Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet

Does it sound great? Yes. Does it taste better than what you had for dinner last night? Probably. Is it effective for long-term fat loss? Probably not.

Dr. Sanford Siegal created a diet in 1975 to address his patients need a for permanent weight loss solution. The premise is that eating 6 small cookies during the day and then having a dinner consisting of 6 ounces of chicken or fish with a cup of vegetables is the optimal way to lose weight. He claims to have helped more than 500,000 people lose weight on his program.

While his claims may or may not be true, there has been no study on how many of these individuals have actually kept their weight off once they started eating real food again. His diet calls for strict adhesion to the prescribed food which amounts to a total of roughly 800 calories per day. This is far too low for the average person and is simply not conducive to long-term fat loss. Of course, almost anyone will lose weight on such a low calorie diet. You could eat 800 calories worth of Oreo cookies and lose weight as well.

Dr. Siegal also does not offer any clear exercise guidelines to go along with his diet. Obviously, following an exercise program while attempting to lose weight is extremely important. However, if you are only eating 800 calories per day and burning additional calories through exercising, how much energy are you going to have left for daily activities?

As you can tell, I am not a fan of very low calorie diets or Dr. Siegal’s plan either. It will help you lose weight initially but you should be trying to lose body fat, not body weight. If you decide to try it however, consider purchasing a small allotment of cookies because if you don’t like the taste you are out of luck due to his no refund policy.