Can The Hacker's Diet 'Hack' Off The Pounds?

While the diet is a fairly straightforward calorie-counting approach, what makes it successful for many is the unique focus on feedback through monitoring of weight using engineering principles. Techniques are presented for Excel aided or paper and pencil data smoothing to allow the dieter to adjust the diet for themselves using the long term trend and to not be discouraged by short term fluctuations based on water retention or other factors.

Another important factor in the diet's approach is using the trend line as a control system to allow the dieter early warning of relapse after the target weight is reached. As Walker states "The vast majority of people who lose weight end up, in relatively short order, gaining back every pound they lost." A quick check of the trend line provides an easy way to make small adjustments in intake, allowing much greater control of weight for life.

Is The Sugar Busters Diet Just Another Low-Carb Diet?

The Sugar Busters Diet was made famous in New Orleans when it sold 100,000 copies by word of mouth alone. It is essentially a diet which eliminates sources of sugar and other high glycemic carbohydrates, in order to lower insulin in the blood (same theory as essentially all reduced-carb diets).

Compared to other reduced-carb diets, there is less restriction. There are no ultra-low carb phases, and, in fact, the whole diet could be fairly high in carbohydrate, depending upon food choices. The authors say the diet usually averages about 40% carbohydrate, but they also say that it can be as high as 50-55% carbohydrate. Where 40% is considered low carb, above 50% is not.

There are almost no suggestions in the books for tailoring the diet to an individual's needs, or how to determine what those needs might be (e.g. different people's needs for different amounts of carbohydrate). The assumption seems to be that everyone is the same in regards to dietary needs.

This is a very simple and straightforward diet to follow. You must learn what foods are off-limits, and then learn how to eat within what is left. There is no measuring, weighing, counting, or calculating whatsoever.

How Can The Pritikin Diet Help Me?

In the late 1950s, Nathan Pritikin was diagnosed with heart disease. Soon after, he adopted a low-fat, high-fiber diet and began a moderate exercise program. Subsequent medical examinations revealed dramatic improvements in his health. Mr. Pritikin developed the Pritikin Diet Program based on his experience and opened the first Pritikin Longevity Center in 1976 so that he could help other people with similar medical problems restore their health.

The Pritikin Diet is almost completely vegetarian, and encourages the consumption of large amounts of whole grains and vegetables. It is high in fiber, low in cholesterol, and extremely low in saturated fat and total fat, containing less than 10 percent of total daily calories from fat. Individuals following the diet are encouraged to eat six or seven meals each day, and are not required to restrict portion sizes. The diet excludes nearly all processed grains and sources of animal protein. In addition to these dietary recommendations, the Pritikin Diet Program includes regular exercise. Program participants are required to walk for at least 45 minutes each day.

Is The Grapefruit Diet A "Sour" Idea?

The 80s might bring back fond memories of leg warmers, Flashdance and Duran Duran videos, but for anyone who was battling the bulge at the time, it probably also conjures up images of eating vast amounts of grapefruit! If you wanted guaranteed weight loss, the grapefruit diet was the plan to follow.

At the time, nutrition experts dismissed it as another fad diet, explaining that the 'fat-burning' properties of grapefruit were, in fact, a myth and any weight loss that occurred was due to the extremely low and potentially dangerous calorie intake.

The latest research, carried out by scientists at the Nutrition and Medical Research Centre at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, America, has found that the simple act of adding grapefruit and grapefruit juice to your diet, really can aid weight loss. But unlike the seriously restricted diet of the 80s, you get these results without changing what else you eat!

What About The Beverly Hills Diet?

Well the Beverly Hills Diet is a 35-day diet plan based on the premise that certain kinds of foods should not be eaten together. The creator of the diet plan, Judy Mazel, recommends that fruit always be eaten by itself, and that carbohydrates and protein should never be eaten together in order for food to be properly digested and not stored as body fat. During the first 10 days of the diet, only fruit is permitted. On day 11 carbohydrates and butter are added; on day 19, protein is added.

The Zone Diet Review

The Zone diet is a diet popularized in books by Barry Sears. It advocates balancing protein and carbohydrate ratios instead of caloric thinking as an approach to eating. It is not primarily a weight-loss "diet" (though it can be used quite successfully for that purpose); rather it is a way of eating — the intake of food that produces the best results within the human body based on a hypothesis of how it has evolved to cope with varying food intake through the ages.

"The Zone" is Sears's term for proper hormone balance. When insulin levels are neither too high nor too low, and glucagon levels are not too high, then specific anti-inflammatory chemicals (types of eicosanoids) are released, which have similar effects to aspirin, but without downsides such as gastric bleeding. Sears claims that a 30:40 ratio of protein to carbohydrates triggers this effect, and this is called 'The Zone.' Sears claims that these natural anti-inflammatories are heart and health friendly.

Atkins Diet - Fad or Fab?

The Atkins Nutritional Approach, popularly known as the Atkins Diet or just Atkins, is the most marketed and well-known of the low-carbohydrate diets. It was adopted by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1960s from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and utilized to resolve his own overweight condition following medical school and graduate medical training. After successfully treating over ten thousand patients, he popularized the Atkins diet in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972. In his revised book, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Atkins updated some of his ideas, but remained faithful to the original concepts.

The Atkins franchise (i.e., the business formed to provide products serving people "doing Atkins") has been highly successful due to the popularity of the diet, and is considered the iconic and driving entity of the larger "low-carb craze". However, various factors have led to its dwindling success and the company, Atkins Nutritionals of Ronkonkoma, New York, founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989, two years after the death of the founder filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July of 2005 and re-emerged in January 2006. The Atkins logo is still highly visible through licensed-proprietary branding for food products and related merchandise.