by Catherine Boudreau

Created on: May 20, 2010

The 3 day diet is a diet that proposes eating a specific meal plan consisting of 3 meals a day for 3 days. Foods range from eggs, bananas, ice cream, crackers, cheese, carrots, apples and other foods. Some minor substitutions are allowed but in general you must eat exactly what is on the list and in quantities mentioned for the diet to work. Many dieters report weight lost from a few pounds to 12 pounds or more after 3 days.

The average 175 pound individual with a sedentary lifestyle will burn around 2500 to 2750 calories daily. These calories are used to move around, digestion, body regulation, eating, driving to work, sleep and all other minimal daily activities. A person exercising will burn more calories daily than what is mentioned above. The scientific community agrees that 3500 calories amount to 1 pound. So to lose one pound of fat your body must burn 3500 calories. Most diets revolve around calorie counting, they estimate your daily calorie expenditure and subtract calories consumed to produce a deficit value for a given day. Every time a deficit of 3500 calories is achieved a pound of weight is lost.

Let’s go back to the 3 Day diet debate, let’s assume that an individual is fairly inactive and in the 3 days burns a total of 7500 calories and ate a total of 4000 calories. This would produce a deficit of 3500 which amounts to only 1 pound of weight loss. If the individual weighs more or is active the deficit will be greater. The question is how does a person lose 3 or even 12 pounds?

The answer is simple, the weight loss is not fat but actually water. Carbohydrates constitute the majority of calories in a typical diet and are used as the primary fuel source for energy metabolism. A low carbohydrate diet promotes water loss because the metabolism of consumed carbohydrates and the ones store in the body produce water. The initial weight loss on low carbohydrate diets such as the 3 day diet comes from loss of water and lean muscle tissue. Not many people realise this but 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram and 1 kilogram is 2.2 pounds. It is very easy for a person to be tricked into thinking that they lost a lot a weight in a few days but in fact they lost mainly water weight.

The 3 day diet does indeed make you lose weight if you weight yourself on scale before and after your diet you will see a difference. What you need to distinguish is between loss of water weight, loss of lean muscle mass and fat loss. You will be losing primarily water, then lean muscle and then fat. This is probably not the ideal solution for weight loss and you will gain the majority of the weight back once you start eating carbohydrates again. It is important to consult a doctor or a nutritionist before starting any extreme diet plan.

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