Is the 3 Day Diet Plan For You?
The 3 day diet plan can be traced back to 1985 — right around the heyday of fad diets. The diet plan boasts that individuals who follow it will lose 10 pounds in 3 days. That’s certainly an attractive offer, as we’ve all had upcoming events where we’d like to be a little thinner.
It’s unclear where the 3 day diet plan actually originated, but it has been floating around for years, gaining popularity and increased longevity through the magic of the Internet. It does not appear to be based on any particular course or book, so there is no way to trace it back to its original writers. The plan is sometimes called the Clevelanc Clinic Diet, but according to Cindy Moore, the director of nutrition therapy at the Cleveland Clinic, the plan is not associated with the Clinic.
3 Day Diet Plan: What’s it All About?
The 3 day diet plan is based on eating a very specific set of meals for 3 days. The dieter is promised that he or she will lose 10 pounds upon completion of the diet plan. The combination of foods are supposed to activate a special metabolic pathway that increases the body’s consumption of fat to shed the 10 pounds quickly. However, it is never explained exactly why the foods cause this reaction or how it works.
The 3 day diet plan commands the dieter to eat three meals a day with very specific foods and portions, such as 1 cup of tuna, 3 ounces of lean meat, 8 saltine crackers, and black coffee or tea every morning. The portions advised are very small; many of them wouldn’t be able to satisfy the hunger of a child, much less a fully-grown adult. For example, lunch on the first day has the dieter eating one cup of cottage cheese or tuna and 8 crackers — a very calorie-restricted meal. Dieters who follow the plan would be eating about 1000 calories per day, which is far below the recommended amount of 2000 calories for a healthy adult.
3 Day Diet Plan: How Does it Work?
The 3 day diet plan may not be far off the mark in its promise that dieters will lose 10 pounds in 3 days. It’s very possible that the extreme caloric restrictions will cause dieters to shed 10 pounds in just a few days, but is it healthy? Since the diet is very low in carbohydrates, the weight that comes off will likely be water weight as the body is dehydrated. Dieters may look at the scale at the end of 3 days and find that they have lost weight, but they likely won’t realize that they haven’t actually lost any fat and that the weight will quickly come piling back on as soon as they resume their normal eating habits. The diet advises that it can be repeated indefinitely as long as the dieter includes 4-5 days of normal eating patterns between the 3 day diet cycles, but dieters are likely to overeat on these cycles of “normal” eating because they were so starved in the previous 3 days.
3 Day Diet Plan: The Verdict
The 3 day diet plan is a fad diet, and it shows. It advocates extreme reduction in caloric intake that only leads to losses in water weight and it does not promote any meaningful fat loss. It also encourages poor eating habits and overeating. Stay away from the 3 day diet plan and look for diets that are more reasonable and which encourage good diet and exercise habits.
Want to know about the best weight loss programs as reviewed by our top health and fitness experts? Check out our diet reviews!
There are no comments yet, add one below.