Can you imagine yourself sunbathing while enjoying a plate full of fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean meats? In between each portion of a meal or meal you’re sipping a glass of fine wine, aware of your location surrounded by hikers, bikers and small slopes dotted with olive trees?
Well, you may or may not, that is the scenario offered by one of the latest diet programs available. The Sonoma Diet by Dr. Connie Gutterson is a weight loss plan that promotes the Mediterranean and healthy delicious eating styles of Sonoma Valley, California. However is all this self-promotion, self-marketing illusion to attract customers, or will it really work?
This article answers this question by detailing the pros and cons within the Sonoma Diet to help potential dieters determine whether the program will suit them.
Sonoma Diet:
pros
– easy:
The Sonoma Diet is extremely simple for dieters to use. There are no formulas to calculate like in the Weight Watchers program, and no counting grams or calories per day. Rather the plate and bowl sizes are used for portion control.
Emphasize the positive:
The emphasis of the Sonoma Diet program is on what you can eat rather than what you cannot eat. Although the program still has a list of forbidden foods, which dieters are supposed to avoid.
– taste food:
The Sonoma Diet focuses on slow eating and delicious food. This is punctuated by the healthy use of fine wine with meals after an initial 10-day period. Eating is enjoyed using delicious recipes, and slowing down the diet prevents overeating.
– nutrition:
The Sonoma Diet has a strong nutrition component, promoting dieters to consume a variety of phytonutrients and antioxidants. This is important to the diet because it is based on nutrition and not starvation. Dieters stay healthy and keep their metabolic rate at an effective level.
– Emphasis on Whole Foods:
The diet’s emphasis on whole foods and very few processed foods helps dieters lose weight along with health benefits.
– Structured Diet
There are certainly many weight loss programs and diets out there that lack a set structure for their participants to follow. One of the strong points of the Sonoma Diet is their step-by-step guidance, although this is obviously each person’s personal preference.
Sonoma Diet:
Shortcoming
– lack of flexibility
Diet analysis proves that most Wave 1 menus only provide about 950-1100 calories for women and 1050-1300 calories for men. Once you get on the Wave 2 diet only 200-300 extra calories are recommended. Now where it is going to prove to be effective in weight loss, it is becoming difficult for people to live with it. People will starve within the first week and in the long run it is not sustainable for most dieters.
– Lack of guidance when hungry
Given the level of hunger that some people may experience during the Sonoma Diet, instructions on what to do and eat when hungry are lacking.
– Limited serving size, especially vegetables
Compared to most other diets, the Sonoma Diet has highly controlled amounts of food, especially when it comes to vegetables. The lack of available vegetables may be unintentional, but people will usually experience shock when it comes to the amount of food they eat when sticking with the portion sizes of the Sonoma Diet.
– Forbidden Foods
With an emphasis on whole foods, the Sonoma Diet is doing a great job of providing nutrition to dieters. However the number of prohibited foods does not leave dieters with many options or choices in the form of sugars, fats etc. It can be difficult for dieters to handle.
– Decreased Carbs in Wave 1
The risk of a carb crash is present in many diets. However, the Sonoma Diet is designed as a low-carb diet and has no means of managing this risk, which may occur in the first phase of the diet, Wave 1.
In conclusion it is clear that the Sonoma Diet offers both positives and negatives for potential dieters. It is important for each person to look at these issues in the context of their personality and take a decision that suits them personally. If you like a structured diet with a focus on taste, health and wellness, then the Sonoma Diet is for you. However, if you need more flexibility and food consumption, an alternative may be recommended.
Source by Tobius Whitman
