Do 3-Day Food Diets Really Work?

There are special food diets all over the internet that promise if you follow them for three or four days you will shed pounds and feel better. For example, there is a weight loss program called the 3-Day Grapefruit Diet where you eat a half a grapefruit three times a day with your meals. Even stranger is the 7-day cabbage and chicken soup diet in which you are permitted to consume all you can eat of a special chicken and vegetable soup. But are these meal plans actually effective in helping people lose weight?

Nutrition specialists warn that although most fad diets may result in a little bit of weight loss, this is only temporary and those lost pounds will quickly be put back on again after the 3-day diet is over.

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One of the most problematic of the often-hyped fad diets is called the Mayo Clinic Grapefruit Diet. Looking into the history of this program has shown there is absolutely no connection between it and the famous hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. And the real Mayo Clinic advised people not to follow short-term diets but instead look for sensible ones that you can stay on for good.

Rather than following a fad diet, better results will be realized by making use of a more mainstream program, such as South Beach, The Zone, Dr. Atkins, or one of the low glycemic index diets.

When the Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution book was published originally, it raised a lot of eyebrows by advocating that people could lose weight by eating all the fat and protein they wanted as long as they did not eat any foods with carbohydrates in them. Over the years, there sprang up quite a lot of more moderate low carb diets, and the most recent published version of the Atkins diet is less radical than it used to be.

Low-GI diets work on the principle of avoiding foods that rate high on the glycemic index and instead substituting similar items that have less of an effect on raising the body's blood sugar level. These diets are often easier for people to follow because they represent less of a lifestyle change. For example, it is easier to substitute whole wheat bread for white bread or to eat brown rice instead of white rice than it would be to completely eliminate bread and rice from your diet altogether. As an added bonus, these diets also help reduce cholesterol and lower blood pressure.

Do 3-Day Food Diets Really Work?

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