What It Is

Body-for-Life is an intense exercise and nutrition program based on the premise that you're more likely to stick with a diet and workout if you see results quickly. Indeed, founder Bill Phillips makes this promise: Follow his program for 12 weeks and you'll have the best body you've ever had. The program is challenging. It involves training with weights for 45 minutes three days a week, then alternating with aerobic exercise for at least 20 minutes three days a week.

The diet involves eating six small meals each day for six days a week, drawing from a list of healthy foods such as vegetables, brown rice, poultry, and fish. On the seventh day, you rest -- free to eat anything you want and take a day off from the rigorous workout.

What It Is

Steak with Bearnaise sauce, eggs, and bacon; cheddar cheese omelets -- don't hold the yolks; Roquefort dressing and silky smooth avocado cream soup made with real cream? These rich foods are allowed as part of the controversial diet described in Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, a phenomenal best seller, and several follow-up books.

The Atkins diet promises that not only will you lose weight -- and not be hungry -- with a low-carbohydrate diet, but you'll also be on the road to better heart health and memory function, as well as other wellness benefits.

What It Is

As a nutritionist, Ann M. Fletcher, MS, RD, has counseled hundreds of people with weight problems. In her book, Thin for Life, she provides the latest nutrition and diet information.

However, inspiring stories from "masters of weight loss" are the real meat of this book. These are people who have lost at least 20 pounds and kept the weight off for a minimum of three years. Fletcher integrates quotes from interviews she conducted with more than 200 masters at weight loss, who share their success tips.

What It Is

If you want a diet that includes Reese's peanut butter cups and has no "bad" foods, the three-hour diet is the plan for you.

Jorge Cruise, fitness journalist and author of The 3-Hour Diet: How Low-Carb Diets Make You Fat and Timing Makes You Thin, believes so strongly in his plan that he actually encourages readers to enjoy candy. Daily.

But the true keys to Cruise's diet -- other than portion control (he recommends chocolate minis, not whole bars) -- involve a trinity of timing: