The Step Diet Review

The Step Diet's premise - move more, eat less - is simple....and you've probably heard it a thousand times. But where you may not have found a personal fit with other plans, Step Diet lays out a stunningly simple and effective way to start losing weight and keep it off. The plan: walk 10,000 steps a day and trim your food portions by 25%. All you need is a pedometer - and one comes with the book.

Author James Hill, PhD is a respected obesity researcher and co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR). His experience has taught him that most diets don't work because they are temporary solutions that don't address the fundamentals of a healthy lifestyle. So he and several colleagues developed a plan wherein you make daily, incremental changes to your eating and exercise habits that - if you stick with them - over time add up to real lifestyle change and permanent weight loss and maintenance.

On Day 1, use the pedometer to calculate the number of steps you usually take in a full day. Getting started, you want to walk a minimum of 2,000 steps (about 15 minutes) a day, increasing over time. With that in mind, take that number you calculated on the pedometer from your regular day and add 500 steps to it. Every week, you'll add 500 steps to your number until you reach your goal of 10,000 steps (about 5 miles/75 minutes) per day. It's important to remember that the 10,000 steps don't have to all come at once - you have the pedometer to track your movement all day long.

On the nutrition side of the plan, Step Diet recommends the fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein that you'd expect, but it doesn't mandate what you can and can't eat. It only requires that you cut your portions by 25% across the board as a calorie cutting measure. If you want to indulge in dessert or another glass of wine, you're required only to compensate for it by adding more steps to your routine the following day. Helpful charts are included in the book which calculate the number of extra steps you'll need to offset these indulgences....and there are also charts which translate an equivalent number of steps into other exercises like cycling.

On Week I of Step Diet, you're encouraged to make a thorough review of your eating and exercise habits. From there, the book provides guidance on how to cut calories and portion size, tips on how and where to increase the number of steps you take in a day and advice designed to help tune you in to the wonders and beauty of healthy eating. What we like about Step Diet is that it's not really a diet - it's proven, practical and simple advice for weight loss and weight management. It's little changes, one day at a time - with no gimmicky stuff with food - with the overriding message that if you want to keep the weight off, you must keep moving.