Choosing Meal Plans for Weight Loss

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.

Finding the Right Weight Loss Meal Plans

The Boston Medical Center indicates that approximately 45 million Americans diet each year and spend $33 billion on weight-loss products in their pursuit of a trimmer, fitter body. Most likely, you or someone you know has pursued weight loss based on a rigorous or structured meal plan. Choosing a diet meal plan is critical to losing weight and keeping it off long term.

HOW TO PICK THE BEST WEIGHT LOSS MEAL PLAN FOR YOU
There are hundreds of weight loss meal plans and philosophies that you can follow. Sometimes, having this many options is more overwhelming than liberating! There are some basic meal plan characteristics that you should keep your eye out for when picking a diet philosophy that best suits you. These factors could help you eliminate diet meal plans that may not lead you to successful, long term weight loss:

  • Manageability: One of the most important factors of any weight loss program is manageability. If you can’t follow a program, how can you expect to lose weight? Make sure your weight loss program gives you all the essential nutrients, enough calories to sustain your energy levels, and realistic goals.
  • Research-based: Make sure that the meal plan you choose is based on research or doctor recommendations. Many diet meal plans have no grounds in science or doctoral studies. These meal plans should not be depended on or trusted for weight loss success.
  • Level of long term success: When in doubt, ask the trainer, doctor, or whoever invented the weight loss philosophy to give you information regarding the rate of long term success.
  • Balance: Do your research ahead of time to determine your personal views on eating healthy. Most likely, you will want a diet that has a healthy balance of all food groups, fats and sugars included. A balanced meal plan will assure that you’re getting all of your essential nutrients.
  • Flexibility: Lastly, find a weight loss meal plan that allows for a little flexibility. If you go too long without your favorite food, you may binge and then, ultimately, suffer from a large bout of guilt. Avoid this “crash and burn” cycle and, instead, find a weight loss meal plan that allows you to have a cookie or some French fries every once in a while.

Dieting is an individual journey. Ultimately the best diet meal plan for you will be one that is geared towards your particular goals and tastes. Pick a plan that works best for you to guarantee success in the long run.