You do not need expensive packaged diets and personal consultations with a nutritionist to access cutting-edge advice to improve your diet. Several health experts and fitness professionals offer free guides to short-term diets. Whether you have a small goal or want to spend the month making some positive changes that you can permanently integrate into your lifestyle, you can find a food and fitness plan to help you meet your goals.
Types
Before starting your one-month diet, determine your goals. If you want to lose 5 lb., look for a calorie restriction diet. If you want to gain fitness, emphasize an energy-boosting diet coupled with an exercise plan. Other diets can help you shift to a vegetarian, vegan or raw lifestyle, or help treat medical conditions such as high cholesterol and heart disease.
Expert Insight
Dr. Mehmet Oz has several free diet plans and challenges that last for four weeks. His Raw Food Challenge can boost your energy, help you lose weight and reduce your risk of heart disease. Begin by swapping meat, white flour, syrup and sugars for nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes and fresh produce. In the second week, cut out dairy, eggs and all meat and add lots of fruit, smoothies and juices. For the third week, emphasize raw nuts, including raw almond milk. By the fourth week, cut pasta and go 100 percent raw.
Effects
An intense one-month diet may prove too restrictive for the long-term. However, Oz recommends reflecting at the end of a month to determine which dietary changes you can maintain, such as sticking with brown rice instead of white rice and whole grain pasta instead of conventional pasta.
Time Frame
One month does not allow time to make any staggering personal changes. However, the Mayo Clinic website guide to fast weight loss states that simply cutting 500 calories a day from you caloric intake, the equivalent of dessert or a couple of large, sugary sodas, can result in losing 1 lb. per week. If you spend an hour a day doing vigorous exercise, you can burn 2 lb. of fat per week.
Identification
One of the easiest ways to incorporate healthier, lighter eating habits is to restrict lunch and dinner to 400 or 500 calories. "Real Simple" offers a month of 400-calorie meals, including recipes, featuring dishes such as gnocchi with roasted cauliflower, asparagus and soft eggs on toast, roast beef and goat cheese salad, grilled salmon with broccoli, halibut and sugar snap peas, polenta-stuffed peppers and chicken kabobs with garbanzo beans.
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