It’s hard if you are trying to lose weight and you feel like you’ve tried everything. You did Jenny Craig, you went to Weight Watchers meetings, and now you don’t know what to do. Everyone out there says it’s easier to have a support system that is there for you. You might need someone telling you their weight loss story, giving you a list of foods to buy at the grocery store and tracking your fitness progress.

Well, not everyone has a friend to do this, and most of us can’t afford a private dietician or personal trainer pushing us along. That is why many people today rely on weight loss websites. It can be difficult to justify paying for any of these services because you don’t exactly see where this money is going to. You aren’t going to meetings in person, and you are often still paying for your own groceries.

So how realistic is this? I did a two-week trial of Sensei for Weight Loss and was pretty impressed. Personally, I am not a dieting person. I have never really dieted, and I believe more in a healthy lifestyle. I have always been interested in eating healthy and staying fit, so I was interested in what advice this site had to offer me.

Sensei allows you to choose all of your own settings and set a personal weight loss goal. You can pick from a few different healthy meal plans, like Mediterranean or a low-carb plan. You can set your fitness level and goals too. You are even given suggested exercises to change up your routine. My favorite part was that you can enter your current diet and include any foods you dislike. For instance, I do not eat red meat and dislike eggs but eat them in baked goods (I think it read my mind).

The site does give a lot of choices for meals, and I think it gives the most realistic and likeable ingredients I’ve seen on a site. All the recipes are easy to make, and they incorporated foods I actually like and eat all the time!

Sensei sends a weekly grocery list of all the foods from your meal planner for the week. It will be so specific to say 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 cup broccoli, etc.  I really liked how organized the list was, but part of me wished it were super-human. Don’t they know if I’m on the Mediterranean Diet I still have an entire bottle of  olive oil left over from last week? I guess the whole point of cooking for yourself is to go through your cabinets and see what you’ve got before going to the store.

The only other downside I saw was that you have to choose a meal-plan, and sometimes you don’t want Mediterranean food for every meal of the week. I wish the weekly meal plans had more variation, but you are able to change your settings if desired. Besides that, Sensei seems like your own personal nutritionist and fitness coach in your home. Yes, $15/month is a lot to pay a website, but think of how much you’re saving compared to other programs. Over $800 on Jenny Craig? Sensei  sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

For more tips from Sensei, click here for their 10 Tips to Help Lose Weight.

A diet that requires a commitment of about 3 minutes per day and allows you to eat whatever you want and still help you lose weight. Sound too good to be true? Well according to Michael Dow, creator of The Pen and Paper Diet, it isn’t. The Pen and Paper Diet is an easy plan that requires dieters to write down everything they eat and keep a log of how many calories they consume. Once they are used to maintaining a journal, The Paper and Pen Diet book will help determine an appropriate calorie budget for their weight loss goals. Dieters are then encouraged to try healthy foods and exercise, but are still permitted to eat whatever they want, as long as they stay within their calorie budget. Dow believes that making small changes – lowering your calorie intake a little bit at a time – is a realistic way for most people to lose weight.

Interested in learning more about The Pen and Paper Diet? Click here.