My Best Weight Loss Programs

The Ornish Diet by the well-known Dean Ornish, MD, is a unique plan. Its main goal is basically to help dieters achieve the weight they desire but it is also into helping people with heart problems or the like.

So far, the Ornish Diet is just one of the few diet plans packed with scientific-sounding theories and backed up with substantial evidences and proofs. All of its approaches and disciplines at hand are well supported and simple to understand.

Well, all the approaches and disciplines are based on the basic idea of eating more but weighing less. And how? By eating a high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet according to Dean Ornish.

Basically, a high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian will not only aid you on your excess pounds but will also keep you fit, firm and healthy.

Recommendations, Limitations and Restrictions

In general, the Ornish Diet is not as limiting as other diet plans. With the Ornish Diet, calories are not that restricted, as well as fats to some extent.

However, with the Ornish Diet, there’s of course some allowed and not allowed foods, as well as foods need to be taken in moderation. Well, if you’d come to think of it, other diet plans do also have these stuff right?

Generally, the allowed foods would include meals with beans and legumes, fruits (anything from apples to watermelon, from raspberries to pineapples), grains, and vegetables. You can have these foods whenever you are hungry and as many times as you want until you finally feel full.

Likely, to make most out of it, incorporate at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, or an hour three times a week or otherwise, some kind of stress “busters” like massage, psychotherapy, meditation, and yoga.

On the other hand, the foods need to be taken in moderation include foods that contain nonfat dairy products like skim milk, nonfat yogurt, nonfat cheeses, nonfat sour cream, and egg whites; and nonfat or very low-fat products like from Life Choice frozen dinners to Haagen-Dazs frozen yogurt bars or the like.

Finally, the not allowed foods include those with meat of all types red and white, fish and fowl; oils and oil-containing products like most salad dressings and margarine; avocados; olives, nuts and seeds; dairy products (aside from the nonfat aforementioned); sugar and simple sugar derivatives such as corn syrup, high-fructose syrup, honey, and molasses; alcohol; and anything with more than two grams of fat per serving.

The Ornish Diet Works

For some dieters, the Ornish Diet has been a great help because of its unique, well supported claims and approaches.

Because of some approaches against the idea that our body naturally longs for all the energies it would recognize and eventually would try to store any extra energy as fat, many dieters have lost pounds. By eating all they want, as often as they are hungry, their metabolism have stayed the same, to some time extent have also increased, so therefore they were able to manage their weight well.

Ornish Diet has succeeded as well in recommending regular exercise or some sort of physical activities that have stimulated dieter’s resting metabolism.

Insights of Some Experts

Most people from the medical community bow to the Ornish Diet because of its healthy lifestyle routine, serious restrictive approach, and sufficient evidences to substantiate all of its claims.

For the president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Neal Barnard, MD, “his diet is one of the only popular diet plans that is firmly rooted in science. It not only brings weight loss without counting calories, but it also brings good overall health.

It reverses heart disease, cuts the risk of cancer, makes diabetes and hypertension more manageable, and sometimes even makes them go away”.

But unfortunately, for Robert H. Eckel, MD, chair of the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association and a professor at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, the Ornish Diet may not work for all.

According to him, only those who are serious and have strong commitment can endure the entire program. He actually quoted, “because it is so rigid and doesn’t allow a lot of food choices for those used to the Western diet, not many people will stay on it for the long term. Many people get tired of eating food with such a low fat content”.

Another critic of the Ornish Diet is Frank Hu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health.

For him, “polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils actually protect against cardiovascular incidents, but Ornish doesn’t distinguish the good fats from the bad fats — such as trans fats, which come from margarine sticks and cookies and crackers, and animal fats”.

Why Ornish Diet

If you are a vegetable lover and can keep it for good, then the Ornish Diet is for you. Same as well if you are well-disciplined and can change unnecessary habits easily. However, of course, just like anything in this world, you still need to be alert and careful when under a diet plan just like the Ornish Diet. Remember, the Ornish Diet may work for you but it may also not.