I’ll at least give the diet plan a review. The Hollywood part of the diet is reportedly comes from a few Hollywood celebrities such as Kelly Clarkson and Mandy Moore dropping a few pounds.

The diet claims that it works because it is based on caloric restriction. That is pretty obvious since you are exchanging two important meals for cookies. The Hollywood Cookie Diet is a short term fix for weight loss. I would bet that the majority of people who lose weight from this diet will quickly gain it back.

Want some more cons to the Hollywood Cookie Diet? First, since two of your meals are based on sugar you may experience a temporary satisfaction and energy gain, but that will soon be followed by a crash. Sugary foods only provide short term energy and if not used are stored and turned to fat.

Second, how full and satisfied are you going to feel after eating 1 or 2 cookies for breakfast and lunch? From my experience, eating that small amount of food would cause great hunger. This may lead to binge eating during your sensible dinner.

Third, think about the logic behind this diet. The whole purpose if to find something you love to eat (cookies) and make two meals out of followed by a sensible dinner. Their website says that 4 cookies are about 600 calories and a sensible dinner should be around 800 calories for a total caloric intake of 1400. They base their claims on a person who usually eats 3000 calories per day. Following their diet plan this person would lose about 15 over the course of 1 month. Following this logic you could eat anything for breakfast or lunch as long as it was around 600 calories. Let’s take for example Subway. Subway offers several breakfast sandwiches that are under 200 calories. Have a breakfast sandwich and a glass of juice and you are at around 300 calories. Visit them again for lunch have any 6 inch sub for around 300 calories. Don’t like Subway try McDonald’s, they have breakfast sandwiches for around 30o calories as well. For lunch, have a cheeseburger or hamburger for around 300 calories as well. Hopefully you get the point. There are hundreds of options for breakfast and lunch that are much more filling than cookies.

Can’t get the cookies out of  your head? Still think cookies are a better option? Buy a pack of of Oreos. Three Oreos have 160 calories. Eat five for breakfast and six for lunch and you’ll come in around  320 calories 580 calories. The difference is you will pay about $5 for a pack of oreos that conatin 51 cookies. The package will last you 4 and 1/2 days. A box of Hollywood Cookies contain 12 cookies and will cost you $20 and will last you 3 days. You do the math……

My advice don’t try the Hollywood Cookie Diet. There are literally hundreds of other options. Even if you have a sweet tooth, follow the same logic. Eat a candy bar for each meal for the same calories and save yourself hundreds of dollars. Don’t waste you money on this diet!

A few months ago my wife’s family and I planned a trip to the beach. We started a nice friendly “biggest loser” contest before we left for the beach. I’m really not that much overweight but decided to get in on the game anyway because I could stand to lose a few pounds. My starting weight was 205 and I wanted to lose about 10 pounds before we left for the beach.

After about 5 weeks I easily lost my 10 pounds, but came in second in the competition. I was still very happy with my progress over the 5 weeks. I followed a healthy diet and tried to do some type of exercise at least 4 days every week.

Now, weeks later I have to admit I’ve lost focus on my healthy diet and only average about 1.5 days per week of exercise. However, I’ve managed to maintain my weight loss over the past few months. I’m convinced it’s because of my eating habits.

I eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast and eat several small meals throughout the day at work. I have protein bar for a morning snack followed by a sandwich and diet cola for lunch. An afternoon snack includes an apple and a cup of yogurt. I try to finish the night with a sensible dinner.

Even though I have skipped exercise many nights I have continued to maintain my weight loss. I’m convinced it’s because I have continued to eat several small meals throughout the day.

If you want to drop a few pounds but don’t have time to exercise you may want to try this technique. You can still eat a good amount of food, just spread it throughout the day instead of large meals. It will help increase your metabolism and burn more calories throughout the day.The Importance of eating small meals in your diet.

Eating a proper diet will help you maintain a good weight, stay full of energy and even improve many of your body functions. You don’t have to starve yourself and strive to be “skinny” or deprive yourself of the foods you love. You just need to limit these foods and consume more of the healthy foods.

To maintain a proper and healthy diet try to follow these guidelines. Not only will you look better, but you will feel better too.

Eat just enough calories per day to maintain a health weight. Overeating will not only cause you to gain weight but will also make you feel sick and often depressed. A recommended amount of calories is 2,000 per day, but this can vary depending on age, sex, activity level and current weight. Try to find the correct balance of calorie intake and calorie expenditure for yourself.

Drink plenty of water. The recommended amount of water intake per day is 8 glasses. Again this can vary depending on your activity level. A office worker will be fine with 8 glasses per day, but a construction worker will need much more during summer month to replenish lost water and stay hydrated.

Throw out the junk food and buy healthy snacks. If you have junk food in the pantry or fridge, you will probably eat it. Get rid of the chips and candy bars and replace them with wheat crackers, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits.

Control your portions. You may want to avoid all you can eat buffets. It’s hard to stop after one plate, after all you want to get your moneys worth. Instead pack your lunch and only bring enough food to make you full. Bring a couple of health snacks to control mid-morning and mid-afternoon hunger.

Keep moving. Even if you work in an office there are plenty of things you can do to burn a few extra calories in the office. Take a walk around the office or use your lunch hour to burn a few calories.

Reward yourself. If you don’t occasionally treat yourself to a treat you will eventually snap and lose control. You may be tempted to binge and ruin your whole diet. Again, just control how much you eat and you’ll be fine.

Here is another solution to the late night diet buster, hunger pains… go to bed. If you don’t have the will power to eat a very healthy snack in the evening then you should try to find another solution to the problem. Most of us don’t get enough sleep anyway so solve two problems at the same time. Grab a glass of water to help control the hunger and head to bed.

The worst solution is to grab a bag of chips, a soda, or some ice cream right before bed. Talk about a diet killer! Eating a few extra hundred calories right before you go to sleep can pack on some extra pounds fast! It may take a few times to break those old habits but it’s worth the effort. So either grab a healthy stalk of celery or hit the sack.

Celery however, does have another big advantage according to some experts. Many believe it’s what called a “negative calorie food”.  This means it actually requires more calories to digest a piece of celery than it contains.

The body burns calories during the digestive process, celery is more diffucult to digest than other foods and requires more work from your body to digest. This in turn burns more calories than celery actually contains.

Just like most other foods it’s probably not a good idea to eat too much celery. As mentioned earlier celery contains sodium and sugar. Even if it is true that celery is a negative calorie food, too much sodium and sugar in y our diet is not a good choice.

Eating celery in moderation is a great healthy snack that may help you burn a few extra calories throughout the day.

How about trying some ankle weights? Ankle weights are a great, comfortable way to drop a few extra pounds. They can easily be worn under your pants or slacks and can be worn all day at  home or at work.

Heavier people burn more calories so making yourself heavier will allow you to burn more calories. Adding an extra 10 or 20 pounds of weight to your body can burn extra calories all day.

Ankle weights are very inexpensive, a pair of Valeo AW10 10-Pound Adjustable Ankle / Wrist Weights can be found on Amazon for around $15. Ankle weights usually range in 2 lb pairs up to 20 lb pairs.

Before you begin using ankle weights you should consult your physician. If you have joint or muscle problems adding ankle weights to your routine could make the problems worse.

If you are healthy ankle weights are a great way to burn extra calories, work your hamstrings, quadriceps and glutes. It will also provide you with a great cardiovascular benefit, because you’re using more exertion.

Every body function requires water in order to work properly. Keeping your body well hydrated allows these functions to happen quickly and efficiently. This in turn gives you more energy, helps you burn more calories, control hunger and many more benefits. Just how many benefits does drinking enough water produce?

Benefits of Drinking Water

1. Drinking a good amount of water helps you control your hunger and appetite. Studies show that thirst and hunger are directly related. If you are slightly dehydrated you are also going to be hungry. Quench the thirst and it will help control the hunger.

2. Drinking water helps regulate and even increase your metabolism. Studies show that being well hydrated will help you burn calories 3% faster than normal.

3. Water helps boost energy levels. Many times we think we need an afternoon soda, candy bar or energy drink to get us through the rest of the day. Sugar provides a quick energy boost but also provides a quick crash, leaving you feeling more tired than before you had the soda. Water on the other hand will provide you with sustained energy to get you through the day and avoid an evening crash.

4. Drinking plenty of water also provides relief of some minor health problems you may experience. Headaches, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and join pain can all possibly be reduced by increasing your water consumption.

5. Water also is believed to decreases your risk of developing certain types of cancer and diseases.

6. Water will improve your skin condition. Often our skin becomes dry and flaky especially in the winter months. Drinking an adequate amount of water will help provide moisture to your dry skin.


With all the health benefits that water provides why not drink a few glasses today?

Exercise is just as important as diet when it comes to being healthy and for most of us even a short workout is hard to fit into our busy schedules. What usually happens is we start an exercise routine, miss a few days and then drop the program all together. If this sounds familiar then maybe a 10 minute quick cardio workout will work best for you.

You know any exercise is much better than no exercise so give it a try. You might not think 1o minutes will help you much but the benefits of a 10 minute cardio workout may be more than you think.

If you are the running type you can probably easily run a mile in 10 minutes. Running a 10 minute mile will burn about 100 calories. It doesn’t sound like much but that’s an average weight loss of almost 1 pound per month. Again it doesn’t sound like much but you could drop a few sizes over the course of several months if you make it a routine.

If you don’t like to run you can achieve similar benefits from other cardio workouts. There are many short cardio workout videos that involve your  your entire body which provides great calorie burning benefits.

Exercise doesn’t have to be painful and it doesn’t have to be an hour long event. Start with small steps, make exercise fun and make it a habit. You’ll soon start to see great benefits from your effort.

This week we’ve started something simple I think will work great for her. Somewhere I read that it takes about 3 weeks to form a good habit. So that’s what we are shooting for with this new exercise program, a very simple three week routine just to form an exercise habit.

The routine basically consists of about 10 minutes of cardio and about 10 minutes of strength exercises. The 10 minutes of cardio can be done while watching television, reading a book or magazine.

Once we have the habit formed I plan on increasing the strength exercises a few minutes or maybe adding more weight, etc. Once exercise is worked into a regular routine adding a couple of minutes should be too difficult, but the benefits will be great.

The Atkins plan emphasises a heavy intake of protein and a limited amount of carbohydrates. The majority of your carbohydrates should come from vegetables and none from sugary treats such as candy, cakes and cookies.

Most protein rich foods such as meat, seafood and eggs, have little or no carbohydrate so they are fair game. Be careful however to watch the labels on lunch meat as they often add sugar to flavor. Also you should try to avoid meats with high amounts of fat such as hot dogs and bacon. You should also limit the number of egg yolks you consume, they are very high in cholesterol and even though they contain no carbs they’re not healthy when consumed in mass quantities.

The pros of the Atkins diet include rapid weight loss. You can see pounds dropping from the scale almost immediately, which can be very encouraging to the dieter. The Atkins diet also allows for the consumption of generous portions of foods which is very enticing for someone on a diet.

The major con of the Atkins diet is the reputation it gets from the medical field. Like other low carb, high protein diets many medical experts agree that long term effects of these diets are not worth the extreme weight loss. Many conditions including high cholesterol, kidney abnormalities, cancer risks, unhealthy metabolic states, and osteoporosis all stem from high cholesterol diets.

In conclusion there are some advantages to the Atkins diet. You may want to consider the Atkins diet to lose a few quick pounds, but the best way to lose weight and feel great is a healthy diet with exercise.