The Diet Solution Program by Isabel De Los Rios originates from her passion to help her diabetic and overweight mother. After years of research the author was able to get her mother completely off diabetes medication and help her lose 40lbs in the process.

The 95 page main guide is very well written and gives lots of great information on what kind of foods we should be eating and why. The first part of the guide discusses metabolic typing and why we each react differently to proteins, carbs and fats. Then you complete a questionnaire that comes with the guide to determine your metabolic type and what ratios of protein/carbs/fats you should be eating and what foods you should avoid etc.

This may explain why lots of people swear by a low carb diet while others hate them and swear by a low fat or high protein diet, and seems to make a lot of sense, we are all unique and have different tolerances for foods. The author claims that when you start eating the right kind of foods for your body type that you should find relief from things like fatigue and bloating that plague many people nowadays, as well as seeing your weight drop.

It then takes you through how to work out how many calories you need and how to allocate your servings of proteins/carbs and fats throughout the day, you are encouraged to have 3 main meals with a snack between each.

Then the second half of the guide goes on to give indepth information on dairy products, soy, fats, organic foods, grains, salt, water, sweeteners and alcohol. Some of it was quite eye-opening.

Once you finish the guide you have a success journal to help you keep track of how you are progressing, sample meal plans for each body type for 20 days, a good range of recipes, a quick start guide which is good as it summarizes everything you just learned in the main guide (read this after the main guide not before), a shopping list which again reminds you what you should and should not be eating, then a list of top nutrition mistakes which just repeats a lot of what is in the main guide.

The idea is to change your lifestyle not just go on a short term diet with short term results, the author teaches you how to eat correctly for your body type and to eat a lot healthier no matter what your body type is. This means the results will be a lot slower but hopefully more permanent, the weight loss comes from a gentle reduction in calories so don’t expect huge weight loss in the first weeks that most diets claim to give.

Plus the diet is going to be hard work, at least at first. To start with you are going to need to take note of everything you eat and how it makes you feel, so you can fine tune what your body likes and does not like. After you have been doing it a while then you will have a great idea of what makes you sluggish and bloated etc, but until then you really need to put in the work to track things and find all this out.

Also the metabolic typing questionnaire is a bit tricky, most of the answers I had no idea about and would have to go away and test them to see what the answer would be. The diet will also be expensive as you are encouraged to buy organic produce and cut out all sorts of things and replace them with healthier versions which usually cost more.

That said if you take everything on board and just apply some of it then you should be a lot healthier in the longrun. It also doesn’t really discuss anything about the weight loss side of things, you get told about how to avoid overeating and about how to reduce your calories, but then you are just told the healthier diet will help you shed all the extra weight you have. So nothing is discussed about what happens if you reach a plateau or what if the reduction in calories she recommends does not work properly etc.

Exercise is also something which is not discussed, but the author does recommend some exercise guides she has tried when you get to the FAQ section.

The platinum upgrade gives you a number of audio files on meal planning and answering some of the questions the author gets asked a lot. A lot of the information is in the main guide so it is not new, but there are some good things like a discussion on cholesterol (as well as a book on cholesterol which is also part of the upgrade) and an audio where the author takes you through some real menus from restaurants and discusses what she would choose to get the healthiest option.

We sent off 3 questions for the personal consultation you get in the upgrade and 3 and half days later we had detailed response to all our questions – this is a good way to round off the course as anything you are confused about you can put in that email and get explained by the author herself.