Examples of some of the best and most popular weight loss and diet plans available include:

"Eat to Live"

Dr. Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" diet plan is a great diet. 49% of people who have followed this program and who have lost 50 pounds or more have kept it off for more than five years, and are on the National Weight Control Registry.

Helpful Resources: Long Term Weight Loss A site that currently has over 5000 people registered who have lost significant amounts of weight and kept it off for long periods of time. This site offers success stories that explain the diet plans these people have chosen, what worked for them, and what did not. This site's purpose is to investigate long term weight loss and diet plans to decipher what methods work best and why. Dr. Esselstyn This site discusses a program by Dr. Esselstyn, his successes, his book, articles, peer reviewed studies he has conducted. It tells you where he is speaking and when, and gives you contact info so you can talk to him personally. The site does not go into his diet plan, but the book available to purchase on this site does. Support Center This site discusses making dietary lifestyle changes easy and taste good. The site offers a support center, a challenge that includes free meal plans, free forum support, a bookstore for additional support literature. The diet plan is discussed in the forums on this site, and has a book available for purchase with further detail. Dr. McDougall Dr. McDougall offers a comprehensive site that allows you to do a search on any health topic, and find well references articles. His site offers a discussion board, foods to purchase, clinical trial information and more. Dr. Furhman Dr. Furhman offers a discussion on diet plans, good nutrition, improving your health with natural weight loss, a member support center, as well as information on diet plans for people of all ages including children. Ornish Diet This site discusses the basics of the Ornish diet, and how to make it easy to implement. He offers simple menus, recipes, a question and answer section, and details about his weight loss program. Weight Loss Programs This link offers reviews of various weight loss programs, including a look at both short and long term success rates. It offers insight into what these diets include, and how their success rates both long and short term. Top Diets This site offers consumers a quick look and rating of some of the top diets with comments posted by people who use these diets. It uses a star rating system, as well as links to learn more about the diets. Weight Watchers This site offers links to local meeting locations, online support, as well as a look at how weight watchers works for so many, and how you can implement it in your personal life. The site offers free newletters and emails. Raw Food Nutrition Dr. Graham is one of the best at teaching raw food nutrition, and has a comprehensive site that offers a diet plan, a book, retreats, food support systems, raw nutritional science course, frequently asked questions, links to other raw food information, and more.

Dr. Furhman meets the criteria for a sustainable lifestyle diet change, he has created recipes that are liked, that center the meal plans around foods that have high nutrient density, and his program is fairly simple and straightforward.

Dr. Furhman offers support for those who use his program. You can buy a subscription to a forum that allows you to get help when you need it. He offers the ability to purchase recipes that have been tested for taste and quality. He offers private coaching. He offers retreats to learn first hand how to follow his recommended diet plan.

What his plan recommends:

• Eat all raw vegetables you want daily.


• Eat one plus pounds a day of cooked green vegetables (ex: asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts).


• Eat beans, legumes, bean sprouts, and tofu freely, but be sure to eat at least one cup a day.


• Eat all the fresh fruit you want, but get at least 4 whole fruits daily.


• Eat one ounce or less of nuts and seeds daily


• Limit whole grains and starchy vegetable to one cup a day or less.


• Limit intake of animal based foods to less than 10% of your diet.


• Eat less than 2 ounces of avocado a day.


• No dairy, animal products, fruit juice, dried fruit, or between meals snacks.

McDougall Plan

The McDougall Plan has a 35% success rate based on the same criteria of losing 50 pounds of more and keeping it off for five years.

McDougall offers an online support service, ten day retreats to learn his system and master the recipes, he has created several thousand recipes that are compliant with his program.

McDougall's diet plan is completely vegan, and many people approaching his diet assume it is difficult and unsatisfying to eat this way, however, with his success rate, it can be seen that this assumption is incorrect. You can find variety and pleasure in the foods, you just have to learn the recipes and principles.

What this plan recommends:

• No overt fat intake, including, oils, refined and processed foods, nuts and seeds, avocados, olives, etc.


• Eat all fruits and vegetables freely.


• Support energy needs with starches. (ex: beans, potatoes, grains)


• No meat or dairy at all.

Original Fast Foods

Original Fast Foods, while fairly new to the diet plan industry has had screaming success with sustainable weight loss programs, and dietary lifestyle changes. Thus far their success ratio is higher than other known diet plan and weight loss programs, with 90% of participants maintaining weight loss long term.

Original Fast Foods offers a support center with community coaching forums, newsletters, group buys, private coaching, support publications (books, pamphlets, articles).

What this plan recommends:
This program has a good, better, best weight loss program, if program is not mentioned in parentheses after, it means it is recommended to not eat this at all.

• Eat fruits freely. (All programs)


• Eat leafy greens, salad greens, and non-starchy vegetables freely. (All programs)


• Eat legumes freely. (Good and Better)


• Limit starchy vegetables to one cup daily (Good)


• Limit whole grains to one cup daily. (Good)


• Limit nuts and seeds to ¼ cup or less daily. (All programs)


• During weight loss eliminate use of animal based foods, during maintenance, limit overt fats such as nuts, seeds, fatty fruits, and animal based foods to 10% of total caloric intake.

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. M.D. started this diet plan. Those who have followed this program have arrested and reversed heart disease, and lost weight as well. This plan was conducted at the Cleveland Clinic, and had 100% success rate for those who follow it. A study was conducted where 88% of all participants have had 100% long term success. 12% opted out of the program, and were not successful. Everyone who sticks to this program loses weight and has arrested and reversed heart disease. An important side note is that each of the participants in this study were on the heart transplant list, and were successfully removed after reversing and arresting heart disease. While this diet plan is designed to arrest and reverse heart disease, it has also been shown to be extremely successful in weight loss.

What this plan recommends:

• No overt fat intake, including, oils, refined and processed foods, nuts and seeds, avocados, olives, etc.


• Eat all fruits and vegetables freely.


• Support energy needs with starches. (ex: beans, potatoes, grains)


• No meat or dairy at all.

Support is only offered through private consultation with doctor Esselstyn.

Weight Watchers

Weight Watchers is the most popular and well known of these best diet plans today, however, statistically speaking it is not nearly as successful long term as the previously mentioned diet plans. However, it is the highest in the country outside of "Eat to Live", "Original Fast Foods", "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease", and "The McDougall Plan". at 22%. Most of the weight loss plans in the country only have about a 1-3% success of people losing weight and keeping it off for more than five years. What does this mean? It means that they are not sustainable lifestyle programs, and do not support good health and long term change, rather quick results with no lasting affects.

Weight Watchers offers a superior nationwide support system that includes local weekly meetings, weigh-ins, buddy systems, incentives, and portable pamphlets. While inferior in program recommendations to the previously mentioned programs, the extensive support structure has made weight watchers a huge success.

What they recommend:

• You can eat whatever you want, as long as you keep your points under a certain value. With this in mind, foods like fruits and vegetables are given almost no point value encouraging participants to eat them freely.

Why the above programs work:

• All meal planning is centered around whole fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes.


• All encourage the elimination of processed and refined foods and oils.

With the four most successful programs mentioned above, the primary focus encourages eating foods high on the nutrient density chart, and centering your eating patterns in a way that encourages a high nutrient density for your caloric intake. While Weight Watchers point system essentially encourages the same thing, they promote the idea of being able to eat what you want and lose weight as long as you stay within your allotted points. The problem with this is that it does not promote educating participants in using their caloric budget on high nutrition foods, rather it promotes the consumption of foods with no nutritional value. Thus, they fail in one of the essential criteria of a good diet plan-meeting the nutritional needs of the body without undue burden.

Let's take a look at what popular diet plans do not work and why:

While the Atkins program promotes weight loss it does not meet the essential nutritional needs of the body, and can not result in long term health, and often leads to heart disease.

Ornish, while a good program, has a poor support system, and people have been unable to make permanent changes, and thus have little success.

While Weight Watchers has a great support system, ultimately people need to survive without a support system. Generally, when people leave the program, they have a hard time maintaining their weight on their own because the nutrition-less foods in the point system tend to escalate, and the high nutrient density foods decrease, and thus people fail in weight loss.

The Zone is fairly complicated, and most people who find success on it can not sustain it because it is too hard to follow.

Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone are all popular diets today, and all promote quick weight loss. However, according to a randomized trial reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association poor sustainability and adherence rates resulted in modest weight loss, and cardiac risk factor reductions for the above diets. From this conclusion you can see that the key to any successful weight loss program is creating sustainable lifestyle changes that are not just going to help you lose weight, but also promote health for your body.