With the spread of Western fast food restaurants and their horrible high-fat, high-sugar, low fiber junk food there is an obesity crisis worldwide. In many countries, more than half of all adults are now overweight with a significant proportion being obese as well. High cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure are just a few of the diseases that come with eating a bad diet and there are many more suspected afflictions being studied.
There are very many diets. Some are fads and some are actually effective. These diets tend to come out each year around January which is a great time to get started. One of the latest is the “Three Day Diet” which is also called the “Military Diet,” but not because it originated there. It is named because of how restrictive it is and you must be highly disciplined to stick to it. It does have some merit and like any diet, it needs to be followed and executed properly to work.
The Promise Of Rapid Weight Loss
Of course, it does promise rapid weight loss, but no diet that didn’t would ever become popular with the mainstream because people always want quick results. One of the differences with this diet is that it’s a three-day diet that cycles, three days on, then 4 days off. This gives people the chance to eat what they want on their off days.
In theory, the science behind the cycling is to break your body’s tendency to store extra fat when you restrict calories. Then, when you stop dieting, you will gain weight rapidly because your body is saving up for the next famine. It’s an evolutionary trait that humans developed over millions of years. Humans that stored fat in the good times, lived through the bad times. Once it’s in our genes, it’s hard to combat.
By only dieting only 3 days, your body won’t kick into famine mode and you shouldn’t gain back all of your lost weight each time you cycle. Because the military diet menu still only allows up to 1,500 calories per day on your off days, you shouldn’t gain much weight back on that amount of food.
The Three Day Diet Menu
The diet consists of mostly regular foods eaten in very small portions adding up to less than 1,400 calories per day. Breakfast would be a slice of toast, a hard boiled egg, only half of a banana and then, coffee with no cream or sugar. This is rather spartan if you’re accustomed to a large, fried bacon and egg meal with buttered toast, but losing weight isn’t easy.
For lunch, you might be looking at a cup of cottage-cheese, another hard-boiled egg, coffee again, and five saltine crackers with nothing on them. Remember though, you only have to do this diet for three days, then you’re off for fours days, so you will have the power to succeed.
For dinner, one baked chicken leg with thigh, a half cup of cooked green beans, another half cup of cooked cauliflower and for desert, a half cup of sherbet. You should drink lots of water several times per day to keep your stomach full and to keep your kidneys working well. If you want to drink coffee or tea with the sweetener Stevia, you’re allowed as much of that as you want.
That’s the basic military diet menu and there are dozens of substitutions for every meal that are direct replacements. Because of the on and off cycling, many people are able to stick with this diet which is really the key to success. Most diets don’t fail, people just don’t stay on long enough for them to be a success.
