Friday, February 27, 2009

Does The 3 Days Diet really Help?

By Slim Slater

The 3 Day Diet dates back to 1985 and today can be found all over the Internet and on book store shelves. The three day diet and its variants boast quick weight loss, a cleansing of the system, lower cholesterol and increased energy all through a specific metabolic reaction that no version of the diet has ever proven.

The diet goes on for three days and then off for four or five with lots of specific and cryptic steps so that when it fails the dieter can be pinned for doing something wrong.

Breakfast on the first day comes with coffee (no sugar), one half a grapefruit, and a piece of toast with 1 Tbsp peanut butter. For lunch, you are to eat a can of tuna, a piece of toast, and black coffee. For dinner it's 3 ounces of chicken or lean meat, a cup of green beans, one cup of carrots, one apple, and one cup of regular vanilla ice cream. The other two days of the diet are pretty similar in meal quantity, though the specifics change, for example Day 2 recommends two beef franks for dinner in place of three ounces of lean meat. Supposedly it's possible to lose as much as 10 pounds in only three days.

Baloney! How's that for specific? And no baloney is not part of the diet. There is no evidence for the so-called specific metabolic reaction. The only reason this diet would shed pounds is because of the lack of calories in the diet. In fact, because the diet is so low in carbohydrates a person could lose ten pound in three days. Of course most of that would be water weight because carbohydrates encourage the body to retain water. By the way, losing that much weight from not retaining water is dangerous as the body needs water to survive.

Once the three days end the weight will return, primarily because it's mostly water. But also because any weight lost from the skipped calories will be regained when the starving diet victim returns to normal, or in this case heavier than normal, eating. Deprive the body of water for three day cycles enough times and a person could develop kidney damage, dehydration, or a host of other dangerous conditions.

The 3 day diet is best treated as a no day diet. In other words, don't do it. - 15995

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