Want to Lose Weight? Guidelines for The Ornish Diet

By Alice Mitchell, Project Weight Loss Editor
January 06, 2009

The Ornish Diet is practically a very low calorie diet with only 10 or 20% of the calorie intake coming from fats. This diet was created by Dr. Dean Ornish who wrote a book called “Eat More, Weight Less”. He claims that this high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet is not only the solution to live a healthy life, but also to lose weight.

Ornish is a well known expert in the medical community and mostly because of his success in reversing heart diseases. In the guideline of the diet it is specified that there are allowed foods as there are prohibited ones, which is not small. In the first weeks, after eliminating the “banned” foods, the menu includes fruits, grains and vegetables.

For instance, you can have whole grain cereal with a fat-free yoghurt and an orange juice for breakfast, and for lunch baked potatoes with fat-free cheese and spinach, a potato salad with fat-free dressing, broccoli, a green salad, and a fresh fruit. At dinner you can eat a portion of pasta with vegetables, bread with tomatoes and capers, and peaches in wine.

This is only a sample plan. Ornish makes a list of foods which are healthy and categorizes it. For example, he recommends eating legumes, beans, fruits, vegetables, and grains until you are full and every time you feel hungry. Products like skim milk and non-fat yoghurt or cheese or sour cream are recommended to be eaten in moderation.

On the other hand, Ornish has made a list of foods that should be avoided, such as: any type of meat, oils or products that contain oil, olives, nuts and seeds, sugar, alcohol, and every other product that contains more than two grams of fat per portion. His main suggestions are to eat more than three meals a day, but in small amounts, because cutting out meat from the diet might make you feel hungry more often than if following another diet. Exercise is also incorporated in this diet plan.

Ornish advices dieters to work out at least 30 minutes a day or, if it’s more convenient, exercise for an hour, three times a week. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says that this diet “not only brings weight loss without counting calories, but it also brings good overall health. It reverses heart disease, cuts the risk of cancer, makes diabetes and hypertension more manageable, and sometimes even makes them go away."

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