and low in carbohydrates. Daily exercise is part of this plan and the type of exercise is designed to focus on body toning as well as strength. The results can be excellent but it does require a large time commitment.
Regardless of which diet plan you decide to try you should consult with your doctor or medical professional. Don’t fall for claims of quick weight loss with no dieting or false promises of pills. For any diet plan to succeed you will need to change your eating habits, incorporate exercise into your daily routine and maintain this discipline for a period of time.
One of the more well-known and well-studied diet plans is the Atkins plan. At its core the Atkins diet is a high protein, low carbohydrate diet plan that has a high level of animal fat in the foods offered. Some medical authorities have questioned the amount of meat and fat that is offered through this plan but millions of people have had success in losing and keeping off excess weight by following closely the Atkins formula.
There are quite a few studies that have shown that by dramatically reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed will allow your body to burn excess fat, leading to both short term and long term weight loss. By adding proper amounts of vitamins and nutrients to meals, there are also results that show improved blood pressure levels, a raising of “good” cholesterol levels and increased energy level. Some studies have shown a decrease in LDL cholesterol levels “called bad cholesterol” but this has not been as consistent in all studies.
Does The Atkins Diet Work?
Despite having been available as a recognized diet plan, Atkins still has some contradictory evidence and is still being studied by many medical colleges. While some differing results have been shown by some studies, the Atkins diet and lifestyle plan has been shown to offer its users some valuable weight loss and health improvements when followed faithfully. Because of the ability to eat many favorite foods, such as steak and pork, many people find this type of diet to be an easy one to get started on and then to stay on for an extended period of time.
One of the more attractive features of the Atkins plan is that the food you get to eat, such as eggs, butter, cheese, red meat, will actually help your body to start burning fat. You are replacing certain types of calories that are found in carbohydrates, calories that are considered empty. By eliminating starches, sugars and carbs you are forcing your body to stop burning carbs for energy. Your system is then forced to turn to another power source, fat, and begin to burn that for its energy. This process is called ketosis and it is the process that will have your body burning fat cells, leading to serious and long term weight loss.
One Benefit: Lower Food Costs
One often ignored benefit of an Atkins plan is that many people find that their overall food costs can go down. Because you are no longer eating processed foods and are concentrating on protein-heavy foods you can enjoy some major savings. Breads, sugars and starches tend to be expensive, especially when they are used in prepared meals. While meats, fruits and vegetables can be expensive you have much more control over what you are preparing and can eliminate a lot of unwanted expense.
A common, but potentially harmful, side effect of going on a diet is that people tend to pick and choose parts of a diet that sound easy, ignoring the fact that a good diet plan is a full lifestyle change. This can happen with an Atkins plan if people just look at eating cheese, meat and butter. That may sound fun, and easy to do for a while, but it ignores completely the importance of vitamins and nutrients that are found in the fruits and vegetables that are in the plan. Plant proteins, such as those found in nuts, are a key part of a healthy Atkins plan.
Should You Try The Atkins Diet?
Should you try an Atkins diet plan? Will this protein rich, carb free food plan actually help you lose weight and get healthier? For most people the results are very positive but it is not a magic formula. As with any diet plan, you will need to add some physical activity to your routine to enjoy all of the benefits of an Atkins diet. You will also need to pay close attention to what foods you eat, especially when you are looking at the carbohydrate levels in some food that claim to be low carb. Many people struggle with the idea that some fruits are fine with this diet but others are not acceptable, at least during the first few months.
The Atkins diet and lifestyle plan has a large, loyal following that swear by the results and have stayed with some style of the plan even after they have reached their weight loss goals. On the other side of this is a group who dislike the plan because of its use of fats and red meat as staples, although there are now many options that use less fat and more plant proteins. There is a large retail offering of Atkins products, from snack bars and shakes to full entrees. Most major supermarkets and online retailers offer a wide assortment of Atkins food product.
No diet plan is perfect and no diet plan works for everyone. Atkins has been shown to work well for millions of dieters and has a good support system for those who try the plan. It is well worth checking out if you are hoping to lose weight and keep it off.
Some form of a Mediterranean diet plan has been practiced for hundreds of years, but not as set diet and meal plan. It is actually a lifestyle, centering on food,that is maintained by people who live in that geographical are. People living in Greece or Italy may not have understood the many advantages of consuming healthy foods "Mediterranean" style. Instead, it was just what their lifestyle called for; eating the foods that are native to that region. Foods such as fish, olive oil, fruits, vegetables and whole grains are native to the region and are the fundamental pieces of the Mediterranean diet plan.
Many detailed studies have shown that following a Mediterranean diet plan greatly increases the chances of long term healthy weight loss. It also has been shown to significantly decrease the risks of serious diseases that are associated with being overweight. Most medical experts recognize five specific benefits from following a Mediterranean style diet.
Fairly Rapid Weight Loss
One welcome benefit of the Mediterranean diet is that most people will see a quick weight loss. Nothing is better for a dieter’s state of mind than to see fast results when they have changed their eating habits. The meals are designed around delicious foods that are both filling and extremely healthy. You aren’t forced to eat tiny portions of tasteless foods that you can’t recognize. Instead, you can enjoy fish prepared in olive oil with roasted peppers, garlic and onions. Add to this some broccoli with balsamic vinegar and parmesan. Terrific!
Improved And Excellent Heart Health
The tasty diet plan dishes offered with a Mediterranean diet plan are all developed to promote a very healthy heart. Meals are designed around heart healthy foods like olive oil, vegetables, fruits and omega oil rich fish such as salmon. Studies have shown that using these foods in your everyday cooking, while cutting out excess fats and sugars, will help to increase dramatically the health of your heart. Important vitamins and nutrients are in almost all of the foods used in this type of diet plan, also improving your heart’s overall health.
Greatly Reduces The Risk Of Cancer
Too many toxic food related substances in your system has been shown to cause certain kinds of cancer. Some of these cancers can take the form of prostrate, uterine or breast cancer. By eating more of the healthier foods promoted in the Mediterranean diet, such as vegetables and fruits, you can start to eliminate many of toxins that are contained in less healthy foods. One other plus is that most of the foods used in the Mediterranean diet are known anti-oxidants.
Help Prevent Gallstones
The Mediterranean diet plan is rich in nuts, vegetable oil, and fish and these foods have been shown to help reduce the risk of gallstones in some people. While this type of diet won’t completely eliminate the possibility of gallstones appearing, it does increase your odds of avoiding them. Anyone who has ever suffered from gallstones knows that you want to avoid them if at all possible.
Greatly Reduces Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is known as a silent killer and quite often it is the direct result of a poor diet and carrying too much weight. Because this diet plan is heavy in healthy, low fat foods most dieters will see a tremendous improvement in their blood pressure levels. When you eat fewer fatty foods your body returns to its natural level of blood pressure and cholesterol. The reduction of salt is also a key component of blood pressure reduction, yet you will find that the meals still taste great. Almost all of the meals are seasoned with tangy herbs and spices that increase the flavor without the harmful effects of too much table salt. Most of the meals are prepared by roasting or baking and very little fat is used for frying. Both of these methods are far healthier and help keep excess fat out of your diet.
These five key benefits are just a few of the many advantages that come from changing to a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle. Your improved overall health, along with a very healthy long term weight loss will show benefits for years to come.
Following a keto diet plan doesn't mean that you can't enjoy food. In fact, following this type of diet plan should mean that you get to experiment with some fun new recipes. You will be surprised at the wide variety of foods that you can eat following keto. While you may have to give you a few things, like your favorite dessert, you will be able to eat very well. Plus, you have the benefit of feeling better and losing that unwanted weight.
At its core, a keto diet eliminates almost all of the carbohydrates from your diet. You replace these carbs with fats, fruits and vegetables. Keto helps re-train your body by burning fat for energy. By starving your body of carbs, your body will turn to stored fat for energy. This is where the weight loss comes from, plus the added health benefits that come from reduced weight.
This is a great cookbook for someone looking to get started on a keto diet. Yes, it has 550 recipes, which is probably more than one person needs. However, it has a huge variety of recipes. There are tons of well written and easy to follow recipes for almost every kind of cooking. The Keto Diet Cookbook For Beginners is a great keto book.
Keto cooking with a regional take. We had a lot of fun with this cookbook. Southern cooking is one of our favorites and we were thrilled when this book was published. There are over 100 recipes to work with and all of them are very well written. The author even includes a shopping list, helping to take some of the mystery out of buying ingredients. Your family will love Southern Keto Cooking.
Comfort foods are called comfort foods for a reason. We want them, we love them, we enjoy eating them. Too often, these types of foods are restricted on a diet and people crave them. Luckily, this cookbook shows you how to make your favorite comfort while staying true to your keto diet. Great recipes with great photos, this is a fun cookbook. Keto Comfort Foods should be on your bookshelf.
There are hundreds of cookbooks available that focus on the keto diet plan. These are three that we really like, but you can find others that are just as good. The goal is to find recipes that are keto friendly, that taste good and will help you stay focused on your weight loss goal.
