The cookie diet may take the cake as the world’s worst ever fad diet. In essence this diet claims that amino acids baked into cookies can control hunger.
Fad diets seem to be everywhere these days. In general a fad diet is a diet which is designed to last for short periods of time, during which large amounts of weight can supposedly be lost. Often times, like the cookie diet, these diets rely on one miracle food with amazing properties for weight loss. They are usually sold by a series of wild claims, much like the old pitch men pitched in the traveling medicine shows. Crack the Fat Loss Code on the other hand stands out by promising what it claims, doing so with the use of healthy, nutrition food that actually makes sense!
Sanford Siegel created the cookie diet in 1975 while he was doing research for a nutrition book. The cookie diet consists of eating 6 cookies in place of breakfast and lunch, then consuming a normal dinner. People on the diet ate only 800 calories a day. Very quickly the cookie diet became a huge success, with 14 clinics in Florida and 10 in Latin America expounding this amazing weight loss formula. By the 80′s 200 doctors were pushing the cookie diet. The clever doctor came out with soups and shakes that also contained the amino acids needed to control hunger. If you are willing to lower your calorie intake to such an extreme, why not just go on an intermittent fast for 24 hours? This type of fasting is explained in great detail in the book Eat Stop Eat.
A new version of the cookie diet became popular with Hollywood stars as the Hollywood cookie diet. Stars and starlets made their use of the diet well known, which helped vault it to public attention. This diet is similar to the original in that it consists of a cookie for breakfast, a cookie as a snack in the morning, a cookie for lunch, a cookie as a mid-afternoon snack, and then a reasonable dinner. The four cookies allowed on this diet consisted of a combined 600 calories and various vitamins.
Don’t waste time with the cookie diet. Eat less, exercise more – that’s the formula for good health. Even if the star of your favorite movie claims to love them, avoid so called miracle weight loss foods.