Ask Dr. Gourmet

Would The Dr. Gourmet Diet Plan work for me? How can you not charge for it?

I am a fairly healthy 56 year old female. I have been on hormone replacement therapy for 15 yrs. and have put on about 30 lbs. I stumbled upon your Dr. Gourmet website by accident. I am just so disgusted with diets....they never seem to work for me. I walk 30 minutes a day about 4 days a week. I try to eat low fat & low sodium, low carbs. I just cannot seem to lose any weight. Do you think your 1000 calorie diet might work for me?

How can you offer this online diet for free without charging money like ediets and weight watchers do?

Dr. Gourmet Says...

The Dr. Gourmet Diet Plan may work very well for you. My belief is that you shouldn't be dieting but embracing food and making changes in how you eat. To this end I have created recipes that are very satisfying but lower in calories and total fat while using fats that we know are good for us.

If you follow the plans through from the start it will help you decide on the amount of calories you should be eating based on your height and whether you wish to maintain or lose weight. This plan has now helped many people and we receive emails all the time about their success and how much they like the program. Here's an example:

My husband and I have been following the menus since about February time. We have lost quite a bit of weight, I've lost around 40 pounds and he's down about 20. I've been doing the whole plan, he shares the evening and weekend meals with me. We're both diabetics and our blood sugars are a lot better, cholesterol and blood pressure too.

Initially I thought the portions would be too small to be satisfying, but if we asked ourselves about an hour after a meal if we were still hungry, the answer was usually no.

Your exercise is a key to being healthy and living a long time. You might try to expand this some by walking a little further and a little faster over time. Burning more calories is key to weight loss.

To answer your question about how I can offer this diet plan online for free I will reply that this project is very important to me. I feel that there needs to be a reliable resource for people to use to eat great food, eat healthy and lose weight. The resource needs to be based on sound evidence and not pseudoscience. We know so much now about how to eat healthy and still enjoy food that there's no reason for silly fad diets.

At this time the website's costs are covered by the advertising and book sales and it works for so many people. I hope that you like the recipes and find that making small changes in your cooking and eating can make a major difference in your life. Telling your friends about Dr. Gourmet is enough.

Thanks for writing.

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP
Dr. Gourmet