A menu for diet meals should include all six food groups recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: milk, grains, protein, fruits, vegetables and fats. A balanced diet built from these groups helps maintain your physical and mental health. Choosing diets that eliminate food groups or drastically reduce calories from your meals can lead to malnutrition even in overweight people; consult your doctor before beginning any new diet.
Lose One Pound a Week
Lose one pound of fat a week by planning a daily menu that contains fewer calories, not necessarily less food. Certified holistic health counselor Maya W. Paul recommends cutting 500 calories from your daily diet, with your doctor's approval. Choose nutrient-rich, low-density foods, such as fresh fruit salad, that allow you to eat large portions. Eliminating one three-ounce bag of corn chips from your diet, for example, trims 441 calories each day, she notes on the Helpguide website.
Lose 10 Pounds This Year
It's not necessary to cut calories drastically from your daily menu to create diet meals, says Paul --- if you eliminate only 100 calories a day, you can lose 10 pounds in one year. Cut 100 calories by reducing the amount of fat in your diet by one tablespoon per day. Use mustard on your sandwich instead of mayonnaise, or fresh lemon juice instead of salad dressing.
Low-Carb or Low-Fat Diet Meals
Low-carbohydrate or a low-fat diets offer the same results for long-term weight loss, a two-year trial conducted at the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University found. The results, published in the "Annals of Internal Medicine" in 2010 found that both diets produced an average 7-percent weight loss after two years. The low-carbohydrate diet was also seen to improve blood pressure and levels of "good" cholesterol.
Prepared Foods
Replacing your regular meals with five Medifast prepared meals a day is an effective diet for weight loss according to research published in the March 2010 issue of the "Nutrition Journal." Study participants who used a diet menu of the prepared-meal replacements lost weight faster and achieved overall weight loss equal to those on a calorie-restricted diet.
Beverages
Some beverages contribute calories to your daily diet. "It's important to be mindful of what and how much you're drinking," notes Mayo Clinic nutritionist Katherine Zeratsky. High-nutrient beverages such as milk and fresh fruit juice are also high in calories. Zeratsky recommends drinking water, not diet soda, as your main beverage, and consuming no more than four ounces of juice per day. Plain green, black, red, white and herbal teas also have no calories.
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