Insight Into 3MD Weight Loss Program
In the last couple of years, the so-called 3MD diet is gaining popularity. This diet is also known as the 90-day separation diet. It is based on two 90 days’ dieting periods. The main advantages of this diet should be; clear and easy-to-follow rules and proven results (weight loss in the range of 40 – 55 pounds). Among other results that the 3MD diet promises are decreased sensibility to weather and positive changes in metabolism.
Even though many people find it easy to believe those statements, there is no in-depth explanation in medical or physical terms, of how should this diet in fact work. Furthermore, after this 3MD diet is ended, weight gains are returning. Changing from the 3MD diet to our previous nutrition patterns makes people gain weight again. 3MD dieting success is built upon the following presumptions:
– We are all subject to a daily nutrition cycle (does not explain what that is).
– We need the right combination of foods – following exact rules defined for each day (protein day, carbohydrate day, starch day, fruit day), and every 29th day there is a so-called “water day” or fasting day.
Following those two presumptions, one should lose weight regardless of how many calories one takes in daily. Menus prescribed by inventors of the 3MD diet are quite strict “2 oranges”, “3 pieces of cake”,” smaller chicken”, “dinner is ½ of lunch”,…but not mentioning what kind of cake, how big a piece should be, which parts of a chicken, how “carb-rich” lunch, nothing about the caloric value of foods one should eat.
Many additional rules accompany this diet. There is some healthy advice among them: how one should use olive oil, restriction on salt, and advice to consult a doctor. Exercise, which is the cornerstone of each serious diet in the world, deserved just an obscure mention, not even close to what one should do to lose weight for real. This sad fact makes the 3MD diet even more popular with overweight people. Those people become caught in a deadlock of repetitive weight gains after completing this diet. Furthermore, this diet does not explain whatsoever the principles of its effectiveness.
Why is separating foods according to specific days and separating nutrients so important?
How exactly will this make us lose fat?
The daily separation cycle according to 3MD consists of a strict diet from 8 pm to midday the next day. Within this period only eating fruits and drinking water is allowed. This does not make any sense. Those 16 hours represent 2/3 of the whole day. And one should not starve their body for 16 hours each day. Each body that undergoes such a daily fasting period becomes more sensitive to energy accumulation from each bite we take. Messages our body reports to our brains are to lower energy consumption and leverage the lack of energy with draining energy stored in muscles. We force our body to start dissolving our muscle mass. That is no good news.
Muscles, when in motion, are our body’s major energy (fat) burner. So we are weakening the only “tool” that can help us get rid of fat.
3MD does not give any explanation on why should we eat carbohydrates on one day and proteins on the other. The problem is that “fruit” day and “starch” day are also “carbohydrate” days. Sugar in fruits and complex sugar in starch are just two different sorts of the same thing – carbohydrates. Even if we somehow can understand fruit day (healthy sugar), it is hard to make sense of the separation between “starch” day and “carbohydrate” day (complex, refined sugars). And there is a rule where one can take whole-wheat bread together with chicken, which contradicts every sane weight loss program (one should not mix proteins (chicken) with carbohydrates (bread)).
3MD diet does work in the short run. But the weight loss is a consequence of water that our body loses with this diet. 3MD is extremely popular as it does not prohibit eating calorie bombs like chocolate. The other short-term positive effect of this diet is that it does somehow regulate daily eating habits. People are disciplined by force. That makes it much easier to fall back into old eating patterns as soon as 90 days are over.