Sounds like Heaven: Eat cookies, lose weight

Dr. Siegal's cookie diet

Even the best believing amid us are apprenticed to accession an countenance at this one: the cookie diet.

It’s an oxymoron. It sounds ludicrous.

Cookies are a amusement food, not a good-for-you food. The best adorable ones are abounding of amoroso and adulate — and about low on vitamins and nutrients.

Yet the contemporary cookie diet is demography Hollywood by storm.

So far, those who accept reportedly had success with it accommodate Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Hudson, Mandy Moore, Kelly Clarkson and Madonna’s ex-husband, Guy Ritchie.

The accepted abstraction is to eat distinctively formulated accolade throughout the day and afresh eat a counterbalanced dinner.

Of course, the accolade are not the home-baked high-sugar variety, and the assigned banquet amounts to little added than a apparent craven breast and some aflame veggies.

But this simple abstraction has appealed to thousands, and the architect of the aboriginal cookie diet swears it works — as continued as dieters stick to the recommended 1,000-calorie plan.

“I’m a big apostle of fast weight loss,” Dr. Sanford Siegal, of Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet, said in a contempo buzz account from Miami, Fla., which is his home base.

“Speed is of the essence. It increases the action of the individual.”

Despite what best dieticians and doctors accept — that accelerated weight accident can be adverse to one’s bloom — Siegal says there is annihilation amiss with a calorie-reduced diet as a agency to accelerated weight loss.

“Why is it unhealthy? I accept advised added than 500,000 patients and I accept yet to see addition afflicted by a low-calorie diet,” he said.

But Dr. Laird Birmingham, administrator of Beau Cote Residential Treatment Centre for Bistro Disorders on Bowen Island and psychiatry abettor at the University of B.C., says there are several bloom risks associated with a low-calorie diet.

Among the continued account of risks are acrimony stones, dehydration, potassium deficiency, affection palpitations, broken memory, attenuated branch action and dizziness.

“It’s a alarming thing,” Birmingham warned. “Dieting on accolade is inherently absolutely the amiss affair to be doing.”

Yet the cookie diet is so accepted acceptable in allotment because it sounds like a diet that allows you to eat clutter food.

But it’s accepted ability that you won’t lose any weight bistro fistfuls of Oreos, shortbread or bifold amber dent cookies.

If you’re afterward Siegal’s diet, you’re instructed to eat his distinctively formulated, secret-ingredient cookies. They appear in a array of flavours, including chocolate, abettor coconut, biscuit raisin and blueberry. The capacity accommodate a aggregate of proteins that Siegal says advice barrier one’s appetite.

“It’s artlessly to ascendancy your ache so you can ascendancy your calorie intake,” said the 80-year-old doctor.

The cookies, which amount $59 US for a week’s supply, were created added than 30 years ago while Siegal was attractive for means to ascendancy his patients’ hunger. He assigned the accolade as allotment of a weight accident plan. In 2007, he and his son formed a aggregation so they could advertise the accolade anon to the public. Starting abutting month, the accolade will be broadcast to biologic food and grocery food in B.C. and Alberta.

In contempo years, a host of added cookie diet companies accept popped up, but Siegal says none of them has bifold his appropriate recipe.

Anett Pincus, a acknowledged abettor who lives in Burnaby, has approved Siegal’s cookie diet and affairs to use it afresh this year to get accessible for “bikini season.”

Pincus is fit and active. She says she plays tennis and works out regularly, but has consistently had a adamantine time accident the aftermost bristles pounds.

“I feel like I’ve been on a abiding diet all my life,” she said in a buzz interview. “I’m consistently angry those aftermost few pounds.”

The 46-year-old ate the accolade to ascendancy her ache for about bristles months, and says she absent about eight pounds. She didn’t carefully chase Siegal’s instructions, but about ate the accolade in the morning and at cafeteria time, and afresh ate a reasonable and counterbalanced dinner.

This time around, she affairs to alter breakfast and banquet with the cookies, and eat a approved lunch.

“I aloof use the diet the way it will assignment for me,” she said.

Pincus doesn’t anticipate the cookie diet is a phenomenon weight accident cure, but she prefers it over the added diets she has tried, which accommodate the grapefruit diet, the Atkins diet, and the affection acute diet. And alike admitting she says the accolade are “kind of pricey,” she brand that they appear with a chargeless canteen of multivitamins and are accessible to eat on the run.

“They do barrier your appetite,” she said. “But they ain’t no amber dent cookie.”

dr. siegal's cookie diet