"Eat cookies and lose weight!" That is how Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet can be best described in a single sentence. As the name indicates, the cookie diet was founded by the Florida based thyroid specialist, Dr. Sanford Siegal, almost three decades ago. Over the years, this ‘one meal diet’ program has garnered the approval of thousands of people who have lost weight with the cookie diet program, in fact according to Dr. Siegal, the cookie diet can lead to the loss of about 15 pounds a month. However if you are enjoying a diet of nothing but cookies, don’t you think that there are potential side effects? After all consuming cookies does not meet your daily nutritional requirements. In order to find the answer to this question, let us unravel the secrets behind Dr. Siegal’s cookies.
Dr. Siegal’s diet cookies are made specially to be distributed throughout his clinics. Even though, the exact ingredients are unknown, experts say that the cookies are high on low glycemic index components such as oatmeal and whole meal flour, and contain a specially prepared amino acid mixture that is known to suppress the appetite. This means that Dr. Siegal’s diet cookies have virtually the same effect as most other weight loss diet gimmicks do on the human body, suppress the appetite, thereby curbing the dieter’s instinct to eat more. According to Dr. Siegal’s diet plan, a dieter should follow a one meal a day program, that meal being dinner, and during the daytime, his/her food is limited to six diet cookies, which the dieter is supposed to eat whenever he/she feels hungry. In other words, there is no definite time table for eating the cookies. Eat only when you are hungry, however you cannot eat more than six cookies per day.
However, appetite suppression is not the only thing that Dr. Siegal’s diet cookie does, it is also a medically supervised cookie with a very low caloric content. In other words, six cookies a day plus dinner should add up to approximately 800 calories. So, its effect on the human system is two fold; it suppresses the dieter’s cravings for food and limits the daily caloric intake to 800, and according to critics, this is exactly where the problem lies. A mere 800 calories is not enough to sustain an adequate amount of energy throughout the day. 800 calories is practically starvation. The human body needs food like your car needs fuel, without fuel your body will not run. People who have low calorie diets have low metabolisms and typically lack energy.
With this lack of energy supply to the body, it is impossible for the body to get all of the minerals and vitamins it needs as recommended by the RDA. Even though, Dr. Siegal suggests vitamin supplements as a solution to this shortcoming, according to nutritional experts supplements cannot replace the amount of vitamin’s supplied to the human body through a healthy diet. Then there is this argument that the cookie diet also falls short in terms of carbohydrates as well as fibers, which is are vital for healthy digestion. Dr. Siegal seems to agree with the fiber issue, but he counters it by saying that the cookie diet is not a permanent diet, but rather a temporary solution to lose weight. He has also conceded that the cookie diet is not a permanent healthy solution for nutrition. Any diet plan that does not offer long term solutions really isn’t worth wasting your time on. What’s the point of losing weight if you are only going to gain it back. If you are not learning the proper way to eat while you are losing weight, then what happens after you’ve dropped the weight, stopped following the program and gone back to eating how you did before? You’ve got it, the pounds come back, and this is definitely not what we want to happen after all of that hard work you’ve put into losing the weight in the first place.
Finally, Dr. Siegal’s cookie diet program does not offer any workout recommendations to complement it. This underlines the fact that his diet plan brings about weight loss only through deprivation and not by burning down excess fat. This is not at all an advisable or healthy method for shedding weight. Any weight loss plan that does not require some sort of exercise and physical activity is doomed for failure. Through exercise we gain muscle and with muscle we are able to build up our metabolism, allowing us to shed weight more quickly and more permanently. Healthy weight loss requires both exercise and a proper and sensible nutritional program.
To answer the question whether Dr. Siegal’s cookie diet, is a quick fix or a dangerous weight loss alternative, it is both. It is a quick fix because, by depriving the body of calories, fat, and other minerals and vitamins, it brings about sudden weight loss in the dieter and for this same reason it is dangerous. Sudden weight loss in never healthy, nor is starving your body of the food it needs to survive. The best and safest way to lose weight is to join a gym or hire a personal trainer, start working out and talk to a nutritionist about creating a meal plan that is best for your health and weight loss needs. Therefore, think twice before embracing Dr. Siegal’s cookie diet for weight loss, because a quick fix is never a permanent solution.
