The Dr. Walter Willett Diet Plan

Change your eating habits and you'll enjoy overall better health, lose weight, and decrease your risk of disease. That's the premise of the so-called Walter Willett Diet. The simple rules are easy to understand and based on current and reliable food and nutrition research.

Dr. Walter Willett wrote this diet plan to help make sense of the misleading information offered in the USDA Food Guide Pyramid. Willet has used his years of research at the Harvard Medical School to create his own Healthy Eating Pyramid, which recommends a different distribution of choices to make up a healthy eating regimen.

Willett designed the guide to help you better understand how to eat the right foods in the proper amounts. It also provides information on how food affects the human body and why other dieting plans work (or don't work). Also included are recommendations for food shopping, exercise, and supplement use that allow you to design a plan that will work for you.

What makes the Dr. Walter Willett Diet a different weight loss plan?

The idea behind this diet is that eating healthy is about making good choices, not about deprivation or monotony. This is a diet prescription based on scientific evidence from large-scale research studies. The Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan suggests simple changes to make snacks and meals tastier and healthier, and pays special attention to the needs of specific segments of the population, including vegetarians, pregnant women, and those at high risk for chronic diseases.

What is the Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan?

This plan promises to provide variety, choice, and few restrictions. It also helps to dispel some of the myths that exist concerning nutrition research and popular fad diets. Willett describes the way nutrition research is conducted in the hopes that you will better understand the results. The book includes tips on how to read medical news and advice. Most importantly, you should not make huge lifestyle changes based on one study - wait to see more evidence.

Willett determined that limiting calories is the "single most important key to losing weight," so this plan tackles the challenge of how to accomplish this.

According to the Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan, all foods can be part of a healthy diet if you can learn how to make healthy choices on a consistent basis.

These three important tips for weight control give you some of the tools to design your own diet plan:

• Increase activity level.
• Find an eating program that works for you.
• Avoid overeating. Be selective, eat small portions, and keep track of calories by being aware of what is in the food you are eating.

The Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan introduces a new version of the USDA food pyramid. This healthy pyramid's foundation is daily exercise and weight control. You can achieve weight control by eating whole grains and healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, nuts and legumes, poultry, fish, and low-fat dairy. At the top of the pyramid are sources of saturated fat, refined carbohydrates, and sweets, all labeled "use sparingly."

You can see Willet's pyramid for yourself and compare it with the USDA guidelines that Willet’s finds so unreliable.

The Dr. Walter Willett Diet program also provides additional information and tips for daily use of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. The tips can help you make choices to best fit your lifestyle. Useful tips include: remember that some fats are good for you, eat whole grains for breakfast, mix up your protein sources, and eat a variety of different colored fruits and vegetables.

You'll also find tools for label reading and ordering at restaurants. As you learn about cost-effective shopping, you'll see that healthy eating does not have to be expensive.

The Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan also offers recommendations for healthy substitutions when cooking, one week of sample menus, and recipes with nutrition information. Recipes include: Apple Crunch Oatmeal, Tandoori Tuna, Portobello and Caramelized Onion Pizza, and Orange Juice Sorbet.

The plan praises alcohol for its potential health-protecting benefits and recommends drinking for those who already drink and who do not have history of alcoholism. Suggested portions are one drink a day (or less) for women and two for men.

What are the weight loss expectations?

The Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan is not a rapid weight loss plan. It does promise to guide you towards eating foods that will help to improve your overall health, lose weight, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Is exercise promoted?

Daily exercise is a vital component to this plan. You'll find exercise at the bottom layer of Willett's pyramid. You should engage in physical activity for at least 30 minutes per day. Do something enjoyable and you are more likely to stick with it. People who exercise regularly and who are active all day can consume more calories than those who do not.

Are supplements recommended?

Supplements can not replace healthy eating. However, the Walter Willett Diet plan recommends that you take a multivitamin for insurance since it can provide extra amounts of nutrients that are vital for good health, such as Vitamins D, B6 and B12, antioxidants, and folic acid. Extra supplements are especially important for those that may not be able to get all their needed nutrients due to disease or restricted diets.

Take fish oil supplements if you do not want to eat the recommended one to two servings of fish per week. The Dr. Walter Willett Diet plan recommends calcium supplements in place of increased milk consumption because they do not have the extra fat, calories, and hormones that may be present in milk.