The Life Choice Diet is Dr. Dean Ornish's low-fat, vegetarian diet.

You can eat legumes, fruits, grains and vegetables whenever you feel hungry and until you are full — but not stuffed. Nonfat dairy products and nonfat/low-fat processed foods should be eaten in moderation. Also, the diet indicates that less than 10 percent of a person's caloric intake should come from fat.

The diet recommends avoiding many types of foods, including all meats and fish, avocados, nuts and seeds, high-fat dairy, sugar products, alcohol, and oils.

Benefits of the Life Choice Diet

Dr. Ornish emphasizes that a low-fat vegetarian diet can reverse or prevent heart disease.

Review of the Life Choice Diet

"I think you have to be careful," says dietician Barker Jackman of the Life Choice diet. "You can become fat phobic."

Dietary recommendations indicate that 20 to 30 percent of a person's caloric intake should come from fat — our bodies need it for such processes as hormone development. Barker Jackman says excluding fish from a diet is a huge concern. Omega 3, found in fatty fish, prevents heart disease by lowering bad cholesterol and raising good cholesterol.

According to Barker Jackman, there's a lot more to being a vegetarian than just not eating meat — you need to do a little research. In order to gain a complete protein from a non-animal source, a person has to combine the right foods.

How to Get Enough Protein

Barker Jackman describes a square that can make this combining easy: draw a square on a piece of paper; mark the upper-left corner with "grains"; mark the upper-right corner with "legumes"; mark the lower-right corner with "nuts and seeds"; and mark the lower-left corner with "milk". Now draw a two-way arrow along each side of the square. This means a person can make a complete protein with legumes by combining that food with nuts and seeds or grains. Without combining the necessary foods, a dieter could become deficient of protein.