5 Things to Consider When Picking a Diet Plan

If you’ve read through this blog, you’ve probably noticed that I quit doing the Extreme Fat Smash diet. It’s a great plan but it stopped being practical for me once I could no longer exercise because of a knee injury. So I researched several online weight loss plans including:

• Weight Watchers Online
• The Biggest Loser Club (from Rodale, the same company that runs the Extreme Fat Smash diet website )
• Discovery Health’s 2008 National Body Challenge
• eDiets.com

Most of these plans are the same – they determine how many calories you should eat per day and give you a fixed daily menu. The only difference was Weight Watchers, which gives you a POINTS goal for the day. You can eat what you want as long as you stay in that POINTS range and have so many fruits, veggies and milk servings per day.

So which diet was right for me? Here are the five things I considered when I looked at the online diet plans. Many of these will apply to other diets – on or offline – as well.

1. Cost – How much money are you willing to spend on a diet plan? At the time I wrote this post (January 2008) the costs are:

• Weight Watchers Online – This depends. As a former member I can sign up for three months at $55 ($18.33 per month). Otherwise, the cost is $65 for three months or $21.66 per month. Doing Weight Watchers online is cheaper than going to the meetings, which will run you $10-15 per week plus a sign up fee.
• The Biggest Loser Club – $19.95 per month though if you buy the three-month value plan you get billed in one installment of $59.94 and get the The Biggest Loser Book, The Biggest Loser Fitness Program, and The Biggest Loser Cookbook for free (a $62.85 value including free shipping)
• Discovery Health’s 2008 National Body Challenge – FREE
• eDiets.com – $4.95 per week (about $20 per month)

There are other costs to consider when picking any weight loss plan:

• Does the diet require that you purchase their food product like NutriSystem or Jenny Craig? Does it use “real food” that you can get at your local grocery store?
• Do you have to buy foods you don’t normally eat like protein powder, tofu, brown rice, or green tea? Are they expensive?
• Does the plan include exercising? If so, you’ll need to figure in a gym membership, sports equipment, exercise clothes, sneakers, etc.
• Do you need to purchase any additional items like cookbooks, videos, books, scales, juicers, etc.?

With any diet, you’ll need to have measuring cups and spoons and a food scale for your kitchen. You probably already have these if you like to cook. You’ll also need to buy a good bathroom scale, preferably digital, and a measuring tape. For exercise, you can start off with a comfortable pair of walking shoes or sneakers. Gym memberships, fancy workout equipment, and designer sweats are optional – buy only what you can afford! (Check out my Five Ways to Save at the Gym post for more money saving tips.)

2. Time – How much time will you be spending “doing” your new diet and exercise plan? Here are some things to consider:

• Computer time – How much time will you need to enter your information on the website? Is the site easy to use? What tools of theirs will you be using – calorie counters, menu planners, exercise videos, recipes? Do you have a printer to print out menus and recipes?
• Meetings – Do you want to go to meetings as well as do it online? Do you have the time to drive to the meetings? Are the meetings scheduled around your work or school schedule? Because of drive time and my schedule, I decided that just doing an online diet was better for me.
• Shopping and cooking – Do you need additional time to grocery shop and cook meals? If you’ll be bringing your lunch to work instead of going out, do you have time to prepare it the night before? Does your local grocery store have everything you need or do you need to make a special trip to a health food or vitamin store? Do you need to make time to place a weekly food order from your personal chef or diet plan?
• Planning time – What time do you need to devote to planning menus, shopping lists, an exercise schedule, etc.?

Time wise, all the online diet plans are about the same since you plan and track directly on their website. You can also participate in their online communities (blogs, message boards, groups, etc.) which can be a time waster even though they’re a great way to get support from others.

A word of caution: Discovery Health’s 2008 National Body Challenge website freezes up my browser (Internet Explorer) no matter how many times I install, un-install, and re-install the latest version of Flash. If this is a problem for you, switch to the Firefox browser from Google. You’ll still need the latest version of Flash (the website will prompt you) but your browser won’t be as flaky.

3. Lifestyle - My biggest problem with the Extreme Fat Smash diet is that it did not fit my lifestyle. It was impossible to follow while traveling. And I was so busy, I’d often forget to eat my small meals and ended up having one big meal at the end of the day – not good since the whole point of the diet was to eat throughout the day to stimulate one’s metabolism. Plus I had to make special meals for me while I made other dishes for my family – too much work!

Here are some lifestyle questions you should ask yourself when choosing a diet plan:

• Cooking – If you don’t like to cook, maybe a diet plan like NutriSystem or getting a personal chef to deliver healthy meals would work better for you.
• Traveling and eating on the go – You need to find a diet that works when you aren’t at home. Does it give you guidelines, information and tips to help you plan your out-of-house meals?
• Family – If you have a family, does your diet plan include recipes that everyone will enjoy? If you can find diet recipes that work for you as well as your family, you’ll be more successful. Plus, everyone will be eating healthier!
• Food allergies and aversions – Do you have a restricted diet, allergies, or are you a vegetarian? Can your plan be tailored to suit your needs? It should include foods you enjoy and eat normally. (The healthy stuff, not the cupcakes!) 
• Your daily schedule – Is it easy for you to eat small meals and snacks throughout the day? Do you work the night shift or are you up at night with small children? If you’re running around all day for work or with the kids or have a funky schedule, you need a diet and exercise plan that fits into your hectic life.

For example, when I read The UltraSimple Diet: Kick-Start Your Metabolism and Safely Lose Up to 10 Pounds in 7 Days last summer I knew it wasn’t for me. While I liked the idea of doing a cleansing diet (without having to undergo a colon cleansing – ha!) part of the routine was to have a 20-minute hot bath each night to “detox” and relax. With a busy schedule and demanding family, this was impossible. But I’d love to try it during a weeklong spa vacation because it sounds decadent.

• Exercise – If you’re not into exercising, does your diet plan still work? We all know that if you can exercise 3 to 5 times a week, you’ll be more successful losing weight and keeping it off. So does your diet plan include ways to get in lighter forms of working out like walking or stretching?

The problem with most of these diets (the exception is Weight Watchers) is that they’re restrictive – you have to stick with that day’s plan. Forget it if you have to travel or go to a party. Either you don’t eat or you bring your own food. While having a daily menu is helpful for a lot of people, I found that it didn’t fit into my lifestyle without a lot of advance preparation. And when I didn’t have time to prepare, the diet fell by the wayside.

4. Support – What kind of support does the diet give you? For online diets it means online community (message boards, blogs, etc.) and daily/weekly email reminders. For other diet plans, it could mean meeting with a nutritionist, a personal trainer, or going for a weekly weigh during a meeting.

Take the time to discover what you need for support. If you don’t have it from your diet plan (or want more), enlist family, friends and coworkers to help you. This could mean getting together with your coworkers to exercise at lunch. Or planning a healthy dinner with friends while you’re getting together to watch The Biggest Loser on TV. Form a betting pool with your friends and relatives – the person who loses the biggest body percentage of weight in a certain amount of time wins the pot! Or get your kids to come with you on a bike ride.

For the paid plans, it was hard to find out how many people they had participating in their online communities without joining. Discovery Health’s 2008 National Body Challenge had some community, but it wasn’t very large. If the The Biggest Loser Club is like the Celebrity Fit Club, the community should be fairly active.

Because they’ve been around forever and have so many members around the world, Weight Watchers Online has an amazing community. There are always members who can offer advice on everything from exercise to how to handle a family member who is trying to sabotage you. And everyone seems to have a terrific recipe to share, too.

5. Longevity – Does the diet give you the tools to go the distance? What about 10 years from now? Or are you going to burn out after a few weeks or months of restricting menus or logging in every day?

Here’s where Weight Watchers blows all the other diets away. You can stop going to meetings and cancel your online membership. But as long as you have a POINTSFinder (available at meetings) and a notebook, you can stay on the diet.

In fact, you can fall off the “Weight Watchers wagon” for years and get back on track very easily. I had a friend who did this. She had a few stressful years dealing with a move to England and back, an ill father, planning her son’s bar mitzvah, and building a house. She didn’t have time to exercise and she often ate on the run.

Once things settled down, she went back doing what she learned at Weight Watchers. She also started working out again. While she didn’t attend meetings or journal, she practiced portion control, picked healthy food to eat like lean meats and vegetables, and kept a running tab of POINTS in her head. In half a year, she lost the weight she had regained.

I hope these 5 Things to Consider When Picking a Diet Plan inspire you to pick a diet and exercise program that will help you be healthier and live longer. Good luck on your weight loss and fitness journey!

For more tips, check out my other Five Things and Ways advice articles.

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Posted on January 22, 2008 in 5 Things/Ways Advice List,Dieting and Weight Loss Tips,Weight Watchers and tagged as diet, diet and exercise, dieting, losing weight, weight loss

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