Do you 'Dig' Dieting?  DietDig.com- your dieting and weight loss support squadron!

What COLOR is Your DIET?

Theory:

Most Americans eat far too many foods with any color in them.  Americans typically consume a beige, grain-based diet.  The beige/white diet commonly results in eating too many calories, so that half of all Americans are overweight.  Adding fruits and vegetables to your diet can replace refined grains such as breads, pastas, cakes, and pastries as well as high-fat meats that bring with them extra calories you simply can’t burn off.  Each colored vegetable provides a unique benefit to the diet, so you don’t want to eat only fruits and vegetables of a single color.  Under this weight loss program, you will learn how adding fruits and vegetables to your diet can reduce calorie intake while increasing nutritional value so that you lose weight and keep it off in a healthy way. The color diet also requires removing sugar and oil from your diet and adding protein (soy protein should make up at least one half of your total protein intake each day). 

Rules:

1.                  You will replace bland, starchy foods with colorful fruits and vegetables by using a simple Color Code system

2.                  You will replaces foods with hidden vegetable oils and add refined sugar with healthy foods that are high in sugar

7 color groups:

Red, red/purple, orange, orange/yellow, green, yellow/green, white/green

The key to design your colorful diet is to place your varied selection of fruit and vegetables from the seven different colors groups

Meals plans include, each day, foods from each of the seven color groups in the Color Code system.  They include protein at each meal, and aim for some soy protein every day.  They include whole grains for fiber and taste enhances as needed with the total calories in the meal plan. The diet plans for women contain about 1,200 to 1,400 calories for women and for men about 1,800 to 2,000 calories.

You will be eating seven servings or more a day of fruits and vegetables from different color groups.  Servings – a half of cup cooked, 1 cup uncooked

A Sample Day Menu (Women)

• Breakfast – Orange-Banana-Strawberry Soy Protein Shake (orange/yellow; red/purple)
• Lunch – Chicken Breast Seven Color Salad (all colors)
• Snack – ½ medium cantaloupe
• Dinner – Shrimp, Tofu, and Broccoli salad (green; white/green), ½ cup steamed brown rice
• Snack – 1 large nectarine

David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. 2001.New York : HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Information provided on this website is not meant to replace the services of your physician, but only to act as an educational tool. The diet summaries are by no means a substitute for reading the actual diet programs, but rather are synopses of basic principles meant to pique your interest and help you select a diet. Be sure to consult your physician and read the entire diet book before beginning any weight loss program.