A lot of fad diets out there claim to give dieters the needed weight loss in short time. Needless to say, the 3 day diet offers the shortest time possible, 10 pounds off in 3 days. Wow! Now, if only that is true. Still, for those of you interested in this short-term program, let me present the full menu plan.

Day 1 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1/2 grapefruit or juice
• 1 toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter

Lunch

• 1/2 cup tuna
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 3 oz. lean meat or chicken
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 apple
• 1 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 2 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1 egg
• 1/2 banana
• 1 toast

Lunch

• 1 cup cottage cheese or tuna
• 8 regular saltine crackers

Dinner

• 2 beef franks
• 1 cup broccoli or cabbage
• 1/2 cup carrots
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 3 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 5 regular saltine crackers
• 1 oz. cheddar cheese
• 1 apple

Lunch

• 1 boiled egg
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 1 cup tuna
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup cauliflower
• 1 cup melon
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

The above recommended meal plan entails that the dieter would be restricted to about 600 caloric intake per day, well below the amount needed by the body. The dieter would probably experience dehydration, as water is not part of the diet plan. The weight shed during this period might just be attributed to the body fluid you lost. Carbohydrates, the source of calories, contribute to the necessary function of retaining body fluid. Furthermore, the meal plan is strictly controlled and doesn’t allow variation. This is ideal only for those who don’t easily give in to hunger pangs, which might be the continuous state you’ll be in during the prescribed three days.

Following the days of strict diet, one might be prone to food bingeing to answer the body’s clamor for more food. Needless to say, this would just put those three days of gastronomic torture to waste. Then you would undergo what others would term the “yo-yo” diet. You put back on the weight you needed to lose in the first place, which would spur you to diet again, which would cause you to binge and gain weight again, and thus the cycle goes on and on…

Nobody can really say just how effective the 3 day diet is (or the other fad diets, for that matter). There might be even some out there who would testify to its efficacy. Still, the only way to lose weight safely is to lose it slowly. That way, the body can adjust to the state you want it in and there would be no more physiological impetus for you to eat more than what is needed. When a person binges on food after a period of semi-starvation, it is the body’s way of saying that it needs food urgently to survive.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Fad Diets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.