The Dr. Oz Ultimate Diet

Read the labels of everything in your kitchen cupboards, your refrigerator, your secret boxes and everywhere else you stash food (the car, your desk drawers). If something has any of the following in one of the first 5 ingredients, throw it out. This is known as the Rule of 5:

1 and 2. Simple sugars and syrups This includes brown sugar, dextrose, corn sweetener, fructose (as in high- fructose corn syrup), glucose, corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, maltose, lactose, malt syrup, molasses, raw sugar, and sucrose. Keep a little table sugar handy, and honey, and maple sugar, because you’ll use some for recipes.

3. Saturated fat This includes most four- legged animal fat, milk fat, butter or lard, and tropical oils, such as palm and coconut.

4. Trans fat This includes partially hydrogenated fats, vegetable oil blends that are hydrogenated, and many margarines and cooking blends. (If you must, use cholesterol-fighting sterol spreads such as Promise and Benecol.)

5. Enriched flours and all flours other than 100 percent whole grain or 100 percent whole wheat. This includes enriched white flour, semolina, durum wheat, and any of the acronyms for flour that is not whole wheat – they should not be in your kitchen.

Your current kitchen is most likely like a prison—it’s filled with a lot of bad dudes. We want to turn your kitchen into a nutritional honor society, so that it’s filled with good-for-your-waist foods that make it easy (and automatic!) to eat right. The first week, you’ll have a larger-than-normal shopping list because you’ll stock up on essentials as well as ingredients you’ll need for this week’s recipes.

Click here to view and print your Dr. Oz Ultimate Diet Shopping List. 

The grocery store isn’t the only stop you’ll be making today. Buy yourself a good pair of walking/running sneakers and a pedometer. Starting tomorrow, you are going to take 10,000 steps every single day.

By doing this, you can lose 12 pounds in a year. Easy ways to cut these extra calories are to eliminate soda, ditch that 100-calorie snack pack or give up 2 cookies.

Keeping meals the same minimizes the chances of cheating or grabbing on-the-go food with mystery nutritional information. Don’t reinvent the wheel; the Dr. Oz Ultimate Diet is about dieting smart, not hard.

For breakfast, try kick-starting your day with Dr. Oz’s Magical Breakfast Blaster. 

Additionally, switch to using 9-inch plates. Most dinner plates are 12.5 – 13 inches. Smaller plates create portion control; you’ll eat less and feel fuller.

Have automated emergency snacks on hand that are full of fiber, like nuts and edamame.

One of the biggest advances in the understanding of obesity is that environment and emotions control our eating habits. Therefore, today, you’ll enlist someone who will support you in your goals to get healthier.

If you try to undertake this alone, there’s a much higher risk that you’ll end up lips- first in a bowl of creamed corn. Find your partner – be it a spouse, a friend, a coworker – someone you can talk to about your goals, your meals, and your new plan. Make a plan to talk (or email) 5 minutes every day – to tell him or her that you walked that day and to tell about your day’s meals. Try to find a partner or partners who are in this with you, on the same journey to good health. It’s one thing to lose 3, 4, or 5 inches yourself, but quite another when you can help contribute to America’s collective loss in waistband size. After all, what’s better than experiencing the satisfaction of helping yourself achieve your goal? Helping others do the same.

It’s not uncommon at this point for you to have already dabbled in the neighbor’s cake, picked at the kids’ chips, or snuck a few bites of a butter- covered pretzel from the mall. And that’s OK. Just get yourself back together. At the next available moment, make an authorized YOU-Turn. The next time you find yourself dancing with the Devil Dog, try these coping strategies:

The Lip Lick. Breathe in, lick your lips, swallow, and breathe out slowly, saying “ohm.” Let the cool air flow across your lips. The soothing move – which takes all of about 3 seconds – helps you to reset, calm down, and refocus.

The Waist Hang. Stand up straight, bend over at your waist, and let your lower back relax. Reach for the floor, grab your elbows, or hold the back of your knees.

The important thing is to let all of the tension you have stored in your back and hips unwind. Relax your neck completely. If you feel tight, don’t straighten your knees.

Spice it Up. Red pepper or cinnamon added to your food can amp up the flavor of food and saturate yearnings for something sweet.

Remember, waist management is a team game, and your doctor is one of your MVPs. So schedule an appointment for thirty days from now (or sooner if you have a great relationship). You can use him or her to help you in many different ways:

• Update your vitals such as blood pressure, waist size, and heart rate. If you need a baseline for such numbers as HDL and LDL cholesterol (HDL is more important for women and men over sixty), now’s a good time to schedule a physical, get a few blood tests, and talk to your doctor about your new plan.
• Having a physical will also prove helpful when you reach a plateau—when your waist and weight loss will seem to have stalled.

Make your goals known to your friends and family. This will provide a sense of pride in your accomplishments and the pressure to stick with health and wellness goals.

Take your waist measurements and weigh yourself to monitor your progress. Write these numbers down and then repeat days 1-7. Repetition is how new habits are formed (and old habits die for good.)

Excerpted from the newly reissued YOU: On a Diet, click here to read and print a copy of the 14-Day YOU Diet.

Excerpted from YOU: On A Diet Revised Edition: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz. Copyright (c) 2006, 2009 by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Oz Works LLC, f/s/o Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.  Excerpted with permission by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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