The Best Diet for 2010?

Mirror mirror on the wall, what is the best diet of them all?

The Daily Beast has done a statistical analysis of the top 10 diets where clinical results are available and have ranked these diets in order of effectiveness. See their slideshow of the 10 best diets.

You may be surprised to hear that the #1 most effective diet is not Jenny Craig, not Weight Watchers or Atkins. It may be one you've never heard of. It's called Volumetrics.

This diet focuses on eating lots of foods which have a high water content. This means lots and lots of vegetables and soups.

With Volumetrics you can literally eat many pounds of food each day. What I had for dinner last night would be a good example. I was eating alone, so I steamed a big bunch of kale, then added a a can of broccoli soup (250 calories) to give it more taste. This was really nice as was, and I had two huge bowls of it (with a calorie total of probably less than 350?).

(Since some of you may consider this a bit too granola head overboard, i'll just add as a sidenote that in my case i also mixed in a couple of tablespoons of nutritional yeast (which is one of the most nutritious foods, and is quite a bit more tasty than Brewer's yeast. It has tons of protein and B Vitamins).

Check out the The Volumetrics book on Amazon. It sells for $6.99

The WiFi Scale

Here's a neat idea for a weight scale. It's the first WiFi scale that connects to the internet to automatically register your weight, fat and BMI calculations.

We first heard about it via a Leo Laporte podcast. He was very impressed with it and has attached it to his tweets on Twitter so that each morning when he steps on the scale, an automatic tweet goes out about his current weight.

The scale is rated five star on Amazon, but it's not cheap at $159. See it here Withings WiFi Body Scale at Amazon.

Is Your Diet Very Healthy? Take this Quiz

The world's healthiest foods website (whfoods.org) has a quiz you can take to see how much of the healthiest foods you are eating and based on your answers, it will tell you what vitamins and nutrients you are probably lacking.

Check out the quiz here.

This non-profit website was founded by a guy who became a wealthy mogul by starting a health food company called Health Valley Foods in 1970. Though his principles were sound, the food was mostly packaged, convenience food. He sold the company in 1996 and now operates this non-profit web-site to give back and also possibly to atone for selling too many granola bars over the years.

The healthiest foods are non-packaged, non-processed foods.

This is the best site we've seen on truly healthy foods and it gives the highest quality information about their nutritional values. Check out the 100 healthiest foods.

Weight Loss for Men - Visualize It

If you have an iPhone or iTouch and are a male who wants to lose weight, check out this Virtual Weight Loss Avatar for men. It's fun to get visual milestones for each few pounds you lose.

As with the similar app for women 'Virtual Weight Loss for Women', this app is based on BMI calculations so it will look different for men who weigh the same but are different heights.

Update: December 16th 2011: We've updated the app and artwork! Check out the latest versions here.

Outdoor Exercise for Weight Loss

Here's a fun story from a discussion about mindless eating. Photo via wheany.

Outdoor Cat v.s Indoor Cat:

Living in the country we had pet cats that lived outdoors.

All of these outdoor cats had to be called to come to eat and did not beg for food. Most of the time they were 50 to 100 yards away from our house. Being predators they were constantly roaming, killing mice and occasionally a bird and patrolling their territory of a couple of acres. Needless to say all of these cats during my childhood were healthy, lean and fit cats.

As young adults we took our pet country cat to live with us in our apartment. The cat ate more food. Begged for food. Yowled for more food and was always underfoot looking for more food. He was left alone most of the day to an empty apartment. He quickly gained a huge amount of weight. Seeing that he was not fit for apartment living and was getting to be a fat cat with nothing better to do than beg for food, we took back home to our parents in the country.

Quickly, the cat lost weight and stopped begging for food since he had mice to chase and a couple of acres to patrol and occupy his time.

We humans sit in our homes watching TV and "reality shows", playing on the computer playing virtual games and wonder why we get fat.

Losing 200 Pounds

Becky Griggs has lost an amazing 200 pounds. At her heaviest, six years ago, she weighed 352.

She now weighs 150 and has become a personal trainer. She's 43 years old and the mother of two grown children.

Becky cut out sugar and flour from her diet. She eats five times a day and works out regularly. Check out her story at CNN (From Fat to Gym Rat) and see her short video below;

Slim Fast Recall

Ten million cans of Slim-Fast ready to drink products are being recalled due to a possible health risk. Slim-Fast is owned by Unilever and in cooperation with the FDA they are recalling the products because of the possibility of contamination with Bacillus cereus, a micro-organism, which may cause diarrhea and possibly nausea and/or vomiting. The probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.

These ready to drink products were being sold in stores nationwide.

No other Slim-Fast® products are affected by this recall. No Slim-Fast® powdered shakes, meal bars, or snack bars are included.

Consumers who have bought Slim-Fast® RTD products in cans are urged to discard them immediately and contact the company at 1-800-896-9479 for a full refund.