The Best Life Reviews

Editor's Star Ratings:

Diet Features:
Fitness Features:
Community Support:
Expert Advice:
Extras:
Customer Support:
Ease of Use / Navigation:
Value for Money:
Overall Star Rating:

Joining Fee:

• Less than $5 per week ($19.95 per month, on the 3-month subscription plan).
• You may choose from a 1-month program, a 3-month program, a 13-week program, a 6-month program, or a 1-year program.

Features:

• Diet Features:
  • Choose from hundreds of easy-to-make and delicious Best Life recommended meals. Set your diet preferences, create and save favorites, swap meals, print shopping lists, track calories, and add custom foods. Eating healthfully has never been easier!
  • Bob's three-phased approach is meant to prepare your body for weight loss. For instance, two key Phase One objectives - increasing your activity level and restructuring how you eat - will help jump start your metabolism and increase the number of calories you burn.
  • Extensive menu plans tailored to your specific calorie needs and food preferences.
  • The Best Life Diet helps you keep your calories in check. You'll do so primarily by managing your hunger using a tool called the Hunger Scale, putting a lid on sweets and eating proper portions.
  • Extensive Best Life Approved Recipe Database.
  • Interactive food and exercise logs.

• Fitness Features:
  • Interactive food and exercise logs. Enter what you've eaten and how much you've exercised, and you'll be given feedback on how you're doing.
  • Activity Tracker allows you to get credit where credit is due: From workplace functions to fitness classes to household chores to strength training.
  • Robust Video Library - featuring a suite of "how-to" exercise demonstrations, as well as related diet and nutrition clips.
  • Fitness tips from Michael Scholtz, Best Life fitness expert.

• Expert Advice from Bob Greene and his team at TheBestLife.com:
  • Weekly Newsletters and Tips from Bob.
  • Help from a team of dietitians and exercise experts who will personally answer all your questions.
  • The on-line store has a range of books by the bestselling author Bob Greene, including:
    • Make the Connection: Ten Steps To A Better Body -- And A Better Life
      (co-written with Oprah Winfrey)
    • A Journal of Daily Renewal: The Companion to Make the Connection
      (co-written with Oprah Winfrey)
    • Keep the Connection: Choices for a Better Body and a Healthier Life
    • Get With the Program!
    • Total Body Makeover
    • The Best Life Diet

• Community Support:
  • The Member Community is the place to go for encouragement, support and advice.
  • Message Boards and Member Profiles help build long-lasting relationships, which will only increase your chances of success.
  • A chance to submit your Success Story and become a featured Best Life Member
  • Challenges to keep you motivated.

• Help Files / Technical Support:
  • A short FAQ section deals briefly with registration and membership issues. An email address is provided for additional queries.
  • Email the fitness and diet experts directly for answers to anything you find difficult.
• Extras:
• • The on-line store has a range of books by the bestselling author Bob Greene, including:
  • • Make the Connection: Ten Steps To A Better Body -- And A Better Life
      (co-written with Oprah Winfrey)
    • A Journal of Daily Renewal: The Companion to Make the Connection
      (co-written with Oprah Winfrey)
    • Keep the Connection: Choices for a Better Body and a Healthier Life
    • Get With the Program!
    • Total Body Makeover
    • The Best Life Diet

Editor's Verdict:

Bob Greene studied health and physical education at the University of Delaware and then went on to get a master's degree in exercise physiology from the University of Arizona. Along with being an exercise physiologist, he is also a certified personal trainer and a member of two distinguished groups, the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Council on Exercise. For the last two decades, Bob has specialized in fitness, metabolism and weight loss. Bob Greene is perhaps best known as Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer, and the man behind her well-documented weight loss. Bob is the author of ten incredibly successful books on health and fitness, including two books that were co-authored by Oprah Winfrey. He is a regular contributor to Oprah Magazine, the Oprah and Friends satellite radio network and also appears regularly on the Oprah Winfrey show.

The best life diet plan is intended to provide dieters with a guide as to how to change their lifestyle entirely, to promote weight loss, healthy living and general wellbeing. Bob Greene advocates a three phase approach, which is intended to gradually introduce the principles of the best life diet, to make them easier to follow, and then continue with a diluted form of the principles after the dieter has reached their target weight in order to maintain that weight and healthy lifestyle. The first phases of the diet, Phase 1, lays the groundwork for adopting the program as a lifestyle change, rather than a short term 'fad' diet, and recommends a slight increase in exercise and mobility, the eating of three solid meals a day (and one snack), drinking plenty of water and eating at sensible times (and never late at night). The second phase involves the actual weight loss, and commences four weeks into the diet process, and lasts as long as it takes to achieve the dieter's target weight. During Phase 2, the dieter cuts out certain 'bad' foods altogether, swapping them for alternatives, increasing exercise and mobility further and advocating careful portion control. In the third phase, dieters are permitted greater flexibility in controlling their diet, and can even add 'anything goes' calories into their diet (whereby users can 'spend', say, 500 calories on whatever food they like).

Whilst a lot of the advice offered by Bob Greene in the Best Life diet sounds like common sense, that is because for the most part, it is. Bob advocates the gradual improvement of diet (for the long term) and the inclusion of regular exercise into a daily routine in order to stimulate and maintain healthy weight loss. In order to make this a little easier, the site offers a range of useful additional features. Users can view fitness videos which offer useful demonstrations of cardio and strength building exercise routines, track their calorie intake and exercise using the activity tracker and develop a personalized fitness plan, ideally suited to their level of fitness. Users can also interact with other users using the community features on the website (message boards, chat rooms and an effective buddy system). All in all, the Best Life diet is about restructuring how and what you eat and when you eat it; all accompanied by an effective exercise routine.

While the Best Life diet is a great diet, and has achieved great success in the US, we're not convinced that it provides users with enough menu choices or meal options in order to be completely sustainable. The website provides only a few hundred recipes for users to try, compared to the hundreds of thousands that are available on other diet sites, such as eDiets.com or Diet.com. The diet is based on sensible principles of moderation and exercise though, so users are likely to find it a sustainable choice if they decide to give it a try, and are willing to think of new menu combinations when they exhaust those on the website. If you would like more information about the Best Life diet, made famous by Oprah Winfrey, hit the link below to check it out!

Click the button below to check out TheBestLife.com for yourself...