Weight Loss, Dieting & Obesity Another WebTrev.Com Health Services specialist sub-site. © Copyright 2004 - 2010 , Trevor Johnson. |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Silly Fad Diets :
|
||||
|
|
<--- Return to "Silly Fad Diets Index"
How could anyone in their right mind take something called "The Cookie Diet" seriously? Doesn't the very name itself yell out "WARNING!! WARNING!!". Well, it seems that there are plenty of people out there who are not in their right minds. The Cookie Diet has been enormously popular in recent years.
While there are many "home grown" versions of The Cookie Diet, it has been particularly popularised by three specific commercial operators. The basic claim of all of them is that by eating certain special (even "secret") recipe cookies as a meal replacement, you'll reduce your appetite and lose weight. The three commercial spruikers are: "Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET®"; "Smart For Life Cookie Diet" and "The Hollywood Cookie Diet". Also, recently launched in Japan, no doubt planning global distribution, comes "Soypal Cookie Diet".
Despite claim and counter-claim about authenticity, nutrition, secret ingredients, appetite suppressing ingredients, 'correct' balance of aminos, and other such what-not, a couple of home truths about the cookie diet must be told:
Firstly, no cookie can make you lose weight. The basis of all the cookie diets is that, by eating (usually) eight cookies per day as meal replacements along with (usually) one normal meal per day, you reduce your daily calorie intake and therefore lose weight. Read that again. The cookies don't cause weight loss. They just help you skip two meals per day to reduce your daily calorie intake.
Secondly, there is no re-education on any of these cookie diets. You lose some weight, then what? Are you going to skip two meals per day for the rest of your life? Have you learnt how to choose, prepare and eat nutritionally sound, portion controlled meals to enable you to maintain good lifelong habits? Of course not. (Not to mention that one of the most important dietary changes a person with weight problems needs to learn is to stay well away from processed junk snack foods such as cookies!)
Like all such restrictive, unbalanced diet plans, any temporary benefit from the cookie diet will be very quickly lost and the old eating and lifestyle patterns that haven't changed will ensure that all your lost weight returns again quite quickly. (Unless, of course, you simply "feed the entrepreneurial machine by continuing to buy more cookies, more cookies, more cookies...)
Ultimately, the cookie diet, no matter which version, is unsustainable and the benefits - if any - merely temporary. The cookie diet, therefore, is just another silly fad diet.
