The Scarsdale Diet

The Scarsdale Diet as a fat burning food diet causes the medical community generally to cringe because of it's two week crash weight loss period where less than 1,000 calories a day are consumed.

If you've decided to try the Scarsdale Diet, or you are already on it and have been losing weight, you may want to consider weighing up whether this diet is really for you.

Tarnower (the cardiologist who developed the diet) himself, does not recommend staying on his diet for any longer than two weeks. Unfortunately, this type of diet is what causes yo-yo weight loss and gain, because it is so restrictive during the two week crash diet period.

Tarnower recommends a low fat, low carbohydrate and high protein diet for the two weeks of dieting and then much the same during weight maintenance.

The Diet Pros:

Recommends expending 300 calories a day in exercise;
Recommends fat free eating habits;
No calorie counting or food weighing - still exclusively to the meal plans prepared;
Some food flexibility is allowed in the maintenance phase of the diet;
Rapid weight loss during the first two weeks;
Recommends drinking lots of water - which of course cleans you out, helps hydrate your body and increases your metabolism.

Diet Cons:

Causing the body to yo-yo in it's weight loss and gain because of the sudden and fast weight loss period; Weight goals are very hard to maintain;
Nutritional gaps in the diet mean that the body loses out on valuable nutrients;
Inflexible meal plans;
Can cause dehydration and bad breath due to minimal carbohydrate consumption;
Recommends lots of coffee drinking, as well as nutritional supplements and stimulants to increase the amount weight lost;
Requires 43% of your daily intake to be from protein, which is more than double the amount of recommended intake by nutritionists.

References:

The Diet Advisor (2000) Time Life Books

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