Mediterranean Diet Review

Losing Weight with Healthy Eating

The Mediterranean Diet means eating healthily leading to weight loss. When I made up my mind to finally lose the extra weight I had been carrying since I got out of college, I knew I wanted something healthy that would allow me to change the way I was eating.

I didn’t want just a way to lose weight—I wanted to be able to take the weight off and keep it off. A co-worker had tried the Mediterranean Diet with great success and suggested it to me. My sister is a nutritionist, but when I asked her about it, she told me it’s perfectly safe and healthy. She gave me a “thumbs up” for even considering the Mediterranean Diet.

As I began to research the Mediterranean Diet before going on it, I discovered some of the key components were eating very little red meat, consuming plenty of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, and eating fish on a regular basis. Cutting back on red meat was one of the most difficult aspects of the diet, but I learned to substitute whenever possible such as eating ground turkey, turkey sausage and turkey bacon.

Instead of cooking with vegetable oil, I started cooking and preparing everything in olive oil, a monounsaturated fat source. Although I had never been a big fish eater other than the breaded variety, I learned to prepare it once or twice a week as the diet suggests. I learned to save the red meat for special occasions or when I went out to dinner.

Although no one in my family needs to diet, they accepted that I needed to eat healthier. Of course, my two teenage girls were more than happy to eat food that would keep them trim, and my husband was reaching the age where he worried about his cholesterol and heart disease. My son wasn’t interested in eating healthy food, but he knew he didn’t have a choice.

Learning to read labels and eliminate Trans fats from our diet was a big step for me, but it was an important one. Both high blood pressure and heart disease ran in my family, so I had to be careful.

Using the Mediterranean diet, I was able to lose the weight I desired in less than six months. Since I only had twenty five pounds to lose, that sounds like a long time, but I didn’t want to lose quickly; I wanted to lose permanently. I’ve had it off for two years now, and we’re still following many of the concepts of the Mediterranean diet.

It’s a real treat in our house to have a steak or pork sausage for bacon, but everyone is healthier for it, especially me. The girls now know they don’t have to worry about their weight, and all of us have more energy than we’ve ever had.

The Mediterranean diet is not just a way to lose weight; it’s a way to change your lifestyle so that you can keep the weight off. For me it was a lifestyle change that I had to make, and I am glad I did. I recommend this diet to anyone who needs to lose weight or learn to eat healthier.

It was hard for my kids to accept it at first, but now they even tell their friends we only keep healthy snacks in the house, and there are always plenty of juices and bottled water in the refrigerator.

Review by Marianne French