COMMENTARY | I, like many people around the world have tried to diet — unsuccessfully, I might add. I have tried many things, from the vegetarian diet to the Slim Fast diet. U.S. News recently ranked 25 diets, of these 25 I have done two, and I want to share my experiences with them.
Vegetarian Diet
In the summer of 2010 I started the Vegetarian Diet, which by the name itself states what the diet consists of. I stopped eating meat, and ate mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. To replace what I was losing with not eating meat I took a combination of vitamins and adding grains and beans and such that would give me the needed protein for daily living. There are several different types of vegetarian diets, most chose the lacto-ovo approach, and cutting everything meat related out of their diet, but keeping dairy products and eggs. I chose to go full vegetarian, cutting everything out of my diet, meat, eggs, dairy, everything. I was on the diet for about eight months and I didn’t lose any weight — I actually gained it — but the diet helped me to start living a healthier lifestyle. The only downside I could find when it came to the Vegetarian Diet was how expensive my food bill had become. I didn’t realize how much produce could cost, and with buying fresh produce came the fact you have to eat it shortly after buying it to keep it from going bad. The diet wasn’t very hard to stick to, even with everyone else in the house eating meat and fish and such. I did not have a very hard time sticking to my diet being I like vegetables to begin with.
Slim Fast Diet
In the spring of 2011 I tried the Slim Fast Diet, a diet kind of like the Special K diet that consists of shakes and bars. The diet consists of eating meal bars, snack bars and the Slim Fast shakes, while limiting your caloric intake to 1,200 calories a day, which can be made up of any food you would like, while still consuming the Slim Fast products. I was only able to follow this diet for a month or two because I found it hard to keep my caloric intake under 1,200 a day, not to mention it didn’t teach me to do anything, just limited my intake of calories. It wasn’t very successful for me because of it. I found that the shakes and other Slim Fast products to be expensive.