The 17 Day Diet
The 17 Day Diet
“We’ve all pledged, promised and bullied ourselves to eat better and exercise more, but so many times even the best intentions fall short. I incorporate healthy habits into my work and home life and you can too.” –Dr. Mike Moreno If you need to shed pounds fast and in a safe, effective, and lasting way, this is the book for you! Unlike many diet programs that starve you down to size, Dr. Mike Moreno’s 17 Day Diet relies on proven methods to help you take weight off and keep it off for good—whether you’ve got 10 pounds to lose or 100. His revolutionary program adjusts your body metabolically so that you burn fat day in and day out. The program is structured around four 17 day cycles:Accelerate—the rapid weight loss portion th
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Good plan for most people,
After seeing 2 of my co-workers have great success with this diet, I finally decided to do it myself since I never lost the baby weight from having my 2nd child. So I played it safe and bought this book with a few other weight loss books so I could mix and match the information to suit me just in case 1 of the diets was too hard for me to stick to.
Right now I’m midway through the 2nd cycle, but at the end of the 1st 17 day cycle, I lost a total of 13 pounds. I did some tinkering around with some of the other diet information I learned however, so I didn’t do this strictly by the book.
The 17 day diet is a branch off of low carb diets. The first of 4 different 17 day cycles is the hardest and requires you to eat a lot of chicken, turkey, fish, and vegetables. So if you’re a picky eater and like to eat a lot of different things, this may not be the diet for you.
Because of the lack of carbs, I had a headache, a bit of brain fog, and was more tired than normal for the first 2 days on the diet. But after tinkering a bit, my body adjusted and I was fine after that. You’ll also add back the carbs in the other 3 cycles so don’t worry if you’re a big carb addict with a sweet tooth or in need of starchy foods.
Learn to like green tea. I wasn’t into it before this diet, but I’ve gotten used to it. No big deal. You have to get away from sodas and diet sodas. Sodas are loaded with useless, empty calories and diet sodas have aspartame in them.
Also on carbs, you’ll end up eating most of your carbs in the morning, which is great advice.
For exercise, the 17 minutes of walking each day is sound advice for people who never exercise, but for me it wasn’t enough. I did it (actually I did 30+ minute walks) after dinner, but I also followed the home exercises from The 5-Second Flat Belly Secret – Lose 2-3 Inches from Your Belly in Less Than 1 Month I could speed up my weight loss.
Supplements and buying expensive special foods… none of that type of stuff in this book as opposed to most other diet books. So that’s a big plus and saves money.
If you’re someone who needs a simple plan to follow and you have some discipline, then this book will work well for you. I give it 4 stars and not 5 because it’s still a diet and there are restrictions and because I think the Kindle version could be cheaper. It’s not a perfect diet and it’s definitely not a fit for everyone. But for most people, it should be fine.
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|A Guide, Not a Cure,
All diet books cater to these notions: you’ll lose weight fast, it’ll be easy, and only THIS diet book has the proper secrets to success. The 17 Day Diet fits those criteria.
The difference between a quality diet book and a scam is that some leave the reader properly informed about the foods that make us thrive and have a normal body weight (South Beach Diet, Zone Diet, 17 Day Diet), and some are based on fantasy premises, such as that your blood type makes a difference, your ethnic background makes a significant difference, or your astrological sign makes a difference. The 17 Day Diet is a quality diet book.
The keys to sustained weight loss (30 lbs. or more, maintained for longer than TWO YEARS, not six months, or one year) are established by good research. You don’t need to buy a book to accomplish the requirements: proper diet, and physical activity. I’m a family physician that lost more than 30 lbs. 16 years ago, and have kept it off. I did it by following the research based information noted long ago in a Scientific American article. And I’ll give you the info for free in two parts:
Food: Eat fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat and fish. Stay away from the white stuff (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, sugar). Even more simply put by Michael Pollan in his books: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.
Exercise: Here’s the rough part: people that have lost 30 lbs. and kept it off for more than two years AVERAGE an hour of physical activity per day. Lots of ways to get this done, often creativity is required. I have patients that are long-haul truckers and traveling salesmen that, against formidable odds, are thin and healthy. They have found ways to get this one hour of activity in (often by splitting it into smaller intervals several times/day). I had to begin riding my bicycle to work every day (45 minutes each way). I do it year round (even have studded snow tires for my commuter bike). You can find a way. Don’t use weather as an excuse to skip your activity. There is no such thing as bad weather, there are only improperly dressed people, say the Scandinavians. I’m Irish, but I believe them.
There you have it. Where does this leave 17 Day Diet? IGNORE the wonderful testimonies posted by Amazon readers regarding their weight loss. Come ON….you’ve heard all this stuff before, with each diet book that has come out, with each diet that you’ve tried. Write these folks claiming marvelous success back in two years, and you’ll find that the only ones that have succceeded are the ones that have adopted what I suggest above.
Bottom line: The 17 Day Diet is one of the “good” diet books, because Dr. Mike provides excellent nutritional advice, and insists that you stay active. His particular hook, his innovation, is that you keep the body’s metabolism “off balance” by shifting back and forth between metabolic food groups. None of which contain baloney, though the advice is. Try the book, stick to it, you WILL lose weight. Stick to it for two years, and you’ll keep the weight off. Why? Not because of any diet secret here, not because of keeping the metabolism “off balance”, but because if you follow Dr. Mike’s advice, you’ll be eating fresh fruit and vegetables, lean meat and fish, dramatically reducing the “white stuff” in your diet, and exercising regularly.
The 17 Day Diet is also distinguished by the upbeat and friendly tone of the author. Any doctor that goes out on a walk with his patients twice a week (as Dr. Mike does) is quite literally walking his talk. Kudos to the author!
One last note: the author does refer, somewhat obliquely, to a relatively new hot topic in weight loss medicine. The type of bacteria that colonize your gut MAY affect your ability to lose weight. The author recommends probiotics to shift your intestinal flora. Current research is more suggestive that when you eat a healthy diet, your gut flora evolves to deal with healthy foods, whereas junk foods encourage intestinal flora that promote obesity. In other words, if you want healthy gut bacteria, eat right, as opposed to taking probiotics. This research is intriguing, but preliminary, and not established.
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|Plan You Can Do for Life,
I have been on more diets than I can count and was still morbidly obese. I couldn’t even lose on a so called “healthy” plan like the Mediterranean diet, which included whole grains. This one works. I have lost 30lbs. in 2 1/2 months. More importantly, despite having Fibromyalgia, I feel better than I have in years. I lost 3 inches each from bust, waist and hips (probably more, but I didn’t measure myself when I started). The first 4 days I had “detox” symptoms such as headache, extreme fatigue and even more muscle pain than usual. After I had cleansed all the toxins from my system from processed foods; I had no cravings, no hunger, and more energy. I have been through the first 3 cycles and am now on the 2nd round.
Don’t believe those reviews from dieticians who say this is a “fad” diet. It is a “fad” only in the sense that it is getting a lot of attention and has gone viral. I can tell by reading those reviews that the dieticians haven’t even read the book. There are no special foods to buy. You are not permanently eliminating any food group. The first cycle of 17 days is a cleansing cycle, but this is not a low carb diet. It’s more of an unprocessed, low sugar, low glycemic index, low fat, food plan. You gradually add starches back in.
An interesting thing happened when I added whole wheat back in during the 3rd 17 day cycle. I discovered that I had an undiagnosed gluten sensitivity. No wonder I couldn’t lose weight eating “healthy” whole grains! I also found that my taste buds have changed. I choose to eat healthy, whole, unprocessed foods. I never ate fruit or yogurt before. Now I look forward to making a smoothie every day, with the recommended Greek yogurt and fruit. The first time I added back in a yam during the 2nd cycle I couldn’t believe how wonderfully sweet it tasted without any added salt or fat on top – just a plain yam.
I can’t say enough about this diet plan. When I lose all the weight I need to, I can see myself on cycle 4, the maintenance plan for the rest of my life. Let me repeat – it’s not a fad diet but a healthy way to eat and lose weight in the process. It works.
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