I will try to reveal the importance of water in all my diets. There were times when I didn’t really understand how much water counted and at those times I had no idea about it’s mechanism in my body or about the water help to loss weight. I only remembered about water when I was thirsty. I guess those who are suffering because they do not have drinkable water must have understood its importance much sooner, and I can not even imagine how lacking water would be.

I’ve had my share of diets during the last years, after the doctors said I was pretty high on cholesterol for my age (I’m slightly over 30). Also, the fact that everyone around me seemed to be well built, that all my friends were going to the gym as a pleasure and they were constantly laughing at me because I could only pride on my fat behind and basketball shaped belly, while they were showing off their perfect abs and well developed upper arms.

Then, I tried something that had hoodia gordonii in it, and for the first time I’ve clearly read about water and what’s the meaning of feeling thirsty. Apparently, this hoodia stuff was used by people in Africa to help them deal with the extended hunger and thirst they had to endure while left on huge hunting expeditions. The substance comes from a cactus plant and it is used to suppress hunger. Basically, you will eat less, because you are not hungry anymore and this is why you end up loosing weight. Not a diet pill to take by women that are only slight overweight and eat less anyway, because they will end up starving their body. But it’s perfect for men like me, who eat huge meals and go well over the recommended calorie intake every day.

But let’s return to water help to loss weight. I was warned while talking this diet that if I don’t remember do drink water I might seriously dehydrate. Hoodia was taking away my thirst as well, but water was still needed by my body. If I didn’t make a habit out of drinking lots of water, I would’ve ended up in some hospital eventually. All appetite suppressants have this effect.

I’ve also discovered something interesting about thirst. It seems that we shouldn’t even wait until we feel thirsty to drink water. The thirsty sensation is actually a bad sign, it’s a sign that our body is suffering from the lack of water. And we don’t want this, we want it to have all the water it need before it starts consuming vital resource, like the water in blood, which can cause major arterial blockages if it decreases in amount.

Besides, when I started to drink lots of water whenever taking a diet, I was filling up my stomach, so the satiety sensation would come faster. Water wasn’t only covering a biological need that help my metabolism regain normal levels and speed, but also helping me eat less, even when not taking appetite suppressants.

As a man that has been continuously struggling to keep his weight, I’ve had my share of diets and I’ve learnt to know which are good and which aren’t. Because some diets didn’t woke for me but they could work for someone else, for someone that has a bit more determination, I’ve picked up best plans form various and decided to present them here. The free diet meal plans are also available in any free diet that can be read about the internet, so I’m only sharing with you some of my experience when dieting and mentioning some of the few ones I’ve found beneficial for my metabolism and weight problems.

One of the best free diet meal plans I’ve tried was the one that had a three day plan to be repeated at least 5 time, so basically a two week diet plan.

First Day: You are not allowed to eat anything but fruits. Breakfast: 3 bananas and a fruit smoothie made at home, with apples, apricots, plums, grapefruits or any other fruits you can get your hands on. Lunch: Eat a big salad with vegetables like tomatoes, lettuce, olives, onion, pickles and put nuts in it. Dinner: Have a big slice of boiled fat free meat, with one backed potato.

Second Day: You can eat anything, but don’t go over 1200 calories. Also, eat 6 meals, not just three. Salads, yogurts, fish, fruits, go creative on this one.

Third Day: Focus on vegetables. Breakfast: Have a glass of apple juice then eat fresh vegetables, 350 grams, with a slice of cow’s cheese or a small chicken meat slice. Lunch: Eat a portion of cabbage soup and then have a plate of boiled vegetables with a slice of fish. Dinner: Today, you will go for a diary based dinner plan. This means, yogurt and cereals, milk and cereals with honey, cow cheese with vegetables, rice and cheese, rice and milk and any other combination you can thing of, Dinner should not weight more that 400 grams.

The free diet meal plans that include a seven day diet have always been difficult to follow. And mostly, these diets, when they are too restrictive, will not measure good results in the long run. I’ve tried the dislocated diet, that urges you to eat one aliment a day, and here’s the meal plan I took. I did lose 12 pounds, but immediately after I’ve put 7 of them back on. Some voices say that this plan is not well regarded in the long run.

First Day: Diary products, as much as you want. Milk, cheese, cream, butter. But nothing more, no bread, no nothing.

Second day: Combine bread with cereals and biscuits and basically anything else made from cereal flour or cereals. You can drink water or tea.

Third Day: Eat fresh fruits, drink only fresh fruit juice and water.

Forth day: Eat fresh or boiled vegetables. Do not eat more that two vegetable types at one meal. This means if you want to eat potatoes and tomatoes, that’s all for one meal. You can eat them in any quantity.

Fifth day: Today you eat meat. Veal, chicken, boiled or barbecued. The trick is to eat only meat, no salad with it, no nothing. You can also eat met products as liver pasta, or other similar stuff. Again, as much as you want, but no more than two types of meat products at each meal. You can drink water, coffer and tea.

Sixth Day: Rice. Boiled, backed…in any combination as long as there’s a 90% rice and 10% something else. This means you can add anything into it, even vegetables, meat, sauces, anything. Just keep the percents.

Seventh Day: This is the last day. You have to slowly get accustomed again to healthy eating. So, you will dislocate only meals. Eat one singular aliment at each meal, and snack. Eat milk at breakfast, or eggs, or ham. Have cheese for lunch. And meat for dinner. You can combine thing differently, this is just what I’ve done.

Also, I’ve tried a few combined free diet meal plans that worked wonders, and only because they were made up of healthy aliments and were not making me miss anything.

Breakfast free diet meal plans:

1. Make an omelet without oil. Add a few slices of tomatoes on top of it. Eat it with a slice of cereal bread and a glass of fresh orange juice.
2. Make a muffin from whole cereals. Or eat one already made, but make sure it’s natural. Place on the place 5 raspberries, one banana and half an apple. You will drink water with this breakfast.
3. A yogurt, a bowl with cereals and a glass of blended fruit juice.
4. A glass of milk along side a slice of fish meat with olives and a boiled egg. With bread, of course.
5. One tomato sliced half an apple, one boiled egg and 10 cereal biscuits.

Morning Snack:

1. One apple
2. Two plums and two sweet biscuits.
3. One fat free croissant.
4. One banana and one raspberry.
5. One pickle and one tomato with a slice of bread.

Lunch free diet meal plans:

1. One large bowl of tomato soup, made at home, without meat in it. Then, two backed potatoes with cheese. No bread.
2. Cabbage soup and a slice of bread and two chicken wings with mashed potatoes.
3. Seasonal soup, with vegetables and greens. A slice of barbecue with boiled vegetables alongside. No bread.
4. A big salad with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, olives, almonds, olive oil, mushrooms and tuna. Then, two slices of bread with a glass of milk and honey.
5. Baked rice and chicken, with peppers and tomatoes. Must be made at home, in the oven. Eat it with fresh vegetables and no bread.

Afternoon Snack:

1. A glass of milk and some sugar free biscuits.
2. One fruit.
3. A slice of bread with one of cheese.
4. A smoothie made from at least 5 fruits, including a banana.
5. A fruit salad.

Dinner free diet meal plans:

1. Barbecued vegetables and fish.
2. Boiled potatoes with a vegetable salad with no meat or bread.
3. Cheese and rice, baked in the over and a glass of milk.
4. Half a grapefruit, then a stake with beans and carrots with a slice of bread.
5. A yogurt with cereals, then a fruit salad with almonds in it.

I’ve had my periods of experimenting diets and healthy alimentary life styles, and for a good period of time I’ve even tried the complete vegetarian weight loss diet. Even if it has shown good results, and it promised a lot on the long run, this program is not for me. Seems a lot more like something fit for a woman. Compared to the anorexic diets women take and surprisingly appreciate, this is a heaven sent, as it’s basically all natural and is not missing lots of stuff…well except proteins, but that can be adjusted by eating fish and easy meat products, if you are willing to make a compromise.

Since I’ve been there, let me tell a bit about how it feels being a vegetarian, including goods and bads. Not everything is so peachy as convinced vegetarians claim, but it’s not by far as bad as meat-eaters tend to believe. A vegetarian weigh loss diet basically means that you will be exclusively eating aliments that are not animal based. There are variations here, some people are taking a mild vegetarian diet, and choose to eat eggs and diary products (just like I did), while others will only use it for religious reasons in different periods of the year.

In the USA, vegetarians are divided in two. The vegans are those eating exclusively vegetal products, and the vegetarians are eating fish, milk and egg along with those vegetal things. Even if the weight loss would have been more pronounced if I would’ve eaten only vegetables, it seemed like too much to me, so I choose to be a vegetarian for a while, not a vegan. But I’ve encountered many people telling me that milk form animals and eggs are not good for healthy, that they are new alimentary products (by this they mean they weren’t eaten in prehistoric times, I’m sure…) and they have been proven to have inconvenient effects on health…and so on. Others, and here I must include doctors, say that there’s no healthy diet without some milk and some eggs…opinions are as always divided.

There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to the vegetarian weight loss diet. Some pople in my vegetarian group (I’ve joined one at the time) were considering this diet out of medical reasons. Their doctors were saying that animal products have many more toxins and that there are lots of factors which target diseases in these products, including cancer triggering factors. Also, a vegetarian diet permits the consumption of aliments unprocessed, which is quite benefic to health. Other advantages I’ve clearly felt by an increased level of energy and well being are the vitamins and minerals I was eating daily.

Because I didn’t take the diet for more than 6 months, I didn’t get to suffer from any of the possible disadvantages related to it. From what others have told me, these are related to vitamin lacks, like the lack of vitamin B12, D and A and others are related to an excessive amount of carbs that we eat, coming from cereals, flour products, potatoes and sugar.

The first thing that drew me to this diet was not the vegetarian weight loss results others had but the fact that I’ve heard that vegetarians have a lowered risk of developing chronic affections. In time, I’ve realized this is just something vegetarians believe themselves, even if it’s backed by some scientific research. The thing is that the quantity of aliments counts a lot, regardless of the diet I would take. And, in additions, I’ve noticed that diseases that were until recently blamed on eat are successfully prevented today by eliminating products like alimentary preservative, sugar and over-processing of food. If we could only eat aliments clean when it comes to chemicals and if only our wives would have the time and patience to cook them healthy every time, then we would be sheltered from risks, regardless of the diet. And after all, alimentation is just one factor that causes these illnesses, but there are many others to take into consideration like bad habits (smoking, drinking, even coffee!) or lack of exercise, stress and so on.

I’ve learnt at my vegetarian focus group that the main problem of vegetarians is that they only focus on cereals and that there are newer studies which pretty much dethrone cereals… In a healthy vegetarian diet the key is diversity… We were recommended to eat, next to fruits and vegetables, a lot of nuts, seeds, roots, mushrooms, salad, spinach, olives, avocado (which I can swear tastes EXACTLY like regular butter… amazing!), sweet fruits, because natural sugar is important after all. They were not talking against eating fish or milk…they were saying nothing about these, so I’m guessing they are ok and no contra argument could be brought. If you want o lose weight, they were clearly saying that the consumption of rice, products made of flour and potatoes should not be very high.

Like everyone else, I was curious to see where my vital proteins could be coming from, if I weren’t to eat meat. I was offered alternatives like some cereals, nuts, beans, olives, mushrooms, nuts and so on. Still, I preferred to be one of those semi-vegetarians that eat fish and eggs and diary products. As far as soy goes, the opinions are not very concluding. From what I’ve understood, we can’t unfortunately consume soy prepared by the traditional Asian methods. So, it’s better to eliminate the industrial soy products that invaded hypermarkets over the years. The soy protein contained by them seems to be quite poor in quality and it comes along with lots of toxins… And there’s something else about soy. Researchers say that soy is called “the nature’s contraceptive pill”. And it’s not a pill taken by women…It works the other way. Soy is causing serious infertility problems in men. So, unless you have too many kids too handle, maybe it’s better to let the wife take pills, and not start eating soy.

In conclusion, the vegetarian diet is what you want to make out of it. Not even vegetarians are that strict. Some even claim they have vegetarian kids, but in fact they are all eating healthy stuff and not eating red meat. If you can stay away from soy, and still eat fish and milk and eggs, then you should be ok. I’ve taken this for 5 months and felt really good. I didn’t give it up because there was something wrong with it, but because there was something wrong with me, as I couldn’t stay away from meat…at least once in a while. I still feel this is a good long term idea, especially if you include fish meat and protein aliments.