Category Archives: Diet Meal Plans

hCG Diet: What is it?

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Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, or hCG, is a hormone produced by pregnant women that regulates metabolic function.  Currently, this diet is getting a lot of hype.  Is it another magic bullet to help people lose weight? Does it really work? And most importantly, is it safe?

What is the hCG Diet?

There are hCG diet drops and hCG diet injections.  While a prescription is required for injections and monitoring by a doctor is recommended, drops are available over the counter. Side effects like headache and leg cramps are the most common, but more severe ones may occur. In conjunction with hormone injections, dieters must adhere to a 500-calorie diet every day. Usually, a radically low calorie intake will cause the body to burn valuable muscle. But hCG supporters claim the hypothalamus will regulate the burning of fat stores for the additional calories needed to function.  The hormone helps to suppress the appetite a little, but dieters are also very likely to binge when they’re hungry, causing weight gain.

hCG Diet Dangers

The FDA DOES NOT approve of hCG for weight loss. The hormone causes the body to burn unhealthy fat rather than any muscle, but not before releasing any valuable nutrients from the fat into the blood stream.  This results in the release of toxins from the cells as well, which can cause headaches and feeling sick for the first couple of days.  hCG is approved for fertility treatments and is therefore not illegal, but in conjunction with a 500 calorie diet the FDA refuses to stand behind it as a method for weight loss.

hCG Diet Foods

Though there is a 500-calorie limit, the hCG diet recommends that those 500 calories come from high fiber content.  Very lean meats and vegetables are essentially the only thing foods allowed.  Sugar is a definite no-no.

While the official hCG diet is popular right now, there is a reason many doctors, the FDA and health specialists are saying it is not the answer to lose weight.  Over the last 50 years, there is one consistent method for losing weight: sticking to a healthy meal plan of fresh produce, lean protein and healthy fats, and getting plenty of exercise. This is certainly the most natural and healthiest way to lose weight and keep it off.

 

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Juicing: Yea or Nay?

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Is juicing a fad diet or does it have true health benefits? Juicing to lose weight has been popular for many years, but does it work? And do you get the necessary nutrients from the juice of fruits and vegetables? Juicing benefits are widely debated with a long lists of pros and cons.

Nutritionists from the Mayo clinic weigh in with a few things to keep in mind:

  • Juicing doesn’t provide any fiber
  • There is a lot of sugar in fruit juice
  • There is no scientific evidence that the benefits of juicing outweigh those of eating whole produce

However, at the Gerson Institute, where they treat patients suffering from cancer and other degenerative diseases, juicing is a carefully calculated part of the formula. The Gerson therapy selects each ingredient based on its entire chemical make up and ability to affect the body and its immune system. This diet is meant for people who are fighting off life-threatening illness, who must strictly adhere to the prescribed diet as well as use the proper kind of juicer.  There is no deviation from the foods and juice over the course of the illness, and in the case of cancer, no deviation for at least two years after the illness has subsided.

Fruit Juice

Though there are nutritional benefits to pomegranate juice and other fruit juices, insulin levels spike from high-sugar fruit juices and vegetable juices like beet and carrot.  It’s recommended that if you’re going to start juicing, you should even out the sugar content with some low-sugar vegetables as well.

Vegetable Juice

Most shelf vegetable juice, like V-8, is full of sodium. Juicing dieters should drink juice they’ve made fresh or bought made to order. Nutritional value of vegetable juice declines rapidly over a short period of time.

Juicing for Health

Proponents assert there are many juicing benefits, and say juicing is good for adults who have damaged their stomach linings and have trouble digesting raw or undercooked vegetables.  Their bodies are able to absorb the nutrients from the juice without having to break down the fiber.

Juicing Recipes

Juicing allows for a lot of nutritional variety.  While you might not otherwise be able to get anyone in your family to consume kale whole, they may never notice it in a juice mixture with tomato, celery, apples and whatever else you want to put in there.

Juicing is not meant to replace healthy meals or regular healthy meal planning. Diabetics, people suffering from kidney problems and others with health problems should consult a physician before beginning a juicing regimen.  As an addition to a healthy diet, juicing can boost nutrition and make for great snacks.

 

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Using Low Calorie Meal Plans

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Researchers at Louisiana State University have concluded that a low calorie diet can lower your insulin levels, reduce your core body temperature, and reverse signs of aging. However, those same researchers urge people to avoid going overboard when it comes to restricting calories. Consuming less food and using low calorie meal plans can undoubtedly be beneficial to your health. However, you should set realistic and healthy expectations for yourself.

If you regularly eat around 2000 calories a day, switching to a 500 calorie a day meal plan won’t be healthy or realistic. On the other hand, switching to a 1500 calorie meal plan wouldn’t be detrimental to your health or particularly difficult for you to do, especially if you were armed with the right strategies.

Strategies to Help You Switch to Low Calorie Meal Plans

  • Pay Attention to Portions: If you’ve made the decision to change your diet and adopt healthy low calorie meal plans, you’re going to have to change the way you eat and what you eat. First and foremost, you should adjust your food portions. The plates we eat off of are simply too large, and their large size often tricks us into eating more than we should. After all, we’ve been trained from childhood to clean our plates. Try eating off salad plates instead of dinner plates. Many dieters find this to be a successful strategy.
  • Customize: Your low calorie meal plans don’t have to be the same as everyone else’s, particularly if you aren’t trying to adhere to any particular diet like the Paleo Diet or HCG diet. If your primary goal is to reduce your caloric intake, you should plan your meals based on what you like. You may want to make a list of all the low calorie foods you normally enjoy eating and include those in your healthy meal plans. Some low calorie foods you could include in your meal plans, for instance, are apples, grapefruits, legumes, black beans, turkey, spinach, low-fast yogurt, oranges, brown rice, and fish.
  • Use Online Tools: Online tools can help you plan out your meals and count the calories you consume. Your goal should be to calculate all the calories you plan to consume each day as a part of your overall meal planning efforts. You should also keep track of how many calories you actually take in versus how many you plan to take in. This can give you an idea of whether or not you need to adjust your eating habits or meal plans to take in fewer actual calories.

  • Drink Plenty of Water: Drinking water throughout the day will help curb your appetite.  And drinking one or two glasses before each meal has been proven to reduce food intake. When you reduce your caloric intake, hunger is going to be your biggest hurdle. Drinking more water will help you overcome that hurdle. Additionally, choosing to drink water as opposed to sodas and juice will help reduce how many empty calories you take in. If you drink diet soda, it’s still a good idea to switch over to water, if possible. Certain additives in diet soda are actually thought to increase your appetite.
  • Don’t Forget to Snack: Plan to eat two or three snacks a day, and bring those snacks with you to work or wherever you go throughout the day. Some ideal snacks are baby carrots, apple slices, grapes, and whole-wheat pita bread with hummus. If you start to feel hungry before a meal, eat one of the 100 or 150-calorie snacks you’ve prepared. Eating snacks throughout the day will help prevent overeating at meals and keep your blood sugar levels stable. One of the most difficult parts of conforming to a low calorie diet is practicing portion control. Since snacking throughout the day helps prevent overeating at meals, you should consider snacking a part of your overall portion control efforts.

So, practice portion control, plan out your customized meals, drink enough water, and snack to avoid overeating. Remember that you are in control of your nutrition, and you have the power to succeed at eating a low calorie diet!

Low Calorie Meal Plans: The Volumetric Diet

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Bottom line: the only way to lose weight is to establish a calorie deficit. This means that if you’re trying to lose weight, you must establish a low calorie meal plan, or at least a meal plan that contains less calories than your current caloric intake. Establishing this calorie deficit may, however, trigger some not-so-comfortable feelings, like hunger. So what if we want to lose weight, but avoid those debilitating hunger pains? Tactics like “volumetrics,” or eating higher-density foods, can help you eat more but weigh less. Keep these low calorie meal plans and density tips in mind if you’re trying to lose a few.

Volumetric Low Calorie Meal Plans

Volumetric dieting is based on the idea that people like to eat, a universal truth as we all can attest to. People tend to eat the same amount of food per day, whether the foods they choose are calorie-rich or not. Volumetrics is all about getting more mileage out of what you eat. Therefore, according to this philosophy, the best way to lose weight is to eat healthy foods that provide low energy but high volume. With these low-calorie foods, you feel full without filling yourself with high amounts of calories. For example, fruits and veggies have a small amount of calories, but they are very high in density, making them great choices for any diet. Raisins, however, pack a high amount of calories into a tiny package–about 1/4 raisins has about 100 calories. Grapes, unlike raisins, have the same number of calories for an entire cup, making them a better choice if following the volumetric diet.

Other foods that fill you up may include fruits, vegetables, soups, popcorn, puffed rice, egg whites, shrimp, and chicken. Plan your meals around volumetric philosophy by filling half a plate of veggies, one quarter with whole grains, then a small serving of lean protein. A great volumetric meal is anything with fibrous veggies, like a lentil bean soup, which will leave you feeling full and satisfied, or a grilled chicken salad with lots of greens. These meals will not only make you feel fuller because of their high volume, but they’ll also make you chew more, which will send signals to your brain to stop eating sooner. This chewing fact has been confirmed by researchers at Reuters, who found that chewing food 40 times instead of a typical 15 times caused study participants to eat nearly 12 percent fewer calories. Another mind trick? Use smaller plates and spoons! Brian Wansink, a food psychology professor at Cornell University said, “We eat with our eyes, not with our stomach” after performing a study that showed that people tend to eat 25% more when using a bigger plate.

In short, volumetrics and the volumetric ideology can greatly aid anyone’s weight loss goals. Next time you’re trying to create a low calorie meal plan, make sure to plan meals that are high volume and low calorie for great results.

Choosing Meal Plans for Weight Loss

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After surveying the biggest diet plans, tallying up membership fees and food costs, analyzing medical studies, and interviewing leading nutritionists, CBS determined that Weight Watchers is one of the best meal plans to lose weight. Here are all the details on this meal plan and how you can use it with other meal planning services to lose weight fast.

What is the Weight Watchers philosophy?

The Weight Watchers meal plan aims to give its followers long-term weight management that comes from a healthy lifestyle, mind, body, and soul. The trick to staying fit and happy at the same time? Eat what you want from time to time. Weight Watchers encourages dieters to make their own eating decisions and do more physical activity. Additionally, this diet meal plan gives you a community that can help when times get tough. This community includes support like Weight Watchers meetings and online forums. Weight Watchers also recommends splitting your weight loss up into body weight reductions of 5% or 10%. For those who need to lose a lot of weight, breaking up their weight loss into 10% “goals” may help them stay more motivated.

What can I eat?

No foods are strictly prohibited on the Weight Watchers. Instead, each food item is assigned points. The points are based on not only calories, but total fat and dietary fiber. For example, 1 cup of broccoli is 0 points, 1 6 ounce steak is 8 points, and 1 ounce of chocolate is 4 points. You can earn negative points with exercise, which is the program’s way of motivating dieters to get to the gym.

Does Weight Watchers work?

Yes! A 2005 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that participants in the program lost an average of about 5 % of their body weight (around 10 pounds) in six months. Two years later, they had kept about half the weight off. After dieters have achieved their goal weight, the Weight Watchers diet meal plan encourages its users to attend meetings until they’ve stayed within 2 pounds of their goal weight for 6 weeks.

Using Weight Watchers in conjunction with an online meal planning service or app that helps you plan out your grocery store visits and make your grocery lists may comprise the overall best meal plan to lose weight.

17 Day Diet Meal Plan

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The 17 Day Diet was created by Dr. Mike Moreno, a family practice physician in California and his book about this plan is available online. It has three cycles, lasting 17 days, plus a fourth long-term maintenance cycle. If followed, this plan can help you to lose weight quickly and learn how to keep it off. It was originally created to help people lose those unwanted pounds gained during the holidays, but it can be used any time during the year to lose weight. The 17 Day Diet Meal plan is a diet for clean eating with reduced sugar, and contains no fried foods, processed foods, and other unhealthy foods.

Steps in the 17 Day Diet

  • Cycle 1 – The “Accelerate” phase of the plan contains 1200 calories per day. You will most likely have a weight loss of 10 – 15 pounds, most of which is water weight. Consumption of an unlimited amount of vegetables that aren’t starchy, for example, romaine lettuce, carrots, and potatoes, and lean protein, along with limited amounts of fruits, probiotics and a little healthy fat, such as olive oil, are the guide here for 17 Day Diet foods.
  • Cycle 2 – The “Activate” phase is the same as cycle 1 except that it reduces the fat to one serving and adds two servings of healthy carbohydrates for the diet meal plan. It plans for 1,500 calories per day, alternating lower-calorie days with slightly higher calorie days. This is for a 17 day diet menu. You will most likely have a 5 – 6 pound weight loss.
  • Cycle 3 – The “Achieve” phase is a period from the 52nd day and onward that allows for healthy foods with a slower rate of weight loss of about 2 – 3 pounds. It is basically the same meal plan as cycle 2, except protein is restricted to portions equal to the size of a sponge and there is an extra option for one serving of alcohol and 100-calorie snacks. The low carbohydrate diets are eliminated and it becomes a more balanced low calorie diet.
  • Cycle 4 – The “Arrive” phase means that hopefully you have reached your goal weight. You will follow diet meal plans from one of the earlier cycles during the week with controlled splurges on weekends (like having a favorite meal) to maintain your new weight. Hopefully, you know what healthy meal plans are all about by now.

Exercise at least 17 minutes a day during the first two cycles – primarily walking because of the limited amount of calories you consume. In the later cycles, exercise 150 – 300 minutes per week. In addition, if you gain 5 pounds after completing the 17 Day Diet plan, go back to cycle 2 until you lose those unwanted pounds.

Benefits of the 17 Day Diet Meal Plan

The variety of foods and cycles can keep you motivated. Also, the free diet meal plans are simple to understand and follow. Dr. Moreno’s book includes tips for avoiding holiday weight gain and for eating out. In addition, it contains 17 Day Diet recipes. If you don’t have time to do the cooking, there are home delivery meals available for a price. In all, it is up to you to maintain your weight and continue to exercise after going through the diet meal program. Make a lifetime commitment to have a healthier lifestyle starting with the 17 Day Diet meal plan!

Get more tools for planning healthy meals here. 

Become a Caveman — The Paleo Diet Meal Plan

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Apparently, Paleolithic Neanderthals did much more than just paint on caves and hunt woolly mammoths!  They had great eating habits, too! According to Loren Cordain, PhD, author of The Paleo Diet, “Clinical trials have shown that the Paleo Diet is the optimum diet that can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, markers of inflammation, help with weight loss, reduce acne, promote optimum health and athletic performance.”  The Paleo Diet, also known as the “Caveman Diet” is named after the eating habits of those living in the Paleolithic era.  It promotes the dietary habits of our ancestors as beneficial to our overall health and well-being since we have both genetically and enzymatically evolved on this diet.  Supposedly, cavemen not only discovered fire, but boasted perfect skin and rock-hard abs!

Paleo Principles

It isn’t particularly shocking that 10,000 years ago, before there was a McDonald’s on every street corner, people were generally healthier.  As we all know, episodes of hypertension, heart disease, and obesity have increased radically over the years due to food processing techniques developed during the industrial age and radical agricultural evolution including genetically modified plants and vegetables.  This has resulted in things like grinding grains into flour (which wasn’t possible until 4,000 years ago) and baked goods, to consumption of various cow milk products, to more contemporary unhealthy foods like French Fries, and chocolate chip Frappuccinos.  Not to mention the recent increase in portion sizes far beyond what we actually need to fuel our bodies.  According to the Paleo Diet plan, adhering to the diet of the Paleolithic era can help you lose weight and follow a healthier lifestyle without counting calories.

How to Follow the Paleo Diet Meal Plan

The Paleo Diet Meal Plan is based on the Paleo Diet foods that were available to hunters and gatherers, like meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and oils. Within a Paleo Diet menu, processed foods, sugar, salt, grains, most dairy products, alcohol, and coffee are prohibited. Unlike other diets, red meats are encouraged, as well as chicken and wild game meat. Eggs are also emphasized as a great Paleo diet breakfast because they are great sources of amino acids, healthy fats, calcium, vitamins, and, most importantly, protein. Fruits consumed should include fruits available to cavemen, like berries. Vegetables like broccoli, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, and asparagus were also available to ancient men and women.

Side Effects and Precautions

Are you ready to give it all up and start eating like a caveman or cavewoman? Not so fast! The Paleo Diet has been linked to some health issues like a lack of calcium or even bacterial infections due to the ingestion of raw meat. More importantly, the minimal carb intake of the Paleo Diet meal plan often causes sluggishness and low blood sugar, which can be a problem with all low carb diets.  Be aware that there’s an acclimation period and if you have a busy schedule, it may not be the right time or diet for you!

The Paleo Diet Meal Plan for Athletes

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Loren Cordain’s first book, The Paleo Diet, shattered many people’s predispositions about meat and eating with one simple idea: we should look to the past for a healthier future. Of course, Cordain’s anti-carb stance is nothing new. We’ve been feeling guilty about that extra scoopful of pasta, buttered croissant, or piece of garlic bread since the days of Adkins’ and the South Beach Diet.

However, for runners, cyclers, and athletes, in general, carbs have always been the way to go. As Cordain states, “Nearly every successful endurance athlete . . .ate with a heavy emphasis on cereals, bagels, bread, rice, pasta, pancakes, and potatoes.” Now, on the contrary, world-class athletes like Ryan Bolton and Gordo Bryn have taken up the Paleo Diet especially tailored for athletes and outlined in Cordain’s second book, The Paleo Diet for Athletes. If you’re an athlete that gravitates towards the carbs, you may want to change up your diet to see if you can increase your performance, speed, and endurance.

The Method of the Madness: Why Paleo Diet Meal Plan for Athletes Works

According to Cordain, there is significant scientific basis for the Paleo Diet hypothesis:

  • Branched-chain amino acids found in animal protein build and repair muscle. When athletes eat meals with higher amounts of protein, they “reverse the natural breakdown of muscle that occurs following a workout and thereby reduce recovery time and train at a greater intensity at the next session.”
  • Metabolic alkalosis reverses metabolic acidosis, preventing muscle loss. Um, excuse me? For those of us who aren’t exactly well acquainted with physiology, all foods are either broken down through the kidney as an acid or alkali. Athletes are more prone to acidosis, an increased acidity in the blood, due to the byproducts of exercise. The body neutralizes these acids by breaking down muscle tissue, something we definitely want to avoid. The Paleo Diet’s emphasis on fruits and vegetables, as opposed to grains and starches, reverses metabolic acidosis, and prevents muscle loss. Happy muscles, happy athlete.
  • Antioxidant vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals found in fruits and vegetables provide nutrients to athletes, ward off illness, and improve general health. No arguing with that.
  • While the Paleo Diet generally discourages starchy carbs and grains, Cordain contends that glycogen, a body fuel essential for high-level performance found in starches and sugars, can and should be consumed in the narrow time frame following exercise.

Following the Paleo Diet Meal Plan as an Athlete

While most of the methodology of the Paleo Diet for Athletes is identical to the Paleo Diet for anyone, as an athlete you should pay close attention to the post-workout window. Following exercise, feed your body with both a high protein food, like fish, and a starch, like bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, or yams. Other than in the post workout period, stay away from grains, dairy products, high-sodium meals, and fatty meats. Gravitate instead towards fresh fruit, vegetables, lean meats, and seafood. If employed correctly, the Paleo Diet meal plan for athletes could improve your skill, speed, and performance, on the court, track, or field.

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How to Make Low-Fat Diet Meal Plans

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We all know that French fries and burgers aren’t the healthiest choices, but we should treat ourselves to something salty and succulent every once in a while, right? Not necessarily. Researchers at the University of Calgary suggest that just one high-fat meal can radically increase your blood pressure, heart rate, and the resistance of blood vessels as you confront stressful tasks, like public speaking or a physical exercise. Yikes. We’re suddenly regretting indulging in that cupcake. “It’s been well documented that a high-fat diet leads to atherosclerosis and high blood pressure, and that exaggerated and prolonged cardiovascular responses to stress are associated with high blood pressure in the future. So when we learn that even a single, high-fat meal can make you more reactive to stress, it’s cause for concern because it suggests a new and damaging way that a high-fat diet affects cardiovascular function,” stated Dr. Tavis Campbell, a behavioral medicine specialist.

Of course, take this information with a grain of salt. Some people are perfectly healthy, even with the occasional steak and fries meal. However, if you have a history of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, or if high cholesterol runs in your family, you should take on a low-fat diet to maintain your cardiovascular health.

Tips to Maintain a Low-Fat Diet Meal Plan

If you want to start making healthier choices or cutting out some of the fat in your diet, take a long, hard look at your current food choices. You can also find ways to cook that will decrease your fat intake.

Making the Right Food Choices:

  • Check your labels and avoid food containing trans-fats, also known as hydrogenated oils.
  • Decrease your consumption of fatty meats like sausages, hot dogs, bologna, salami, organ meats, goose, duck, and untrimmed red meats. Choose lean meats and poultry without skin.
  • Select fat-free, 1 percent fat, and low-fat dairy products.
  • Cut back on beverages and foods with added sugars.
  • If you do drink alcohol, drink in moderation. Resist ordering that second margarita or another round of beer and shoot for only one drink per day. A glass of wine at dinner is a great option for anyone taking on a low-fat diet meal plan.
  • Follow the American Heart Association recommendations when you eat out and try to keep an eye on your portion sizes. As a general rule of thumb, only eat half of your entree and skip dessert.

Cooking methods to decrease your fat intake:

  • Use vegetable broth when cooking instead of oil and butter
  • Always trim your meats, then prepare your skinless and lean meats without added saturated and trans fat.
  • When making sauces, always let your cooking liquid cool, then remove the hardened fat before making gravy or any other sauce. You can also use a fat separator to pour the “good liquid” from the stock, leaving the fat in the pan.
  • Cook your eggs without the yolk, and bake with egg whites instead of whole eggs.
  • When baking, limit your vegetable oil to a tablespoon or less.  You can even substitute apple sauce in some recipes.
  • Replace your butter, lard, or shortening, with vegetable oils, like canola, sunflower, soybean, or olive oil when cooking dishes. Butter can be replaced when sautéing vegetables, pan-frying fish, or cooking pancakes.

Stay motivated to keep up with your low-fat diet meal plan by keeping in mind that you’ll both look and feel better when making healthy choices. While we may miss our steak and fried eggs, indulging in high-fat dishes is just not worth it. While partaking in a low-fat diet, make sure that you’re getting enough “healthy fats” to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as other important nutritional compounds.

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The Mediterranean Diet Meal Plan and You

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The Mediterranean diet originated from the idea that Mediterranean populations eat healthier than many Western civilizations. As it turns out, Mediterranean populations have consistently lower levels of heart disease compared to the rest of the Western world, according to an overview of the diet published by the European Society of Cardiology. The Mediterranean healthy hearts could be attributed to a diet rich in monounsaturated fatty acids, which lower risks associated with cardiac disease. Lots of omega-3s from fish and olive oil keep blood pressure, triglyceride, cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol levels stable, according to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. If you want to change up your diet plan and integrate some omega-3s into your diet, try the Mediterranean diet meal plan.

Fats in the Mediterranean Diet

A key element of this plan is healthy fats. The Mediterranean diet meal plan prioritizes healthy fats, which minimize inflammation and increase energy. Healthy guidelines usually advocate 35% or less of daily calories from fat. However, with the Mediterranean diet meal plan, you can eat 35% to 40% if you limit your diet to healthy, monounsaturated fats, such as those found in olives, nuts, and avocados, instead of saturated fats and trans fats. Saturated and trans fats could contribute to heart disease and should be avoided. Swap butter for olive oil and canola oil to better follow the Mediterranean diet. For example, you can dip bread in olive oil with a bit of garlic and spices, rather than eating bread and butter. Trust us, bread and olive oil is equally delicious. Select low-fat dairy for healthy diet meal plans, like the Mediterranean diet.  For example, swap higher fat dairy products for skim milk, fat-free yogurt, and low-fat cheese.

Mediterranean Friendly Starches

The Mediterranean diet also prioritizes plant-based foods, like fruits and vegetables. The farmer’s market in your area is a great source for garden-fresh produce. Most of your meals will be vegetarian in this diet meal plan, so expect to be cutting meat to a minimum. Also swap white starches for whole grains, legumes, and nuts. Nuts, in particular, are a great source of protein, but should be kept to a minimum since they are calorie dense and fatty. Replace peanut butter that contains hydrogenated fat or increased sodium with natural peanut butter. You could also try almond butter or tahini paste (ground sesame seeds) on bread as peanut butter substitutes.

Meats and Fish on the Mediterranean Diet

Limit red meat to no more than a few times a month in the Mediterranean diet meal plan. Instead, eat fish and poultry at least twice a week. Use fatty fish, rich with omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, mackerel, lake trout, herring, sardines, and albacore tuna.  Grill it, don’t fry it! Grilled meat is much healthier and less caloric than fried meat. Minimize your sodium intake by cutting your table salt use and, instead, flavor your food with spices and herbs.

If you like the philosophy of the Mediterranean diet meal plan you may want to give it a go. Whether you want to drop the pounds or you’re simply trying to live a healthier lifestyle, the Mediterranean diet could be your best bet.