eDiets Review

What Is It?

Despite our differences, there’s one thing we all seem to agree on: choice is good. For more than 10 years, since the early days of the Internet, eDiets has been providing us more choice in diet plans than we ever could have imagined. Currently, the site offers some two dozen options, starting with its own program, the eDiets Weight Loss Plan, and including popular programs such as Atkins, the Mediterranean Diet, Blood Type Diet and Slim-Fast.

If there’s a specific diet you’re looking for, you’ll probably be able to find it, or one that’s similar, at eDiets. And if you don’t know what you want or need, eDiets will help you make an informed decision. The site offers visitors a free diet profile, which analyzes your current state and recommends a weight loss program.

How it works

Once you’ve gone for the bait, so to speak, and paid the subscription fee, you gain access to eDiet’s vast repository of diet information. This online portal, one of the largest in the health sector, has a braintrust of doctors, nutritionists and fitness experts who submit new articles on a daily basis. These and other weight loss experts also participate in the discussion forums, moderating topics and answering questions.

Subscription packages start at about $5 a week and include access to the basic diet plan of your choice. As you add plan components and seek access to other services, the price will go up.

A popular feature of eDiets is you can test drive diet plans and fitness programs, switching from one to another at any time. You can also mix and match parts of different plans to create your own personalized weight loss program.

Another interesting feature is the company’s eDiets Express service. Subscribers to this innovative offering get their weight loss program meals delivered to their homes. For road warriors, there’s eDiets Mobile, a software package for use in mobile computing devices. It allows users to track their food, exercise, calories and weight while they’re traveling.

The good

Not all diets work for everyone. eDiets has found a way to give dieters both choice and a mechanism for making an informed selection. The free diet profile administered prior to signup is a clever gimmick, but it serves a real purpose. The profile takes into consideration weight, height, age and gender, as well as favorite foods, exercise habits and other lifestyle factors. Based on this information, the experts at eDiets are able to guide subscribers to the most suitable weight loss program. This could involve using parts of different brand-name plans to create a customized program fitted to the customer’s profile.

The Bad

As an online destination, eDiets has so much going on, it’s bound to confuse new subscribers. You’ll need to pay a number of visits to the site to figure out what all the resources are and how best to access them. Do you prefer chat or email to connect with nutrition and fitness experts? Do you like to obtain written information by scrolling through forum logs or searching articles written by experts?

If you like busy online environments – and more of us are growing comfortable in these settings – you should be able to use eDiets to your advantage in achieving your weight loss goals. But if it doesn’t suit you, a simpler, more focused online diet site might be the answer

eDiet’s subscription costs can also be confusing. Actually, there’s no problem if you stay with the basic service. But you’ll probably want to add program components at some point, and that’s when it gets a little puzzling.

The bottom line

eDiets’ strategy of making available both its own and competitors’ weight loss plans is a great opportunity for savvy consumers. The fact that all the programs are located in one place makes it simple easy to compare and contrast them. And the site’s experts in nutrition and fitness are always on hand to answers questions and fill in the blanks. It’s easy for people struggling with their weight to get stuck in ruts. Used to its fullest, eDiets can be a catalyst to help dieters make important advances towards controlling their weight for good.