My Fitness Pal: $0
My Fitness Pal is a free online tool for tracking diet, nutrition and exercise. In addition to their website, MFP offers free mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and Windows phone. MFP makes it really easy to keep track of what you eat and to help you formulate a personal weight loss plan based on your weight, nutritional needs and goals.
Dr. Weil’s Vitamin Advisor: free recommendation report/vitamin prices vary
Dr. Andrew Weil is a Harvard-educated physician and a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, a discipline combining both conventional and alternative medical therapies. I call him “The beardy guy from Larry King” because he used to be a pretty frequent guest on CNN’s Larry King Live.
Dr. Weil founded and directs the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, where he’s also a tenured professor.
Some of his nutritional recommendations are considered somewhat controversial among the pill-pushing medical community, but his credentials are impeccable and his arguments always compelling. Anyone who knows anything about science knows it’s not uncommon for scientific pioneers on the “bleeding edge” to receive some criticism from the scientific establishment.
Obtaining vitamins and minerals through a nutritious, well-balanced diet is always preferable to taking a pill, but in some cases it’s very hard to eat enough of the right foods to get all the vitamins your body needs — even if you already eat a nutritious diet.
The Dr. Weil’s Vitamin Advisor website offers a free personalized recommendation of what vitamins to take based on your age, sex, medical history, etc. Dr. Weil’s website sells very high-quality vitamins at reasonable prices, but you could also just sign up for the free vitamin report and then shop for your vitamins elsewhere.
Dr. Weil’s fish oil supplement in particular is a higher quality product than you’re likely to find on the shelf at Walmart or your local pharmacy. He also sells a very high-quality daily multivitamin.
If you believe in the health benefits of ingesting omega-3 fatty acids in particular, as I do, then it’s very hard to eat enough fish to get the amount of fish oil needed for maximum efficacy. Dr. Weil’s vitamin store is one of the best sources for fish oil supplements you’re likely to find, and they’re very reasonably priced (even to me, and I’m notoriously frugal).
The Mayo Clinic Diet: $2.99 (Kindle format), $17.15 (hardcover), $10.98 (paperback)
You’ve probably heard of miraculous “Mayo Clinic diets” your entire life, but until 2009 no such thing really existed. Shady marketers have been attaching the Mayo Clinic’s name to dubious fad diets for as long as I can remember, but those diets and their often outrageous claims (“Lose 50 pounds a day by just eating pickles!”) have pretty much all been scams.
Since there was obviously high demand for a “Mayo Clinic diet” of some sort, the Mayo Clinic folks finally decided to develop and endorse one based on their own medical research and present it in book form. Considering it’s only $2.99 for the Kindle edition as I write this, I doubt you could ever find a bigger bargain with the word “diet” in its name. You can barely even get a decent cheeseburger for under five bucks anymore, much less a credible, scientifically-formulated road map for losing weight and keeping it off.
“The purpose of the Mayo Clinic Diet,” as the clinic explains, “is to help you lose excess weight and to find a way of eating that you can enjoy for a lifetime. The Mayo Clinic Diet aims to teach you how to choose healthy foods and portions and to develop healthy lifestyle habits so that you can maintain a healthy weight for life.” Their diet changes can also help reduce your risk of weight-related health problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and sleep apnea.
The Mayo Clinic Diet plan outlined in this New York Times best-selling book begins with a two-week period where five specific bad habits are replaced by five specific good habits. Mayo claims this should result in a 6- to 10-pound weight loss in the first two weeks of dieting. The remainder of the program focuses largely on portion control and exercise, allowing dieters to safely lose — and keep off — 1 to 2 pounds per week.
Not a “miracle diet” by any means, but 50 to 100 pounds of safe and healthy weight loss in one year is still quite aggressive, not to mention quite life-changing for anyone who needs to lose that much weight.
The Mayo program uses a food pyramid-type system with vegetables and fruits as its base and carbs, meat and dairy, fats and sweets sorted into progressively more limited daily allowances. The Mayo Clinic Diet emphasizes setting realistic goals, replacing poor health habits with good ones and enforcing conscious portion control.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even a food scientist) to know nutritional behavior modifications such as this can be life-changing, and the Mayo Clinic is among the most trusted institutions in health care. Click here to read more about the book on Amazon. What have you got to lose? Besides weight, anyway.