The HCG diet plan has gained popularity over the last several years as a quick, effective way to lose a significant amount of weight.

HCG stands for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, and is a hormone found in large quantities in pregnant women. This hormone is responsible for feeding and protecting the fetus by taking stored fat, and converting it in to nutrition for the placenta. It has been discovered that once a woman has given birth, her hcg hormone levels begin to decline, though hcg is found in lower levels in all men and women.

The premise of the HCG diet is this. We know there are three types of fat found in the body: structural fat, which is a necessary fat that protects our organs, normal reserve fat, which our bodies use when we haven’t eaten enough, and abnormal fat, which isn’t useful at all, and pools in certain areas of our body. The abnormal fat is the fat used by HCG when calorie intake is low. When beginning the HCG diet plan, calorie intake is very low (500 calories) which triggers the HCG to begin feeding on the abnormal fat, and using it for energy.

HCG is sold in the form of drops, pills, or as an injectible liquid, and can be purchased online. The HCG is not an online diet per se, though you can purchase the hormone online and there are many websites and forums dedicated to the HCG diet.

The steps to follow when on this diet program begin with initially taking the drops and eating a high fat diet for two days. The high fat content is necessary to “fat load” in preparation for the low calorie portion. The next segment will see you taking the drops and following the restrictive 500 calorie per day diet. It is recommended by those that follow the diet, that you remain on the drops, and the low calorie diet for between 19 and 43 days, during which time they say you will lose between .5lb to 3lbs per day. After a maximum of 43 days, you cease taking the drops but remain on the low calorie diet for another 3 days. After this phase, you are into the maintenance period, during which it is suggested that you eat healthily, while avoiding starches and sugars.

The HCG diet isn’t for everyone and should be followed under the guidance of a physician.

If you have decided it is time to lose weight, you may be wondering what the best way is to go about it to ensure your success. There are many options when it comes to weight loss, and choosing one is a very personal decision.

The 17 day diet is a relatively new diet plan, created by Dr. Mike Moreno. On the cover of the book it is described as: ”A simple plan that targets both belly fat and visceral fat and produces fast results that last.” As far as diet programs go, it’s nothing revolutionary, but rather works on the same principals as most other low carb, or low fat diets do.

This is not an online diet, though you can purchase the book and the DVD online, and there is a website which offers a bit of information as well as some before and after pictures for added motivation. There is also a 7 day meal package available for purchase, which includes 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches, and 7 dinners, which are delivered right to your door. You can view a calorie counter and a bmi calculator, though there is no way to track what you have eaten or how many calories you have burned from exercising.

The premise of the 17 day diet is this. The first 17 days are spent on a low carb diet, with a maximum daily intake of 1200 calories. This ensures a fast start and can be very motivational if you can handle the low calorie intake. By eating only lean protein, approved vegetables and fruit and some yogurt, you are also helping your body to forget all about processed foods and more unhealthy choices. After the 17 days are up there is some calorie shifting to be done, whereby you change up your calorie intake from day to day to confuse your body in to not knowing you are on a diet. Here you add some calories and add some foods as well. The next phase which starts at 35 days in is focused on setting you up with good habits for life, and again, more foods are added in, including an optional alcoholic beverage and a snack.

The 17 day diet is a diet program that can be effective if followed, and can teach good eating habits that can last a lifetime. As with any diet, or online diet, it should be followed only after discussing it with your physician, as not all diet plans are suitable for everyone.

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Weight loss is tricky. If it were easy, there would be no overweight people in the world today. But the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to know the right formula, and to possess the right amount of willpower to get the job done.

Our bodies require food both to live and to sustain energy. The energy present in each food is referred to in calories and the higher the number of calories in a food, the more energy our bodies can draw from. There are three types of energy available from any food, carbohydrates, protein and fat. 1g of protein equals 4 calories. 1g of carbohydrates equals 4 calories, and 1g of fat equals 9 calories, over twice as many as the other two. When your body requires fuel, it draws on these calories, but any that are leftover are stored as fat in the fat cells in your body. Some fat is needed for a healthy body, but excess fat, anything over and above what naturally fits in our fat cells, causes them to expand, which manifests itself as flab.

Fat burning foods are foods that through one way or another help speed our metabolism to burn fuel more efficiently, or help us feel full while consuming fewer calories, thus leading to weight loss.

A short list of some fat burning foods are:

Eggs – Eggs are high in protein, low in fat, and have a low calorie count. They can be enjoyed any time of day and they are fast and easy to prepare.

Salmon – Omega 6 and omega 3 are heart healthy fats, and salmon contains both. It is also high in protein and has a low calorie count.

Oats – Oats, and in particular steel cut oats, contain a large amount of insoluble fiber. This means that your body will spend a lot of energy trying to process this food. It also keeps you full for a long time because of this fiber, which can ward off the mid-morning temptation to snack.

Citrus Fruits – Citrus fruits like oranges, grapefruits, and apples provide the body with loads of vitamins, fiber and are high in water, which means a low calorie count. Vitamin C has been shown to reduce fat, and there are loads in citrus fruits.

Fat burning foods can help you on your journey to weight loss. By watching your calorie count, and eating some fat burning foods, you can be on the road to a healthy weight in no time.

The HCG diet or Human Chorionic Gonadotropin diet was discovered by Dr. A.T.W. Simeons over 50 years ago. He accidentally discovered its power while researching a cure for malnutrition in underdeveloped villages.

HCG is a hormone that is produced large volumes in pregnant women. Dr. Simeon found that when you combine HCG with a low calorie diet, a weight loss of 1-2 pounds per day is possible. A dramatic reduction in calories alone is a difficult and potentially harmful way to lose weight, but a reduction of calories in conjunction with HCG works without drastic measures.

The science behind the diet is that the HCG hormone works to trigger the body to burn excess fat. This process works in pregnant women if caloric intake is insufficient to feed the baby, ensuring that the baby doesn’t starve. The HCG hormone sends the same signal to those who are not pregnant as well, by tricking the body into believing that it is pregnant. As the HCG hormone is found in both men and women, both can successfully use the HCG drops.

The HCG claims to be a natural fat burning process as your body literally digests excess fat as food to feed your body, so that it may function and perform to the best of its ability. There are different types of fat found in the body: structural fat which is found between the skin and organs and which is a necessary protective layer, normal reserve fat which is the layer that supplies the body with energy when not enough calories are consumed, and abnormal fat. Abnormal fat is the make-up of the extra fat in our hips, waist, thighs and buttocks, and serves no useful purpose. The abnormal fat is the only fat consumed by HCG.

The reason the HCG is needed over mere calorie restriction is this: when the body is deprived of protein and vitamins, it will draw from any type of fat, including the structural and normal reserve fat, which your body requires. When you stop a low calorie diet, your lean muscle mass has been depleted, and any fat that you now put back comes on as abnormal fat.

Some of the benefits of the HCG diet are: fat burning without muscle loss, a decrease in cravings, no starvation and a proper redistribution of fat. The HCG diet allows you to lose weight without feeling hungry, and lose it fast.

There are three different phases in the South Beach Diet. The first plan is without a doubt the most difficult as it is very strict. In the first two weeks of the diet you are told to cut out just about all carbs such as bread and rice.  You are also asked to to cut fruits and juices from your diet as well. This phase promises that you will lose between eight and thirteen pounds in just two weeks. Some say that this form of restrictive eating is not that healthy for you.

In the South Beach Diet phase 2 you are once again allowed to eat some of the foods that you were told not to. Just an example you will be allowed to eat bread and pastas as long as they are just the whole wheat kind. You will be allowed to eat almost all fruits again, that is except bananas, pineapples, and raisins. They prohibit you from eating certain vegetables such as corn and potatoes. Using their the South Beach phase 2 will still help you lose one to two pounds additional per week.

The final pahse is just maintaining the weight you have lost. They say because you have followed the first two steps you can now eat the foods that were prohibited because your body has now adjusted and reset itself to learn how to process the foods properly again.
The South Beach Diet is a hard one to judge because the reviews have this diet program at 50/50. Half the people that stuck to this program now swear by it. Yet the others say it did not work. The only way to tell if this diet is the right fit for you is to ask yourself a couple questions. The main question has to be “Can I get past the first 2 week?” If you can answer yes to that question then you might want to try the South Beach Diet.

The Nutrisystem Diet is another Diet Plan that has been around for a long time. Nutisystem is a meal plan diet that uses its diet guidelines according to  top national health institutes. They send you portion controlled meals direct to your door, which can be a plus because you don’t have to do the preparing. The meal plans are set to teach you healthy habits for eating right.

The Nutrisystem diet also send you grocery guides and gives you access to a vast array of tools such as calorie counters, daily diet planners and an interactive tool that helps you track the various foods that you might consume in a given day. They also giev you full phone support at no additional cost just in case you fall off the eating right wagon.

In our opinion and in the opinion of most of the readers we can say this is a very good diet plan. The only drawback to this diet is if you use their meals you will be spending around 250.00 every 28 days. Now if you have the money and want to get back into shape that is great, as this diet, when followed, has a very good success rate. However, if you are low on funds like many of us in today’s economy you might want to skip the meal plan and buy your own food.

In any case, Nutrisystem is a good diet and is recommended. Nutrisystem has even come out with a new diet plan that so far has good reviews. It is the Nutrisystem advanced plan. With this plan you do not have to spend money just on their diet program but they give you the options and the recipes to purchase your own food using the guidelines they have set out.

The Ingredients that you need for the Apples With Dip Recipe

You will need

8 ounces of  fat free cream cheese
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons chopped peanuts
1/2 cup orange juice
4 apples, cored and sliced

Here are the Directions

The first thing you need to do is to place the cream cheese on your counter until it becomes soft, this takes about 5 minutes.

Now you are ready to make your dip. In a bowl you need to combine your brown sugar,  your vanilla and the cream cheese. Mix them  until they are smooth. Then stir in your peanuts.

Put all of the apples in a different bowl. Sprinkle orange juice on top of the apples and this will prevent browning. Serve the sliced apples with the dip.

Nutrition Facts
(per serving)
Calories 177 Cholesterol 4 mg
Protein 10 g Sodium 326 mg
Carbohydrate 28 g Fiber 4 g
Total fat 3 g Potassium 305 mg
Saturated fat 1 g Calcium 121 mg
Monounsaturated fat 1 g

Ok this one is one of those diets that we do not particularly like but that is our opinion. The Change One Diet is brought to you by Readers Digest. It was designed by their so called fitness gurus.

Here is how the diet program works. The whole diet is based on the principle that you need to change one thing in your life a day. For example in the first week you switch to a healthier breakfast but in the second week you switch to a nutritional lunch. The idea is that you will train yourself into controlling your portion sizes without worrying about counting calories. This is not the first time this diet type has been around but because it is brought to you by Readers Digest it carries some clout. They have a health form in which you can track your progress which is always beneficial.

Some people however do well with this type of diet, but the majority of people we have spoken with have lost weight in the initial phases of the diet but ended up gaining more weight towards the end. The only thing we can suggest is that you go into this diet with full motivation to succeed and then you will. The only problem is that the reason we usually need a diet program is the fact that we ourselves do not have the motivation to begin with. So in our humble opinion this is not a diet we would suggest to our readers.

Weight Watchers is probably one of the oldest diet programs in America. They were established in 1963 by Jean Nidetch in New York City. The Weight Watchers diet program was designed for me and women alike and they are based on a calorie count system. Many people over the years have tried their diet and more recently their online diet.

Weight Watchers was originally a plan in which members meet weekly to form a network for dieters that are sharing the same goal, to lose weight and keep it off. Every week when you go to the weight loss meeting you get weighed in privately, which causes you to have a sense of either accomplishment or despair. The team leaders at Weight Watchers are their to motivate you to lose weight and get healthy as well as share their secrets to nutrition and fitness.

More recently Weight Watchers has started an online diet program for those with busy schedules.Their online program gives you the ability to track your calories using a calorie calculator, as well as giving you access to message boards, a weight monitoring system to track your weight loss and access to hundreds of recipes. The downside to their online version of their diet is that their is no face to face contact. The personal weigh in is on of the biggest motivation factors of the Weight Watchers program and without that aspect of the program, as little as it may seem, it makes it more difficult to lose the weight.

Most recently. Weight Watchers has developed a Points Plus program. The new points plus program adds the newest research in nutritional science with the proven Weight Watchers method that they have been using for all these years.They say that this new system will far exceed anything they have put forward but this also depends on who you might talk with.

There are varying opinions of the new program from people who complain that it is complicated and does not make sense to them to those who swear by the program. Counting on the Points Plus is very time consuming and is not really meant for those who do not have the time to spare. Overall the weight watchers program is a good program however one should go into it slowly. We suggest trying their monthly pass program which will give give you a month to try their program without a long term commitment. If you go into the program and pay for two years just to find out you do not like it you will have lost your money. So try it for a month, see if it is for you, and then decide.