Diet Cookies By Dr. Siegel

Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet is popular with Hollywood celebrities and has been featured in hundreds of news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and ABC-TV's Good Morning America. The Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet website claims that Dr. Siegal has helped over half a million dieters lose weight on his program, which features specially-formulated cookies and supplements. Although considered a crash diet by many nutritionists, with questionable long-term benefits, it may help jump-start your weight loss program.

Identification

Dr. Sanford Siegal created his cookie diet in 1975 to help his overweight patients, claiming they could lose up to 15 lbs. a month. Up until 2002, the program was only available from doctors. In 2006, he opened the program to include diet center franchises, and in 2007, Siegal created an online store and also began partnering with chain drug stores to sell his products.

The Program

The patients in Dr. Siegal's practice first undergo a medical history and get an EKG and various lab tests. These tests determine whether you need thyroid medication and appetite suppressant drugs before you are placed on the cookie diet program. If you try the program by purchasing the products from a store or over the Internet, you won't be provided those introductory tests. The diet itself involves consuming 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day. Under the original "classic" plan you eat six 90-calorie cookies a day whenever hunger strikes. Under the Plan 10X, added in 2011, you eat nine, 60-calorie cookies a day on a fixed schedule of 1 or 2 cookies every two hours to avoid hunger. With both plans, you also consume one normal 500 to 700-calorie meal each day.

Ingredients

The diet cookies in the classic program contain water, glycerin, whole wheat flour, oats, crisp rice, brown sugar and Dr. Siegal's proprietary blend of amino acid proteins from beef, eggs and dairy. The cookies in Plan 10X are Kosher and vegetarian and also cost less. They still use a protein blend, as well as various high-fiber whole grains. Dr. Siegal also has diet shakes that you can add to the program; these contain milk, malodextrin, corn syrup solids, beef protein, eggs, soybean oil, acesulfame K, cellulose and carragenan.

Considerations

MayoClinic.com notes that any diet of 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day will cause weight loss, but it may be difficult obtain complete nutrition, as well as difficult to maintain, which can result in a regain of the lost pounds. Although Dr. Siegal counters this with a maintenance plan that encourages exercise and healthy eating, he admits in his 2009 book "Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet" that not every person who reaches a normal weight on the diet keeps it off, and many gain it back.

Expert Insight

A study published in November 2008 in "Obesity" indicates that subjects who used a very low calorie diet regained significantly more weight than those on higher-calorie diets. A study published in the "Journal of Neuroscience" in December 2010 indicates that severe caloric restriction and resulting weight loss in mice caused stress in certain brain regions that prompted binge eating after the diet ended. Researchers suggested that management of stress during dieting may be helpful in preventing weight regain.