Weight Loss - The Mayo Clinic Way

Finally we have a diet plan that doesn't just involve a strict eating plan, this diet recognizes the fact that there needs to be changes made to the persons lifestyle and focuses on your overall health. This lifestyle change will help reshape your body and get you back to your ideal weight. Based on research and clinical experiences, the mayo diet will help with the change in lifestyle you need (by adopting healthy habits and breaking the unhealthy ones) and this will improve your health, increase your energy and get you back to the body you had many years ago.

There are 4 guide lines that will help you achieve what you want with this diet:
* eat well
* Increase your daily activity
* we need to identify our health and eating goals
* remain motivated

Eat well

We all love to eat well, but we tend to eat the wrong combination's of foods and now need to break this habit by sticking to foods that are classified as good. This is done by using a food chart in the shape of a pyramid with vegetables and fruits [half and half] at the base. the next layer would be the carbohydrates, above this layer would be the meat and dairy, then come the fats with the sweets being the tip of the pyramid. If you put pen to paper and draw this example, you will see that the amounts get progressively smaller and therefore limit the daily allowance of each type of foods. So by setting realistic goals you can replace your poor eating habits with good ones and also be conscious of the correct portions of food you are able to consume.

Increase your daily activity

Oh dear, here we have to get off the couch and schedule a more active lifestyle by participating in some kind of sport and exercising. This can be done by either by going to the dreaded gym daily or staying at home and doing some form of exercise - be it on a treadmill or bicycle it has to be done. Breaking our sedentary habits is probably one of the hardest things we will ever do - hang in there though, as the results are worth it.

Identifying our health and eating goals

Decide on a course of action, you don't need to rush into the exercise on a daily basis, you can start at a steady pace and maybe exercise 3 times a week for a month or two. This will slowly be increased over the next few months until you are exercising at least 5 times a week - be it three visits to the gym and 2 games of tennis - it is your course of action to improve your health, so you can decide. You will also need to set you ideal goal weight here and how long it will take you to reach it. If you feel you need to lose fifty pounds, you could set a goal at a year down the road or if you feel you need to lose it sooner, give yourself six months. By sticking to these goals you will find your weight going down and your health going up!

Remain motivated

This is probably one of the hardest things to do, we generally start out with such enthusiasm and go at it with gusto - that is until something else comes along and we start finding excuses not to do our exercise and by thinking one extra helping of desert wont hurt. Keep a positive attitude, get a support system [like a couple of friends who can be there with you] and remember the goals you have set yourself. Patience is also required as the 50 pounds you want to lose will not disappear overnight but over a longer period of time.

There are pro's and con's to this diet:

PRO"s - the mayo diet is based on solid medical research, the clinic is one of the top medical institutions and it encourages one to eat properly and exercise regularly.

CON's - no negatives to this way of losing weight other than a small charge for the actual Mayo Clinic Diet Plan.

Remember [as with all diet programs] - to consult your doctor if you have any existing medical conditions, before starting this diet.

A brief bit of History
The Mayo Clinic traces its heritage to a frontier doctor, William Worrall Mayo, an Englishman who settled in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1863.