|  | Diet Nutrition | Weight Control

Ornish Diets

The Ornish Diet is taken from the book "Eat More, Weigh Less" by Dr. Dean Ornish. When he published the book, Dr. Ornish was already well-respected in the medical community because of the success he had had in reversing blockages to the heart. The weight-loss diet found in his book is an adaptation of his original heart disease reversing diet.

  1. The Theory According to Ornish

    • The theory behind the diet according to Ornish is that eating a vegetarian diet which is high in fiber and low in fat will make you, and keep you, healthy as well as helping you to lose weight. According to Ornish, you need a combination of diet and exercise to ensure the body's fat-burning mechanism is working as efficiently as possible.

    Calories

    • The Ornish diet advises that weight loss will not be achieved by counting the calories we consume, but rather by taking care over the source of those calories. That is whether they are from fat or other parts of food. To this end, he divided the into three groups: foods to eat all the time, foods to eat in moderation and foods to avoid.

    Foods To Eat All The Time

    • On the Ornish diet, you can eat as many beans and legumes, fruit, grains and vegetables as you like. Being allowed unlimited quantities of these foods means that the dieter can eat until full and does not need to feel hungry.

    Foods To Eat In Moderation

    • Fat-free dairy products such as skimmed milk, fat free yogurt, non-fat cheeses, non-fat sour cream and egg whites (but not yolks) are acceptable. Dieters can also eat fat-free or very low-fat commercially available products, such as frozen yogurt bars, provided they are low in sugar and do not include any of the foods to avoid in their ingredients.

    Foods To Avoid

    • Because the diet is vegetarian, followers must avoid meat of all types. Followers also should avoid oils and products which contain oil (such as margerine), avocados, nuts, any dairy products not mentioned in the foods to eat in moderation category, and alcohol.

    How Does The Diet Work

    • The idea behind the diet is that our metabolism is still set in the same way it was thousands of years ago, when cavemen did not know when their next meal would be. The approach of limiting calories, therefore, slows down the metabolism, according to Dr. Ornish, causing weight to reach a plateau after the initial loss. Eating whenever we are hungry encourages the metabolism to speed up, as there is no need to hold onto energy since the body is not required to fast.

    Does It Work?

    • Dr. Ornish's success in reversing heart disease using this diet means that he is not only highly respected in the medical community, but studies have shown his is an effective weigh-loss diet. According to Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians' Committee For Responsible Medicine, the diet brings about weight loss, reduces the risk of cancer and makes diabetes and high blood pressure more manageable.

Weight Control - Related Articles