'The 3-Hour Diet' Is Nothing New Under The Sun

Is THIS really the next weight loss fad to sweep America?

Contra Costa Times published a reprint of a New York Times article detailing the alleged latest and greatest diet book to hit bookstore shelves this year and one that is expected to be, according to the publisher, the bestselling diet book in 2005. Oh really. I can't wait to hear why.

It's entitled "The 3-Hour Diet" (now with a title like that, it sounds like this diet is just another "fad" waiting to happen!) by a San Diego-based fitness freak named Jorge Cruise. His "8 Minutes In The Morning" workout books have been moderately successful and allowed him to appear in the media many times over the past few years.

Interestingly, the subtitle of Cruise's book caught my attention much more than the title -- "How Low-Carb Diets Make You Fat and Timing Makes You Thin."

Okay, so Cruise is yet another anti-Atkins mouthpiece, but he's come up with some kind of eating plan regarding "timing" that makes people lose weight. I was somewhat intrigued to see where he was going with this, so I decided to look into this "diet" he was recommending that was supposedly so much better than livin' la vida low-carb.

Basically, Cruise says people can still eat carbs, fat and sugar and lose weight on his diet. The so-called secret to the diet is protecting the body against starvation by eating a light to moderate amount of food every three hours.

Sound familiar? You got it, that's exactly what Dr. Atkins recommended people who follow his plan to do. In fact, eating often is encouraged strongly as part of a low-carb lifestyle. It keeps your body satisfied and you never get hungry.

If you allow your body to go several hours without eating anything, then it will start storing up body fat to protect itself from starvation. Cruise's answer to this is for people to eat every three hours. Yet, he also recommends they eat less than 1500 calories a day in multiple small-portioned meals of various ingredients and proclaims this way of eating will help them lose 2 pounds per week. No doubt. He even offers his readers a journal in his book to keep track of their calories while doing his diet.

Does this new "hot diet" sound like something you may have tried before? Do we REALLY need ANOTHER low-calorie/low-fat diet book telling us we are doomed to eat nasty rabbit food or limited portions of our favorite foods just to lose and maintain weight loss? This concept is NOTHING new under the sun and looks strikingly like the portion-controlled concept Weight Watchers has used for many years.

At a whopping $25.00, "The 3-Hour Diet" book is a huge ripoff for people looking for a lasting way to weight loss and improved health. Cruise has not really come up with anything that most of us haven't heard before many times while dieting. His publisher and he are hoping the hype and buzz about the book will make it fly off the shelves. And it probably will.

But here is what a New York nutritionist named Mindy Hermann said about Cruise's diet and how it's no different that what's been out there for years.

"In the end, it's all about calorie control for all diets; it's just the path that the person can take to get to calorie control that varies," she said. "There's always a promise, always a hook or a gimmick. There's got to be some way to lure some person in."

She makes a good point that most diet books out there make "a promise ... hook or a gimmick" to get people to buy them. However, I strongly disagree with Hermann's assumption that less calories automatically equates into weight loss.

I probably ate MORE calories than I ever have as I was losing 180 pounds on Atkins. While calorie control is absolutely necessary for every other diet out there because they are mostly based on portion-size and calorie intake, Atkins did not have these restrictions on calories, fat or portions. Eventually, though, as your body begins to get smaller and smaller, you find that you don't need as much food as you used to eat. The body automatically adjusts to your smaller size and your food intake follows suit. That's why a low-carb lifestyle works and all of these other methods failed for me in the past.

If this is the next big thing in weight loss, then I would HIGHLY recommend you go back to what is considered the Bible of real lasting weight loss -- "Atkins New Diet Revolution."

Don't be fooled by the slick marketing campaign being given to Cruise's book just because he's a nice-looking, tanned spokesman for a low-calorie/low-fat lifestyle. Neither he nor his publisher have your good health in mind with this book. They only hope to line their own pockets with gobs and gobs of money by joining the "anything but low-carb" line of attack that is so prevalent in the media today.

One final thought. Isn't it interesting that of all the weight loss plans out there, Cruise chose to mention "low-carb" by name in the title of his book? Hmmmm. Me thinks he knows it works and is trying to lure obese and overweight people away from the success they would have on low-carb. It won't happen if you don't fall for it!