There are no prescriptions, appetite suppressants, or fasting shakes on THE Diet.  You eat regular food only. Customize your Daily Food Worksheet using the Nutrition Facts on the back of food containers and information on the composition of natural foods from a reference book to reflect the healthy foods you like to eat.  Change anything anywhere on the spreadsheets.  Create your own plan…and then follow and monitor it! 

One of the biggest questions to answer is “What is my ideal weight?”   Believe me, there are many different answers from the Diet Center, Atkin’s Diet, and the Internet.  Your ideal weight is a function of your age, body frame type, sex, and height.  Using a tape measure, measure your wrist size in inches.  Use the following chart to determine your body frame size:

Don’t be discouraged if you occasionally gain a little weight.  This will occur when you eat outside your home due to the salt added to restaurant food.  Your weight will also vary according to your elimination schedule and, for women, your menstrual cycle. 

First of all, rethink food events as social occasions, not watering holes.  Focus on enjoying your companions: let them be the highlight of the meal!  Eat in restaurants by choosing meat, vegetables, and salads, ignoring any salad dressing other than low-calorie vinaigrettes. Good restaurants provide at least a couple acceptable food choices.  Order water with lemon instead of tea, coffee, or soda. 

At a local steak house, I order a 16 ounce prime rib with steamed vegetables and a house salad with mustard vinaigrette.  I eat the salad, trim all the fat off the meat, eat half of the meat, and take the vegetables and the rest of the meat home for another complete meal!

Your body is composed of 50-75% water which serves as a supplier and carrier of nutrients, an eliminator of waste materials, and a regulator of body temperature.  Everyday your body loses 2-3 quarts of water through breathing, perspiration, urination, and other bodily processes.  Water also removes all the weight loss from your body. 

Calories are composed of food energy from proteins (4 calories/gram), carbohydrates (4 calories/gram), and fats (9 calories/gram).  No matter where it comes from, a carbohydrate gram is a carbohydrate gram and a protein gram is a protein gram.  Chocolate cake or sirloin steak, the numbers are all that matter.  This is not true with fat grams.   

Bad fat is saturated fat, the hard fats found mostly in animal products such as lard, butter, fatty meats, and some vegetable oils, palm or coconut.  Good fat includes both monounsaturated fat (olive oil, canola oil, and peanut oil) and polyunsaturated fat (corn oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil).  Learn to substitute olive oil for butter in nearly every instance!  Read food labels carefully!  

The Internet site that most closely shadows THE Diet is www.ediets.com. Another site is www.cyberdiet.com. Try the free profile on both sites to see how close they score your food needs.