1. Alter your mindset: One of the biggest problem for dieters is the way they view a diet, their mindset. It seems like a big sacrifice or losing your freedom like a prison sentence. May be you feel that you are depriving yourself. It helps to reframe your idea of what you’re really trying to do.  It is not just to lose the weight but to gain a healthier lifestyle.

Change how you view your diet so you can stick to it. If you’re too restrictive and never allow yourself to have the things you enjoy, you won’t be able to stay with it. Cut yourself some slack once in a while (see the next tip).

2. Give yourself a break: Don’t kid yourself, there will be times that you don’t live up to your own dietary expectations.  Instead of using that as an excuse to blow off your diet completely, just give yourself a break.

No one eats a healthy meal every day of their lives. You’ll need to allow yourself a few treats here and there.  If you eat too big of a meal, get over it and cut back on the next meal. Make healthier choices the next time.

3. Set smaller goals. Setting smaller goals will help you to monitor your progress and keep youself motivated.  Most people set weight-related goals that are not realistic.  And when the scale doesn’t show them immediate results, they quit.  Instead, set goals that closely match your diet plan.

For example, set a goal to drink 7 to 8 glasses of water every day, take a multivitamin, or eat fruits and vegetables for at least one meal.  Then when you reach those goals, you can reward yourself with a small treat for a job well done.

4. Find a diet pal: Working with a partner can help you to share your shortcomings as well as your successes. You can bounce ideas off your diet pal and hold each other accountable for sticking with your respective diet plans. You can swap recipes, trade meal ideas, and help each other enjoy the process of dieting instead of dreading it.

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Cold brewskis and friends: When men get together with their friends, having a few cold beers is the norm. Even in other social gatherings, alcohol is a constant presence. This is a challenge if you are trying to diet because alcohol tends to make you feel hungry, you reach for the snacks and as a result overeat.

The best thing for your diet would be to abstain from alcohol altogether. However, this may be unrealistic or difficult for you give up. In that case, you can try to slow down your rate of consumption. Sipping your beer instead of chugging, may not be very manly but will help your cut back on the number of beers you drink.

If you are into the hard stuff, alternate a glass of cold water between each alcoholic drink. It will help you feel fuller and cut down your drinks by half or more.

Some men are the salt of the earth: Unlike women who tend to have a sweet tooth, most men tend to have a craving for salty snacks. Usually these also tend to be high fat foods like nachos, wings, chips, and salty peanuts. These are often temptations for men.

Salty foods can really keep you from getting the weight loss that you’re seeking from your diet program. There are a couple of easy ways to help with the salt cravings. One method is to prepare your favorite foods in low-sodium, low-fat versions.

If you absolutely must have a serving of your favorite nachos loaded with salt and fat, stick to smaller portions. Finally, if you have a day where you eat a lot of extra salt, drink lots of water to help flush it out of your system. Salt by itself does not contribute to weight gain because it has no calories but high consumption of salt causes your body to retain water and leads to temporary weight gain.

When you start eating a diet that’s lower in sodium, eventually these cravings will die down. So take a break from the salt for a while, and you’ll see the cravings become more manageable.

Exercising to bulk up: Men tend to exercise with the goal of bulking up. In that case, you may find that you’re putting on pounds instead of losing them even though you are eating healthy and on a diet. However, it’s okay to be putting on muscle mass because eventually it will help you to lose the weight you want to lose. Don’t forget to add some aerobic activity to your routine. It will help you to burn fat faster so that you can see those hard-earned muscles.  Good diet with an exercise program will work wonders for any man.

Those are three diet challenges that are unique to men.

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Believers of raw food diet weight loss programs say that it is virtually impossible to gain weight on raw food, especially if you are overweight to begin. For that reason there is no particular food plan to follow when you go raw. The only rule is that you do not eat anything that has been cooked or processed using heat over 115 degrees Fahrenheit. This automatically rules out almost anything that you would buy in a package or a jar.

Even people of normal weight who switch to a raw diet usually lose weight. The exception might be people who eat a very large amount of nuts. Even then, you will probably find that you lose weight in the beginning. If you hit a plateau where you stop losing for a while, you might want to consider your nut consumption and reduce it if it is very high. The raw food diet is sometimes criticized for having a high level of fat and the culprit is usually nuts.

Many nuts are anyway subject to heat processing to remove the shells when they are available commercially. It is best to buy nuts in their shells. Cashews, macadamia nuts, brazils that you buy shelled and many other types of nuts are not really raw even if you buy them unroasted. The nuts in nut butters have also usually been heated in the processing.

When you do buy raw nuts such as filberts, it is best to soak them overnight before eating, to reactivate their growth enzymes. The same is true of seeds although seeds only need to be soaked for 2-4 hours. Pre soaking your nuts and seeds will help you avoid eating too many.

You can eat sprouted grains as well as many beans and lentils. These should be soaked overnight before sprouting in a jar or purpose made sprouting trays.

Red kidney beans should not be eaten raw because they are toxic. There are many other foods that contain some toxins which may or may not affect people depending on the quantities consumed and your sensitivity. These include buckwheat greens, alfalfa sprouts, cassava, peas, eggs in large quantities, apricot kernels, brassica vegetables and parsnips. Raw milk and raw meat may carry microbial disease including tuberculosis.

However, any raw food including lettuce can carry microbes that can give you food poisoning. Nobody cooks lettuce. Therefore raw foodists say that there is no point in stressing out about the idea of microbes on raw food. They believe that the body is better equipped to deal with any disease, including food borne illnesses, when it is fed on a raw diet. Still, it is a good idea to always wash your food well.

If you do not plan to eat 100% raw food, then whatever cooked food you eat should be natural, whole, healthy foods. Avoid refined grains like white rice and anything made with white flour including white bread and pasta. It is best to avoid refined sugars and anything containing them.

The majority of your cooked food should be vegetables and perhaps some brown rice and low fat meat such as skinless chicken breast. For example in winter you might want to have vegetable soup with some chicken. Have salad as a first course before your cooked dish and finish with fresh raw fruit instead of any other type of dessert.

If you follow this plan then even on 75% raw you should have no trouble losing weight in a healthy way. Raw food diet weight loss plans do seem to work for anybody who is able to stick to them.

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1. Social issues: Women are known to hold social gatherings that are centered on food. And often these foods aren’t the healthiest of choices. You can overcome that by bringing your own healthier choices or hosting a party with a health-conscious theme.
   It’s also a good idea to try to have gatherings where food isn’t the focus. Try going to performances, museums, or having a game night where the snacks are the sideline, not the main event.
2. Hormonal changes: Women have the unique experience of dealing with changes in the menstrual cycle. Dealing with PMS can cause increases in cravings, water retention, and make you feel like you simply can’t deal with your diet.
   Being aware of your cycle can help you to plan ahead for these problems and temptations. For example, if you know that you’re going to have a few pounds of extra water weight at a specific time of the month, you can stay off the scales for a few days.
   If you have specific foods you crave, you can also plan for that. One way to battle your chocolate cravings is to try dark chocolate. It can satisfy your craving for chocolate, but because it’s very rich, you can’t eat a lot of it at once.
3. Satisfying your sweet tooth: For women, sweet snacks are often the most tempting. Cookies, cakes, chocolate, and other candy can be the hardest thing to let go of. Many women try to deal with this by choosing fat-free snacks that are still high in sugar.
   Instead, try to eat snacks such as fruit and protein that give you energy, but don’t have the processed sugars that make those cravings worse. After a while of not having a lot of sugar, you’ll feel those cravings start to weaken.

Keep these three issues in mind and may be your next diet plan will not be such a challenge.

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Unlike many diet plans today, the Fat Smash Diet is inexpensive. You shop just like normal at your regular grocery store without having to buy strange foods with names that you can’t pronounce. You don’t need to add any obscure spices to fix them at home. Once you understand the rationale behind how the diet works, you can follow what it says and see measurable weight loss.

What you need to do:

It is not a quick fix fad diet but one that will change your lifestyle and eating habits for the long term. Using diet and exercise, you can find success on this 90-day program. It is important to note that during each phase of the plan it is recommended that you eat four to five times a day every day. The constant fuel keeps your metabolism high.

Phase One lasts for nine days. You can eat fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grain cereal like oatmeal, brown rice and drink water or herbal tea. Milk is also allowed as long as it is not the full fat variety. If you can last until Day Ten, you will have wiped your metabolic slate clean in preparation to start again.

Phase Two is the foundation phase. The same foods are eaten as in Phase One but with a few additions like lean meat (in moderation), seafood (like shrimp), some condiments, juices, more whole-grain cereals, eggs and the like. As far as fats, you are allowed unsaturated fats like olive oil.

Phase Three is where you add in more food. Now that you are getting used to eating healthier foods your portions are increased but not by much. Now, breads are eaten and whole grain pasta. Desserts from a list can be chosen if you feel the craving. This phase lasts about four weeks.

The last phase is the maintenance phase. You can add more foods in like the ones that you used to like to eat, but portion size is still important. You won’t count calories or grams of anything because the idea is to choose foods that are healthier for you so you can be flexible in that department.

What about exercise? It is a major part of the Fat Smash Diet. Regular exercise is stressed throughout the entire 90-day program and beyond. Exercising increases metabolism, burns fat and calories, improves mood and helps reduce weight gain.

Are you up to the challenge? Try the Fat Smash Diet.

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Curves is an exercise gym that caters to women and this book about the Curves Diet Plan complements all that hard work done in the gym.

The Curve Diet Plan takes a revolutionary approach to permanent weight loss and the results have been replicated in two studies performed by Baylor University’s Exercise & Sport Nutrition Lab to validate its effectiveness.

In “Curves,” Heavin explains how traditional diets activate the body’s starvation hormones, which lower metabolism and cause weight gain. The Curves diet plan reprograms the body’s metabolism to absorb as many as 3,000 calories a day. This means the freedom to eat full portions without gaining weight – with major results seen in two short weeks.

You can check out this plan at any Curves location. The philosophy behind the workout is that if you have thirty minutes, you can get fit. The routine is a circuit training regimen that combines aerobics and strength training to get the most out of your body during those thirty minutes.

At Curves, you can meet with a nutritionist to help you flesh out a diet program that is right for you to follow so that you are losing weight through diet and your hard work in the gym. Curves has two plans that you can decide from: The Calorie-Sensitive plan and the Carbohydrate-Sensitive plan. If one doesn’t produce the desired results for you, then switch to the other.

What you need to do:

Choose your plan to follow. The plans are broken out into three phases. Phase One is designed to jumpstart your weight loss. Phase Two is followed until you reach your target goal. Phase Three is the maintenance phase of the diet plan.

With the Curves Diet plan, you are in essence learning to retrain your body to burn fat in the most efficient way. You are revving up your metabolism.

Each diet plan includes exercise and supplementation. Since the program is designed for women, the exercise component is usually your thirty minute workout at Curves. You can workout at home using inexpensive equipment if you want to. All dieters are asked to take a multivitamin. Depending on your age, other supplements may be recommended.

Now, let’s look at the food. On each plan, you will either be counting calories or the amount of carbohydrates in your diet. A protein shake is consumed each day throughout the first two phases of both plans along with at least eight glasses of water.

The plan also includes the following food groups:

• Lean meat
• Vegetables
• Fruit
• Low fat dairy products
• Whole grains

The book will give you recipes and a list of “free foods” that can be eaten as often as you like each day. In Phase Three you can return to your previous calorie limit as long as you are not gaining weight. But, continuing to exercise will probably help you keep your weight steady.

A diet plan that is just for women? That is what the Curves Diet plan is all about.

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The name is definitely catchy but it is worth a second look. As much as we (Americans) like to bash the French, we can learn how to eat like them and still lose weight.

In the book, Mireille Guiliano(a Frenchwoman herself) explains how French women maintain their lean figures in two ways: eating high quality foods and deriving pleasure from them.

The one thing that kills our attempts at healthy eating is portion sizes. We all want to get the most bang for our buck, but that often comes at the cost of our waistlines. Portion control is quite important on any diet plan. Eating too much is always a recipe for disaster.

With the French Women Don’t Get Fat Diet, you are encouraged to savor your food, both with your eyes and your taste buds. Eating slowly and with purpose is a must that will keep you from eating too much at any one sitting. It has long been advocated that chewing your food completely reduces your hunger and the amount of food you end up eating.

What you need to do:

There is a book so don’t worry if you can’t remember all that is said here. To jumpstart your taste buds and your new way of viewing food, the diet begins with a two-day soup marathon. The soup in question: Leek Soup. Leeks are a type of onion. The only other thing consumed in that 48-hour period is water.

The purpose of this soup fast is to rid the body of harmful toxins and also to wipe the palate clean. Now, you can start to rebuild your metabolism and your food repertoire the French way. You will mostly lose water weight but the quick change is motivation to keep going with the eating plan. Also during this time, you are asked to evaluate the types of foods that you eat and what needs to go to help you become healthier.

Guiliano recommends eating healthy, lean meats, poultry and fish. Each day you will eat at least two servings of yogurt to provide calcium and to fight hunger. Add to that vegetables and fruits. Keeping a food journal lets you see where the problems are lurking that threaten your weight loss efforts.

When you eat, avoid other distractions. You want to concentrate on feasting your eyes on the food and savoring the taste in your mouth. Instead of salt, try other seasonings to bring out the flavor of the meal. Eating hot spices like cayenne pepper will also speed up your metabolism.

Exercise is not specified on this program but you are asked to move each day. You can incorporate exercise if you like and/or continue the exercise program you already follow.

The French have a different outlook on food. Using their hints, you can lose weight and begin eating for health and pleasure.

French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure:

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The truth is that to see your abs, you need to lose the fat. Losing the layer of adipose tissue that lies on top of the abdominal muscles is not the easiest task in the world, but it can be done. Attention to diet and exercise will eventually get you the look that you want.

Through all your dieting efforts, it is important to continue on a targeted exercise program that is designed to boost your metabolism and burn fat.

As you might have guessed, the exercise in question involves working the abs muscles. To achieve quicker results, use circuit training, a combination of aerobic activity and strength training. A certain number of reps of a strength exercise are alternated with aerobics (bicycling, running, jumping rope). With little more than twenty seconds or so of rest between exercises, the heart rate is kept elevated until you finish your circuit training. You work the heart, lungs and build muscle tissue.

What you need to do:

What you eat is just as important as the effort you put into your workouts on this diet plan. The main principle is eating five to six small meals each day to maintain a high metabolism. But, these aren’t just any foods. Choose foods that are low in saturated fats, full of protein and whole grains. Any fats are best consumed as unsaturated fats like olive oil, flaxseed oil and nuts.

The Abs Diet relies on a 7-day meal plan that includes twelve power foods.

• Peanut butter
• Olive oil
• Whey protein
• Berries
• Lean meat
• Eggs
• Low fat dairy
• Oatmeal
• Nuts
• Beans and legumes
• Green vegetables

You will lose weight and more importantly, the fat covering your midsection when each meal contains at least two or more of these power foods. If you aren’t sure how you will put them together, David’s book contains recipes and other meal suggestions so you can get as many of these foods into your daily routine. And, once a week, you are allowed a cheat meal to savor some of the foods you love, in moderation of course. That’s what makes the Abs Diet so great!

David Zinczenko’s The Abs Diet Books and DVDs:

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The name draws you in to find out more about this diet plan created by Jorge Cruise. The time frame here refers to how often you are allowed to eat. According to the creator of the plan, eating often revs up your metabolism and keeps it high. When it threatens to dip, it’s time to add more nutritious fuel to your body.

Eating every three hours may seem like a lot, but considering how many hours you are actually awake during the day, it is not. During that time, you will lose weight when you eat three meals and snacks in between, being sure to observe a certain calorie limit for each meal.

What you need to do:

The 3-Hour Diet plan starts with a calorie limit for each meal. The total calories eaten at any one time is not supposed to exceed 400 and snacks are limited to 100 calories each. More calories are allowed in the form of a 50 calorie night snack for dieters weighing less than 200 pounds when they start.

So, what do you eat? According to the diet, you can eat a variety of foods. No food is really off limits. The only stipulation is that the calorie limits are observed. What he recommends is food from all major food groups: protein, fats, carbohydrates and low fat dairy. This means lean meat, poultry, fish, nuts, yogurt, beans, whole grains and oils like olive and flaxseed.

This diet does require some counting. To ensure that you get the right amount of calories, you’ll have to measure your serving sizes for each meal. Serving sizes are important because they promote portion control and keep us from overeating.

There is also a picture of a plate in his book called the 3-Hour Plate. It helps you visualize how much of the plate is to be occupied by each food group at your meals. You can get ideas for healthy snacks that fill you up.

Exercise is not stressed here but the creator does have his own exercise program that gives you recommendations for moves to perform to increase your weight loss. To see if you are making progress, you are asked to weigh yourself once a week, preferably on Sundays. At this time, you can see if the work done the previous week is leading to weight loss.

There are incentives built into the program. As long as you are losing weight, you can add 100 calories to your allowance for each snack on a weekly basis. When you stop losing weight, decrease your snack calorie limit by 100.

If you are looking for structure and a way to stay accountable while losing weight, the 3-Hour Diet by Jorge Cruise may be right for you.

Jorge Cruise’s 3-Hour Diet Books and DVDs:

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Losing weight is an important goal for so many people and everybody is looking for the quick and easy solution to lose weight. Some need to lose weight to prevent long-term complications such as diabetes and there are those who need to lose weight because of medical reasons such as morbid obesity. Of course, there are people who do not really need to lose any weight but do so for reasons of vanity or obsession.

Whatever is your reason for losing weight, you will find that there are many different diets out there including low carbohydrate (carb) diets. The truth is that most of them will achieve weight loss if you follow them correctly and stick with one long enough.

Following a diet doesn’t mean sticking to every recommendation religiously 24/7. There are going to be inevitable slipups. The key is how you deal with such occasions when you eat too much or feast on foods that are not on the plan.

If you can put it behind you and return to the plan without beating yourself up too badly, you are likely to succeed. Everybody has those days – the important thing is to let go and accept them as just another step on the road to permanent weight loss.

It is also important to find a diet that you can easily follow. Low carb diets are suitable for many people because the rules are quite simple. As the name suggests, the diet consists of avoiding or limiting foods that are high in carbohydrates. These include bread, pasta, potatoes, rice and other grains. Sugar is also a carbohydrate. Once you understand what these foods are, it is a simple matter of choosing the right food and avoiding the bad ones. (See Are All Carbs Bad for You?)

The primary criticism of low carbohydrate dieting is based on the fact that the dieters will get most of their daily calories from meat, dairy and other high fat products. This can lead to high cholesterol and other problems related to a high intake of saturated fats. You should seek proper medical advice before starting this type of diet. Sometimes weight loss is good in the early stages but people cannot handle the restrictions over the long haul and start to deviate from the diet.

One of the problems that many people have with low carb diets is the elimination of bread and pasta. No more toast, spaghetti or pizza! Many of the foods that are quickest to prepare are based around carbohydrates – burgers in their buns, fries, sandwiches, pasta and sauce.

Beer and some alcoholic drinks are high in carbs too. It is true that alcohol is generally restricted on any diet, because it is high in calories and very low in nutritional value, but low carb diets put particular emphasis on this.

Still there are many foods that can be enjoyed on a low carb diet. If you are fond of meat, you will relish the opportunity to consume beef, chicken and other animal products. The popularity of these diets is evident by their longevity. It boils down to what suits you the best. For many, the best weight loss solution is a low carb diet.

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