"You On A Diet" another diet book that has been endorsed by Oprah. It does it's best to steer away from fad diets and all the pit falls associated with them, including rapid weight loss. The You On A Diet book goes by the premise that the faster the weight loss the more likely weight will return and yo yo dieting to occur.
Slow and Steady weight loss
Based on this, you get the feeling that the book is trying to invoke a healthier lifestyle that's conducive to weight loss, without the expectation of a rapid or huge weight loss. It talks about cutting 100 calories a day and losing a pound a month. This is far slower then the numbers that many other diets aim for and quite often its fast results that attract people.
However, when diets that promise faster results end in failure and in being in a position worse off to begun with (due to slowering of the metabolism amongst other things), slower more sensible diets are then opted for. The slower approach is more realistic and has attainable goals more likely to be carried on for the remainder of ones life.
What NOT to eat
Now for the part of the diet that people struggle with the most, food restrictions! The diet tries to simplify what not to eat by banning 5 things.
This of course doesn't mean you have to only ban 5 foods from your diet. It means you have to remove a range of products containing the 5 offending ingredients and depending on your current diet; this could be a dramatic and arduous task.
Banning these 5 food ingredients results in the removal of processed foods from the diet that most health professionals would recommend you replace with better foods. It takes the sensible and conventional approach like other diets, while attempting to relate it to the struggling dieter in its own way. And it does a pretty good job of it too, by having people concentrate on just 5 ingredients and also including a lot of useful tips along the way.
To avoid these 5 ingredients, dieters have to read the labels of pre-packaged labels. It is suggested to buy foods that contain less then 4 grams of saturated fat and less then four grams of sugar per serving. An even better and ideal option of course to buying pre-packaged food and not having to read the labels is to buy fresh produce.
What to Eat
Dr. Oz puts a great emphasis on the importance of eating breakfast everyday. He says most people who eat a healthy breakfast are thinner as it fuels the body and jump starts the metabolism. He goes on to say that if you find a healthy breakfast and a healthy lunch that you can eat everyday, you can then eat a wide variety of things for dinner putting you in an excellent position for weight loss and maintenance.
Eating the same thing for breakfast everyday is quite common but having the same lunch everyday may prove a little too monotonous for some.
Some unique advice
You On A Diet has a number of helpful tips, advice and interesting bits of knowledge to impart.
This includes how to deal with what he refers to as the craving centre of the brain. When banning foods and replacing them with good foods, the science of the body and mind come into play. Dr. Oz has a number of good suggestions to help the body and mind adjust to this transition from the not so exciting eating carrots, to having sex.
Exercise
The You On A Diet book doesn't just mention exercise as a less significant addition to diet. It takes the same approach of simplifying exercise as it does for diet. There are four things it says you need to do and these all seem like very simple things that any person could integrate easily into their lives.