Dr. Bernstein Diet... Bad?

All low calorie diets/anything that involved "supplements" or "magic pills" are fad diets that 9 times out of 10 do not lead to healthy, sustainable weight loss.

When it comes down to it, they don't teach what you need to know to maintain a healthy weight: how to make the right food choices, listen to your body, and get the balance between food and exercise correct.

People go on these fad diets, lose a bunch of weight, end the diet, and then return to their old eating habits and gain all the weight back plus more.

That, or they lose the weight, become fearful of coming off the diet, and end up continuously eating an unhealthily low amount of calories for an extended period of time; you'd be surprised how many people develop eating disorders from these so-called miracle diets.

When it comes down to it, 900 calories a day is starving yourself.

If a 105lb woman was eating 900 calories a day, everybody would say she has an eating disorder, because that's what it is; a disordered way of eating. Attaching a doctor's name to it and calling it a 'diet' doesn't make it any less disordered or unhealthy.

I hate this whole notion that society and 'miracle diets' have that it's okay to essentially starve your body if you're overweight. If a 250lb woman eats very little, she's on a crash diet; if a 100lb woman eats very little, she has a serious problem.

These so-called diets feed off of peoples desire to lose weight fast; and lose weight fast you will, only to find it again a few months later.

I would try and convince her that that diet is the wrong way to go about losing weight. There is no miracle cure, fad diet, magic pill or anything else that will reward you with long-lasting, healthy weight loss. The only "magic pill" there is is good old fashioned healthy eating and exercise. Yes, it may take longer, but it will be far more maintainable, and more importantly, much healthier.

I heard an expert once describe what happens to people who do extreme diets like Bernstein when they go back to eating "normally" or back to they way they ate before the diet (which was usually not very healthy).

He said something like the reason they gain weight back so rapidly is that the fat cells just can't wait to be fed and because they were so deprived they hold on to every morsel. This also happens to people who have lost weight slowly but the regain is much less rapid.

I'll tell you this - a co-worker went on Bernstein at the same time I started MFP in Feb 2010. She lost over 40 lbs in about 4 months, but by the time I had lost 50 lbs using MFP (about 14 months) she had already gained back all of those 40 lbs. Here we are over 2 years later and I've only gained back 2 lbs; she's gained an extra 25. The only permanent loss she was was thousands of dollars!

I also heard Dr. Bernstein on a "Talk to the Experts" radio show that airs in my city. A caller, who was a client of Bernstein and was doing the diet at the time, was concerned because he hair was falling out in clumps. His ridiculous answer was that she was growing so much new hair by being on the "healthy" Bernstein diet program that the new hair was pushing the old hair out. Talk about ridiculous!!!

When it comes down to it, she has to make her own choices, good and bad, and if she's really set on doing this diet, she's probably going to do it and then discover a little bit down the line that you were, in fact, right.

If you've given her all the advice and she's still determined, there's not much else you can do. The only plus side of these fad diets is that people often fail to stick to them, because the starvation gets too much to handle, on the body and on the mind.

As for the "kick-starting" - it'll be more detrimental because she'll just slow down her metabolism. Which means once she comes off the diet, in order to lose weight she'll still have to be eating a monumentally small amount.

I used to have an eating disorder as a young teenager, ate around 400 - 800 calories a day, dropped from 180lbs to under 105 in around 6 - 7 months. While recovering, I was eating 1500 calories a day, and that made me gain weight, and fast, because my metabolism was so shot to hell from eating so little. In the end I almost ended up the size I was to begin with. It's taken me a long, long time to get my metabolism back to normal, and even now I'm a pretty sickly person because of it. It's why it disgusts me when I see these supposed "doctors" promoting these diets that are essentially the same eating habits I had when I had a severe eating disorder. At my heaviest, it was 'acceptable' for me to eat that way, but the moment I started getting skinny suddenly my eating habits were 'unhealthy'; which was bull****, because they'd ALWAYS been unhealthy. It's just another form of sizeism; it doesn't matter if you're doing serious damage to your body with your eating habits if you're overweight, but if you're thin, jesus christ, stop that.

She'll regret it a few months down the line, but she's got the make her own decisions. All you can do is try your best to discourage her and hope she realises it's not the right way to go about it soon.

I actually had a chance to work for one of the clinics but I decided against it because I can't work for an organization that promotes, and greatly profits from, starvation diets. I have also heard very negative things about the staff such as how they are encouraged to report any patient who overeats on their plan and they frequently belittle patients both to their face and behind their back. I believe people have been kicked out of the program for eating a little more than the starvation diet dictates. It seems like a sad situation all around!

My mom did it for a bit they give you "injections" 3 times a week. From what she told me it's essentially needles into your fat... at least that is what I grasped from it.

Sadly, I bought into it and have been on it twice. The last time was about 5 years ago and since that experience, I swore to never do anything like it again. Sure, I lost 30lbs quickly but it's not something that can be maintained and as soon as I introduced carbs back into my diet, I gained it all back within a few months. It's a waste of money and I never had energy (I was only consuming about 800 calories/day). I would not recommend it.

Medically supervised starvation.