Free Diet Plans

If you want to lose weight and are willing to pay to attend meetings, weigh-ins, and counseling sessions, you can choose from a variety of effective, popular weight loss programs. Any one of them will guide you to your goal and encourage you to maintain your ideal weight once you get there.

But what if you can’t pay to lose weight? What kinds of free diet plans are available to someone who wants to lose weight but can’t afford to spend tons of money on losing it?

The following free diet plans can be adopted by almost anyone who wants to drop a few pounds. The information on how to use these free diet plans is readily available both online and at public libraries in the form of diet books and diet cookbooks.

If you have quite a lot of weight to lose, or if you have other health issues that make dieting dangerous, make sure you talk with your physician before beginning any drastic weight loss regimen:

• The Mediterranean Diet. The Mediterranean Diet is not really a weight loss diet so much as it is a way of eating that can lead to weight loss and better overall health. On this plan, you focus on lean meats and fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, olive oil (very little or no saturated fat), limited low fat dairy products like Greek yogurt or low fat cheeses, whole grains, olives, seeds, and nuts. Lemon juice, vinegar, and herbs are used to flavor foods instead of heavy sauces, gravies, salt, or butter.
• The Atkins Diet. This diet consists of two phases. During the first and most stringent phase you are confined to protein, fat, and some green leafy vegetables. You eat until you are full, but you restrict your diet to only those foods. In the second phase you slowly reintroduce other food groups until you find the right balance for maintaining your new weight.
• The South Beach Diet. This diet is a lot like Atkins only without the fat and with more kinds of vegetables and fruits included. Like Atkins it has a preliminary stringent phase followed by a phase in which other foods groups are gradually reintroduced until a maintenance level of eating is found.
• Meal Planners & Calorie Counters. Depending on your body type and on how fast you want to lose weight, you choose either a 1200 or 1600-calorie diet-plan and then simply stop when you reach that calorie level. You can eat anything but you can’t exceed your daily limit. Free meal planners and calorie counters are available online. These tools plan menus based on your calorie choices and preferences. Print out the menus and follow them to the letter.
• Meal Replacement Plans. This form of diet does have a cost in the sense that you do buy canned meal replacement shakes and substitute one for breakfast and lunch, then eat a normal dinner. This cost of the shakes is offset by the fact that you are not buying normal food for those meals, so it balances out.
• The Cabbage Soup Diet. This diet is only safe for seven days, no more. You can lose about 10 pounds by following it to the letter. The diet itself and the recipe for the soup that is the staple ingredient of the Cabbage Soup Diet is available online.
• The Flat Belly Diet. This diet was created by a nutritionist at Prevention Magazine and is a combination of the Mediterranean Diet and calorie counting. It is based on evidence that eating the right amount of monounsaturated fatty acids and high fiber foods leads to satisfaction and lower caloric intake levels. You can find out enough about this way of eating online and at the library to embark on the diet without spending any extra cash.

Whichever diet you choose, whether it is free or expensive and personally coached, the most important consideration is whether or not you can stick with it for life. Any diet that reduces calories taken in and increases the level of exercise in your life will result in weight loss, but if you return to your old habits shortly after reaching your goal, the weight will come right back.

This is what happens to most people when they diet. Only about 2 in 10 people who diet are able to maintain that weight loss for a year after the diet ends. The secret to getting around that statistic is to pick a plan you can maintain for life and add daily exercise to it.

You can beat the statistics, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to do it. You just have to commit to exchanging bad habits for good ones for the long haul.