What It Is

The Eat Right for Your Type diet encourages people to eat certain foods and avoid others based on their blood type -- A, B, AB, or O.

Peter J. D'Adamo, ND, the author of Eat Right for Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight, believes blood types affect the digestive system and that some foods good for people of one type are "dangerous" for another.

It goes further than that for D'Adamo, a naturopathic doctor, who believes that your blood type also determines your susceptibility to certain illnesses and how you should exercise.

What It Is

Phil McGraw, PhD, the plain-talking, self-improvement guru and psychologist, spent eight years counseling people who were up to 300 pounds overweight. "The approaches I used with them are precisely the very same get-real strategies for weight loss you will learn about and apply here," he writes in his book, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom.

Dr. Phil outlines seven key points to understanding and facing your "personal truth" - how you view yourself and your weight. Then you must replace these toxic messages with positive thoughts, says Dr. Phil.

"It's about changing yourself from the inside out, so that being fit and healthy for you is as natural and as normal as breathing," he writes. "By changing yourself from the inside out, you will be able to attain and permanently maintain what I call your get-real weight --- the weight that is healthy and realistic for your age and your physical and genetic makeup, a weight at which you are happy and truly at peace with your size, and a weight that is stable because you have taken control of every factor in your life that keeps it there."

What It Is

Unlike other diet books that make big promises, Eat More, Weigh Less, by Dean Ornish, MD, soft-pedals the health claims for this diet for the masses, adapted from his regimen to reverse heart disease. Ornish is well known in the medical community because of his success in reversing blockages to the heart, once thought impossible without surgery or drugs.

Unlike other books that are full of scientific-sounding theories and explanations without clinical studies to back them up, Ornish's explanations are simple and well supported. His main point is that eating a high-fiber, low-fat vegetarian diet will not only help you stay healthy, or get you there, but also will help you lose weight.

What It Is

No hocus-pocus here, no quick weight-loss promises from wellness guru Andrew Weil, MD. Weil sums up his philosophy in four words: "Eat less, exercise more." Weil urges readers of his several best-sellers, including the latest, Eating Well for Optimum Health, and his popular Web site (www.drweil.com) to look upon eating with a sensibility that is more Eastern than Western.

Naturally he points out that what we eat does influence our health in a big way. But he adds this caveat: Diet is only one aspect of our lifestyle, and lifestyle is only one variable in the mix of factors that determines whether we are blessed with well-being or whether we feel out of sorts.