The alternate day diet

In July 2009, I was asked by Bella magazine to comment on 3 ‘fad/mad’ diets – are they really mad, or are any of them OK? The 3 diets were:

1) the Hollywood cookie diet- eat 4 calorie counted, expensive, cookies a day and not much else;

2) the ‘caveman’ diet – eat meat, fish, berries & nuts and no modern foods;

3) the alternate day diet. This was described as eat whatever you want every other day and virtually nothing for the day inbetween.

You can imagine my response!

1) = too low calorie, full of sugar/wheat/crap – don’t go near it!

2) = jolly good idea – you will lose lots of weight and feel a bit rubbish short term (caffeine/sugar withdrawal and Candida die-off) and then probably feel better than you have done for ages.

3) I actually replied “I used to do the alternate day diet – only it was called bulimia back then”! (I think they printed that one!)

Imagine my surprise therefore when this diet was all over the UK press w/c 23/11/09! I found out a bit more about the diet, from the newspaper articles, but I still stand by my Bella comment. This diet is all about having good days and bad days! I know all about those – I just don’t have them any more! 500 calories a day on the ‘good’ days (that’s my breakfast porridge and then nothing more for 24 hours) and then “you can eat as much as you want on the alternate days but don’t binge.” Sorry – but when I had an eating disorder, there was no difference between eating as much as I wanted and bingeing!

No surprise that the ‘brains’ behind this diet is an American neuroscientist who has been playing with rats in labs for the past few years. (Dr Mark Mattson). Dr Mark (probably a really nice guy) needs to get out more and meet a few food addicts!

Even funnier was that the British Dietetic Spokesperson – Catherine Collins (Registered Dietician) – who thought this was a good diet. “It sounds absolutely fine” she says. “It would certainly make it easier to stick to a weight loss programme” How so?! Are dieticians really the people we are supposed to turn to to solve this obesity epidemic?!