Making the decision to lose weight is something that will change your life forever. Not only are you going to love how you look, but you’ll also feel better and be in better health overall. Unfortunately, losing weight can be challenging for a lot of people. Either they don’t know where to start, they’re discouraged by past experiences with diets, or they don’t have access to the right resources.
There are many different weight loss programs designed to help you drop some pounds and feel healthier. Losing weight can also contribute to your heart health, cholesterol levels, mental health and self esteem. The Mayo Clinic Health System is a not for profit medical center focused on integrated health care, education and scientific research. They have a diet program that is effective and backed by science.
Quick Summary of Mayo Clinic Diet Review
| Diet Program: | The Mayo Clinic Diet |
| Claimed Benefits: | Faster, sustainable weight loss (lose 3x more weight) and build healthier eating habits. |
| Best for: | Those who need to change their relationship with food and exercise to incorporate it as daily habits. |
| Cost: | $49.99/mo (monthto-month), $39.99/mo (3 months at a time), $29.99/mo (6 months), or $19.99/mo (1 year) |
| Current Promotions: | Get 3 Months Free using any link on this page! |
| Where to start: | diet.mayoclinic.org/us/ |
| Average User Rating: | 4.1/5 (Over 100 reviews) |
| GW Rating: | 4.2/5 |
Mayo Clinic Diet
What Is The Mayo Clinic Diet?
The Mayo Clinic Diet helps you achieve your weight loss goals by way of a healthier lifestyle. You receive education and support that helps you make healthier meal choices and helps you break bad eating habits. They have their own food pyramid that focuses on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. These are foods that allow you to eat them in healthy quantities without consuming a ton of calories. If you had two hundred calories to work with, The Mayo Clinic Diet explains that you want to source those calories from nutrient-dense foods rather than something which has empty calories (candy, cookies, etc.).
Pros
- Teaches you healthy eating habits that will help you maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle long into the future
- This diet doesn’t utilize any crash diets or extreme rules. It’s all about healthy eating
- Developed by a credible and reputable medical system
- Easy to learn and easy to maintain long term
- Provides impressive weight loss during the first two weeks of use
Cons
- There is a learning curve when it comes to figuring out what you can and cannot eat
How Does It Work?
There is a newer version of the Mayo Clinic Diet that was released in 2017. It focuses on two main parts of the program titled ‘Lose It’ and “Live It”. The first part of the program teaches you 15 different healthy habits. You’re not required to count calories and you have unlimited access to fruits and vegetables. You don’t have to eliminate any one food group to get healthy. There is also a program that you can use on your smart device to track your progress.
Lose Weight While Optimizing Your Health
You can use Mayo Clinic approved meal plans to personalize your diet. There are options for keto, high protein diets, vegetarian and Mediterranean. There are over 1 million foods included in the Mayo Clinic food tracker so you can closely watch the calories and fat you’re consuming. Not only will this help you to lose weight, but you can also live a much healthier lifestyle.
Food and Nutrition
A lot of people run into difficulties with their diet because they don’t know what foods are healthy or what foods they should be consuming to lose weight. The Mayo Clinic food pyramid provides a great deal of information regarding what foods you should be basing your diet off of. There is even a private Facebook group that you can join to get ideas from other people and access to useful information.
Healthy Habit Forming
The Mayo Clinic habit optimizer helps you figure out where you’re making unhealthy choices and then educates you on how to change those to more healthy options. There are also a series of reminders and tools that help you develop healthier habits.
Claimed Benefits
As with any diet or weight loss plan, there are claims that the Mayo Clinic makes regarding their program and how much weight you can lose. Your experience may be slightly different than what someone else encounters.
Lose 3x More Weight
The Mayo Clinic claims that you can lose anywhere from six to ten pounds in two weeks time when you start using their diet plan. After the two week point, you can lose one to two pounds per week until you reach your weight goal. People who complete the entire twelve week program will lose three times more weight than those who start but do not finish.
Easy Accessible Online Resources
The Mayo Clinic has a very vast collection of online resources that you can use to get started and to continue throughout your weight loss journey. Their website includes a blog (https://diet.mayoclinic.org/us/blog/) that shares different tips for healthy snacking, exercises routines, following a keto diet, setback tips and even personal stories that can help motivate you. You can also use their app to monitor your daily food intake, access a full healthy menu and much more.
Medically-Backed and Trusted Diet Program
There are a lot of weight loss programs and diets on the market. Unfortunately, many of them lack the scientific research and medical information that’s needed in order to fully trust that a program will help you and be good for your body. The Mayo Clinic Diet was developed by medical professionals and based on scientific principles. It’s been used for many years now with great success.
Food Tracker with Over One Million Foods
Your Mayo Clinic Diet app will suggest to you different meals that you can use each day to stick to your diet plan. You can choose to swap out different meals and ingredients based on your preferences, allergies, etc. The program provides you with access to over one million foods for plenty of versatility.
At-Home Workouts to Tone Your Body
You are encouraged to participate in at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day when following the Mayo Clinic Diet. The goal is to get your heart rate up, but you don’t have to get a full sweat on each day. Provided at-home workouts can be used to work different parts of your body aerobically. You can also partake in walks, working in the yard, yoga, etc.
Pricing Options
There are a few different ways that you can pay for the Mayo Clinic Diet. If you choose to pay monthly it costs $49.99 per month. Paying for three months at a time costs $39.99 per month. Signing up for a six month plan drops the cost down to $29.99 per month and paying for one full year of the service costs just $19.99 per month. And, if you use any of our links on this page, you'll get 3 months free to get started.
Cancellation Policy and Refunds
You have the option to cancel your membership at any time. Simply log in to your account online and click on the ‘Manage Membership’ option. This section gives you the option to cancel completely. Unfortunately, you do not receive a refund for any of the unused months that you already paid for.
Is It Worth It?
The Mayo Clinic is a reputable and trustworthy resource for medical information and a weight loss plan. The goal of this program is to fully educate you on what you need to know in order to make long term changes that are healthy and beneficial. When you’re making healthier choices, watching what you eat and following proper portion control, you’ll find that the pounds come off much easier than you expected. The exercise program is a nice compliment to the diet plan. It helps to burn additional calories while also promoting heart healthy activities.
If you feel like you struggle with your nutrition quite a bit, then I feel like the Mayo Clinic Diet program is worth the investment. While you can lose quite a bit of weight within the first couple of weeks, the goal of this program is to change your life forever. I recommend signing up for at least three to six months to really reap the benefits of everything that you have access to.
How Long Is The Program?
This initial program is twelve weeks long, but the information and healthy habits that you develop will be used long term. You can still utilize the program and its resources past the twelve week point. This is why you can sign up for memberships up to one year at a time, for as long as you would like. The hope is that you will make lifelong changes that will keep the weight off and boost your overall health.
How to Get Started
Head to the Mayo Clinic Diet website to fill out their initial assessment questionnaire and to get started (https://diet.mayoclinic.org/). The assessment only takes about three minutes and looks into why you want to make changes to your diet and exercise routine, helps you understand what motivates you, gives you information on weight loss and determines what you need to stay focused on your goals. You can then sign up for your membership.
Real Mayo Clinic Diet Reviews and Average Rating
The Mayo Clinic Diet has over 100 reviews on the Trustpilot website. It has 4.1 stars out of five stars. People found the most success from following the sample menus and diet recommendations. Adhering to portion limits and reducing carbohydrate intake can have the most effect. You can use the tracker to come up with your own meals if you’re not happy with the menus provided, which is something a lot of people utilized. People expressed that portions are plenty big to stay full throughout the day.
The negatives that people mentioned were the monotony of the menus. After about three months things start to get repetitive. However, you should have built up enough knowledge by this point that you can start to develop your own recipes and routines for mealtime.
Click to see more before and afters
Alternatives Compared to the Mayo Clinic Diet
If the Mayo Clinic Diet doesn’t seem like something you’re interested in, there are plenty of other online options that provide you with a similar program concept but with a little more variety or versatility.
Noom
The Noom weight loss plan does not limit what you are able to eat each day. It has a more psychological approach to figure out what your relationship is with food, why you eat what you do and when you do. The goal is to shift your mindset to a healthier way of eating and living. Noom focuses on eating healthy, exercising regularly, managing your stress and developing better sleep routines.
G-Plans
The G-Plans diet strives to repair your gut microbiome by increasing the number of good bacteria that you have present. This can help you experience less inflammation, decreased bloating, regular bowel habits and much more. It is a 21-day diet that consists of three different phases. The first phase lasts five days and is designed to detox your body. The next phase allows you to incorporate some healthy foods back into your diet. The third phase re-balances your body and allows you to eat a healthier diet with better portion control and less processed items. G-Plans and Noom are very similar, so make sure you research both before going with one or the other.
FOUND
Join Found (learn more) is a science driven weight loss program that educates you on healthier eating habits that you can follow for a lifetime. This holistic-based option focuses on your metabolism, genetics, hormones, gut health and even the use of weight loss medications to help you achieve your goals.
Calibrate
Calibrate is an online weight loss program that provides you with access to one-on-one coaching, diet plans and access to weight loss medications that can help reset your metabolism. It takes into account your emotional health, exercise plan, sleep routine and much more. There is also an accountability aspect of Calibrate that helps you stay on track with your progress thanks to the right support.
Fella Health
Fella Health is designed as a weight loss solution for men. After a brief assessment, you are put in touch with a certified obesity doctor that will discuss different options for weight loss medication. The goal is to improve your metabolic health through medication, changes in your diet, incorporating exercise and providing support throughout your weight loss journey.
Form Health
Form Health is personalized to your biology. When you subscribe you gain access to a nutrition plan based on your information and needs, prescription medication if needed and a personal health coach that you will communicate with on an ongoing basis to monitor your progress and make changes as needed.
The Bottom Line: Does It Work For Sustainable Weight Loss?
It is my belief that being able to achieve your weight loss goals and maintain them long into the future relies on your ability to make healthy choices for all of your meals and snacks. It’s not difficult to fall off track, especially as you get older and the pounds are harder to keep off. I like the Mayo Clinic Diet because its goal is to educate you on the different healthy meal options that you can be utilizing each day. You’re not counting calories for foods that don’t work for you, you don’t have to use weight loss medication to boost your metabolism and you’re not participating in any drastic cleanses, detoxes or caloric reductions.
You’ll experience the most weight loss within the first couple of weeks when you first get started with the Mayo Clinic Diet. After that point the weight will come off a bit slower, but you’ll find that you’re experiencing consistent progress the entire time you’re using the program. Once you’re used to the way this diet functions, you’ll have the opportunity to make your own healthy choices moving forward. If you can stay on track, sustainable weight loss is potential.
Tips for Success from the RD
If you’re starting a new diet plan then there is a lot to learn at the very beginning. It’s important that you take all the time that you need to educate yourself and prepare. Here are some of my tips for success when starting a new diet routine.
Don’t Be Too Hard on Yourself
We are all imperfect humans that will make mistakes and slip up now and again. It’s perfectly fine if you allow yourself a cheat day or you make an unhealthy choice. The goal is to minimize the amount of times that happens. If it does happen, get right back on track.
Listen to Your Body
Most diet plans also incorporate exercise to get you closer to your weight loss goals. Exercise is a very important part of being healthy, but make sure that you’re listening to your body. If you have low energy, you’re not feeling well or you’re sore from yesterday’s activity, you may want to slow things down for the day. You don’t have to be inactive. Yoga or gentle stretching can be great rest day activities.
It’s Normal to Have an Adjustment Period
If the diet you’re starting is very different from how you normally eat, it’s typical for you to experience an adjustment period of some sort. This can include various cravings and even a little moodiness as you detox from things like refined sugar and junk food.
