The Complete Best Life Diet is a healthy diet and lifestyle based on the popular health and fitness nutrition book “Bob Greene’s The Best Life Diet”.  "The Best Life Diet" is a health, diet and nutrition plan that emphasizes the importance of routine exercise regimens and making wise food choices.

How Best Life Diet Works 

The Best Life Diet is a health and fitness plan that suggests making vegetables a mainstay of your diet. The Best Life Diet suggests trying a new vegetable each week (including less familiar veggies like hearts of palm, jircama and celery root), and offers recipes for vegetarian  entrées, soups, salads and healthy veggie and other types of healthy wraps.

The basic premise of the Best Life Diet is that you can enjoy a wide variety of healthy foods while slowly ridding your diet of unhealthier choices such as fried foods, foods containing trans fats, white bread, sugary soft drinks, regular pasta, and high-fat dairy. The diet teaches you to phase out these unhealthy foods in favor of healthier foods such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, and more. 

With the Best Life Diet you're encouraged to make gradual changes, one step at a time. The aim is to transform your old eating and exercise habits into healthier new ones that will last a lifetime.

The Best Life Diet allows you to enjoy wonderful food in appropriate portions. And that means you’ll eat the same delicious food that Oprah enjoys, in easy-to-follow meal plans.

To make it even easier, Greene has created the "Best Life" Seal of Approval for select foods that meet the needs of those trying to eat healthy and lose weight in The Best Life Diet plan. This makes it easier for people to make the right choices. 

The Best Life Diet does not suggest eliminating any one food group, encourages eating frequently, having plenty of water and reexamining your current nutritional intake.

Calories Count in the Best of Life Diet

Depending on your gender and activity level, the Best Life Diet guidelines suggest calorie levels ranging from 1,500-2,500 and a recommended number of servings from the various food groups. The basic premise is that the more active you are, the more calories you can eat. 

The Actual Best Life Diet Program Plan

The Best Life Diet guides you to develop healthy eating habits and a healthy lifestyle, for weight loss and to maintain a healthy weight management. The program does this in 3 phases.

Phase 1 - minimum 4 weeks

Objective: More activity, establishing meal patterns.
Following an initial weigh-in, the diet program stipulates 3 meals (including breakfast) plus at least 1 snack daily, and no eating during minimum 2 hours before bedtime. Plenty of water but no alcohol, and daily supplements. Increase physical activity.

Phase 2 - minimum 4 weeks

Objective: Significant and consistent weight loss through control of hunger and dietary changes.

Weigh in at start, and then every week. Develop understanding of the physical and emotional reasons for your hunger, and use the hunger scale. Eat reasonable food portions, and remove 6 foods from your diet that are ‘empty’ or are problem foods. Physical activity may be increased.

Phase 3 - lifetime lifestyle

Objective: Continue to improve quality of diet for good health and weight maintenance.

Weigh in at least each month, but no more often than once a week. Introduce other foods according to the calories advice given, and balance your diet using the guidelines, removing more unhealthy foods and adding wholesome ones. Physical activity may be increased.

What Food is Allowed in Best Life Diet

You can enjoy a wide variety of healthy foods while slowly ridding your diet of unhealthier choices such as fried foods, foods containing trans fats, white bread, sugary soft drinks, regular pasta, and high-fat dairy. These foods are phased out and replaced with healthier foods such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, and more. Weekly eating plans provide suggested meals.

Greene has placed his Best Life Diet seal of approval logo on a variety of food products he recommends as healthy. Dieters are asked to make their healthier choices from a recommended list of foods from companies involved in corporate sponsorship.

What Food is Not Allowed Best Life Diet

In the final stage of Bob Greene's Best Life Diet, you will be permitted to occasionally have foods like white bread, fried foods and non-diet sodas. But in the early stages of the Best Life Diet, you can't have any of them. The biggest offenders are margarine and vegetable shortenings although, there are trans fat free versions of both now. Processed food such as frozen meals, crackers, ramen soups, cake mixes, chips and candy have to be avoided.

Known Benefits of Best Life Diet

The Best Life Diet helps to improve your eating habits and incorporate an exercise plan for weight loss. The result is an overall improvement to your health and less risk for chronic diseases, such as heart attack and stroke,

The Best life diet helps  to keep the weight off, and develop habits that dramatically reduces your risk of diabetes, heart disease and other ills. 

Potential Risks Best Life Diet

Bob Greene is obviously sponsored by all of the brands mentioned and does not promote the foods as much as the brands. All of the types of foods mentioned can be purchased without buying the specific brands being promoted.

He also does not mention the benefits of having protein at every meal for weight loss. Protein has an extreme effectiveness on fat metabolism.

The tips and overall diet plan are not sufficient for people with an above average knowledge of nutrition and fitness. Everyone knows that the bad foods listed in the Best Life Diet are not beneficial to one’s health, weight and appearance. What is most likely needed is a more advanced plan of action to get fit and lose weight. However, Bob Greene does present basic nutritional and fitness information in a way that people can understand. The Best of Life Diet does not suggest eliminating any one food group, encourages eating frequently, having plenty of water and reexamining your current nutritional intake. 

What the Experts Say About Best Life Diet

Because of Bob Greene's affiliation with Oprah (she wrote the foreword to his book and says the diet mirrors how she eats and lives now), many skeptics have dismissed the Best Life Diet as another celebrity weight loss fad. However, it's become highly regarded among nutritionists because of its motivating tone and honest approach to nutrition and exercise.

The Best Life Diet supports the U.S. government's 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines with very doable and easy suggestions. And most registered dietitians and fitness trainers agree that true weight loss success comes from making lifestyle changes.

"The diet is incredibly sound advice that promotes very healthy foods," says Dawn Jackson Blatner, RN, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. He aso added that, "Both of these must be manipulated in order to have a helpful weight loss plan. The Best Life Diet does a very good job at explaining the healthiest foods to choose, but it's a little lacking in the food portions side of the equation." Obesity expert Cathy Nonas, RD, wonders if his realistic, gradual approach will appeal to overweight people who want the quick fix on weight management. Nonas says she likes the slow and gradual first phase followed by the more intense second and third phases. 

Bottom Line 

The Best Life Diet is a safe, easy to understand, effective way to weight loss and improve fitness. The Best Life Diet is easily tailored to a wide array of personal lifestyles, activity levels, and food preferences. It’s a solid plan for dieters with an appetite for introspection and well-informed cheerleading. The Best of Life Diet contains lots of great tips, recipes, menus, and useful tools are included to help dieters get and stay motivated.

Dtteing and weight loss programs in general can be hard for many people. To make it easier, Greene has created the "Best Life" Seal of Approval for select foods that meet the needs of those trying to eat healthy and lose weight in The Best Life Diet plan. This makes it easier for people to make the right choices.  This diet is one the team at Muscle Mag Fitness can give its seal of approval.