Diet Watch | DietWatch.com Review

Joining Fee:

Weekly plan: $2.99 per week ($12 per month).
Yearly Plan: Less than $1.49 per week ($6 per month) Best Value!
Basic Terms & Conditions: (For full details please consult DietWatch.com)
- Weekly Plan - At the time of registration, your credit card will be billed $38.87 for the first 13 weeks, and then every 13 weeks until you cancel your membership. You may cancel at any time after the first 8 weeks and receive a full refund for the portion of your membership not used.
- Yearly Plan - At the time of registration, your credit card will be charged the annual membership fee of $77. Your annual membership will be automatically renewed unless you cancel your membership at the end of the 12 month billing cycle. The annual membership offer is non-refundable, and no credit will be issued for early cancellation.

Features:

Diet features:
- Personalized Meal Planner:
  1. The No Restrictions meal plan is designed for individuals looking to maintain a healthy & balanced diet. It's best suited for those without specific dietary concerns or preferences.
  2. The Reduced Carbohydrate meal plan limits carbohydrate intake to 40% of total calories. This plan is not to be confused with low carbohydrate diets (e.g., Atkins, Protein Power, etc.) because the carbohydrate restriction does not put the body in a state of ketosis.
  3. The Heart Healthy Mediterranean meal plan is designed for individuals who are looking for a heart-healthy diet with Mediterranean characteristics. It focuses on incorporating healthy mono and polyunsaturated fats while limiting intake of saturated and trans fat.
  4. The Vegetarian meal plan is a lacto-ovo vegetarian plan, meaning that eggs and dairy are included. This plan is designed for individuals who do not consume meat, chicken, or fish, and the menus include a variety of soy foods and meat substitutes.
- Customized Shopping Lists
- Nutrition Tracker - keep track of your food intake when you enter the foods that you eat. The Planner keeps a running total of your calories, fats, carbohydrates, protein, and other key nutrients.
- Automatic reminders and alerts
- Free Diet profile based on your height, weight, size and shape.

Fitness Features:
- DietWatch offers several exercise plans, including aerobic, strength training and flexibility programs. Each plan has been designed by professionals.
- Exercise Tracker: Log your exercise, and then see how many calories you've burned.
- Daily Calorie Balance - factor in the calories consumed and burned and produce an overall net calorie balance for the day.

Community Support:
- Experts and members provide encouragement and motivation to reach your goals.
- Blogs - share your ups and downs with other DietWatch users.
- Discussion Boards - meet new friends, ask the experts and join in on lively discussions.
- Chat rooms - connect with other users 24 hours a day.
- Find-a-Friend - Buddy up with other DietWatch users and choose your buddy by age, gender, marital status, location and more.

Expert Advice:
- DietWatch.com's highly qualified team of consultants offer advice on:
  - Body Image Help
  - Managing Emotions
  - Goal Setting
  - Positive Thinking
- Receive food tips, fitness tips and thoughts for the day.
- NewsBytes: Get the lowdown on the latest nutrition news in the media!

Help Files / Technical Support:
- Search DietWatch's Knowledge base for answers to frequently asked questions or submit a ticket to the Support Center.
- Get technical support by logging on to the chat room and posting a message or calling the DietWatch helpline.

Extras:
- Virtual Meditation Room where you can unwind and listen to inspirational messages.
- MASTERINGFood program - a one-stop resource for articles and assessments to help you to stop binge eating and break the emotional eating cycle. Enroll on a 12-week course to overcome emotional eating for good.

Editor's Verdict:

Established in 1996, DietWatch.com has been dispensing dietary and nutritional advice to a loyal membership base for some time now, so it's not surprising that it ranks so highly in our reviews. DietWatch originally started life as an offline piece of downloadable software, which allowed users to document the foods they ate and the exercise they did in order to manage their lifestyle and lose weight. This 'offline diary' was later developed into an online diary, and then finally, into its current incarnation as a complete weight loss management program and community. The site in its current form has been featured, extremely positively, on CNN, in Forbes magazine and About.com. Overall, the site has more than 1 million active users - testament to the quality of its service.

The DietWatch.com program is based around four main diet plans, supported by a combination of great features intended to make it easier for DietWatch users to achieve their weight loss goals. Users can choose from the 'no restrictions' plan (which is a low calorie diet, but not based around particular dietary requirements), a 'low-carb' diet, a 'Mediterranean eating plan' (based around the renowned Mediterranean healthy diet) and a vegetarian plan (including eggs and dairy). All of the meal plans that are featured on DietWatch are developed by industry professionals and are specially designed to facilitate regular, manageable weight loss. Whilst the programs featured on the site are excellent in terms of quality, it is a little disappointing that there are only four eating plans featured on the site - considerably less than the 20 plans featured on eDiets.com and the unlimited number of combinations generated by Diet.com's personality type diet, for example.

As is common on high-quality online weight loss programs, DietWatch combines an eating program with a collection of fitness related advice to boost the health of its members and speed up their weight loss. Users can engage in one of a number of excellent exercise plans, relating to aerobic health, strength training or flexibility, all of which are professionally developed by leading industry experts. Whilst the quality of these exercise regimes is undeniable, they do lack the flexibility or customizability of the programs featured on other weight loss programs, such as eDiets.com or Diet.com. That said, there is also another fantastic feature included with the fitness element of DietWatch.com, which makes using the site all the more useful for dieters. Members can make use of the daily calorie balance feature to calculate the number of calories consumed and burned in one day to produce a net calorie figure, indicating whether they are on the right track for weight loss.

DietWatch has, for a long period of time, understood the importance of combining a supportive community and counseling service with effective fitness and eating plans in order to maximize the health of members. Users are spurred on by their online companions, which form part of the large virtual community of dieters on DietWatch. Users can also use blogs, chat rooms and discussion boards to make new friends, engage in active discussions and share dieting and weight loss tips. We're convinced that this sort of 'community feeling' is the best way to speed up weight loss, as users are motivated by their online friends. One of the best features of DietWatch, and one that has received particular attention from critics and in other reviews, is the MASTERINGFood program. This program is a top-class counseling service which takes place over 12 weeks, using an online seminar and teaching method. At the time of writing, this course costs an additional $34.99 for the first four weeks, and $9.95 a week for the remaining eight weeks. This course is intended to improve members' psychological wellbeing and help them break the harmful emotional-eating cycles often associated with failed dieters. We were particularly impressed by this feature, as it is a particularly high standard illustration of the supporting and counseling nature of DietWatch.

DietWatch is a great online community for dieters, which has received notable acclaim and encourages great success amongst its members. Whilst the counseling and support services are excellent, the diet plans and fitness options are slightly less flexible and customizable than those featured on other sites, and this is why DietWatch doesn't rank higher in our reviews.

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