The Mayo Clinic Diet Book

The Mayo Clinic, the preeminent center for health research and initiatives, stays ahead of the curve once again with the release of their own diet book. Less of a “diet” and more of a weight-loss program for everyday life, the Mayo Clinic created a plan to maintain a healthy lifestyle and body type. Mayo Clinic's approach to weight loss is based on Mayo Clinic research and clinical experience. It recognizes that successful, long-term weight management needs to focus on more than the food you eat and the pounds you lose. It needs to focus on your overall health.

The Mayo Clinic Diet (Good Books; $25.99; hardcover) comes packed with meal plans, tips for overcoming challenges, help in starting an exercise plan, and overall encouragement for success from the Mayo Clinic’s weight-loss and nutrition experts.


The book emphasizes two distinct phases of dieting. Part 1: “Lose It” helps you get off to a sprinting start and shed six to ten pounds in the first two weeks. After the early dramatic drop, the Mayo Clinic Diet transitions to the “Live It” phase, strategically designed to help dieters continue to lose one to two pounds each week until they reach their desired healthy weight. 


This book offers a customized guide to using the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid (check it out here). A play on the FDAs version of the pyramid, the basic goal is to choose the right amounts and types of food every day. To make it possible for dieters to keep track of their goals and succeed with weight loss, The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal is available as an essential companion to The Mayo Clinic Diet.  Like the Diet itself, The Journal includes both a “Lose It” quick-start section to monitor habits and a “Live It” section to record daily eating and exercise.

Following any sort of diet plan or pyramid helps with losing weight, but exercise makes for such a key component that it simply can not be ignored. The Mayo Clinic diet calls for 30 to 60 minutes moderately intense physical activity on most days of the week. One of my favorite ways to break a sweat is working in my garden on a hot day, using all sorts of muscles and getting my heart rate up. Lastly, it remains important to set overall and short term goals, all the while staying motivated to keep up the hard work when you feel discouraged (we’ve all been there).

If I had to listen to anyone when it came to healthy eating and dieting habits, I would certainly choose the one institution that has stood as the test of time and is revered the world around for their breakthrough medical work.

Disclosure: Mom Central was sent the Mayo Clinic Diet Book in order to facilitate this review.