As the name implies, you have to follow this diet for 3 days in a row, and then take a four to five days break before resuming the diet. During this time, you are advised to eat balanced meals, low in saturated fat.

The foods allowed during this diet, besides the tuna fish, are salty crackers, ice-cream, toast, fruit, black coffee and cheese. You must also drink plenty of water. Looking at this list, the contradiction in this diet becomes obvious. Having black coffee for breakfast, followed by ice-cream at another meal, defeats the purpose of reducing sugar at any meal of the day.

Moreover, the diet cannot possibly be sustainable, as satisfying your cravings for sugar and cheese (one of the foods avoided by all diets, except for cottage cheese) won’t help you resist your cravings once the diet has ended.

Of course, the pounds you’ve lost are very likely to redeposit as soon as you finish dieting. This is one of the major risks of short-term dieting, regardless of the diet menu involved. Any short-term diet must be followed by a long-term, balanced eating plan, so you can keep the pounds off and lose weight even further, in a slower, but healthier pace. The tuna diet aims to boost your weight loss, but cannot help you fix the excess fat problem by itself.

Unfortunately, most dieters go back to their previous life style once they end the tuna diet and, inevitably, they accumulate fat again. Not only does this phenomenon follow a low calorie diet, but all other weight loss approaches, such as the bypass surgery or using “miracle” weight loss products.

The 3-day plan

Day 1:

• Morning: serve unsweetened black tea or coffee, or only water. Drink all the juice of a grapefruit or eat one third of the fruit with a slice of toast and 1 tblsp peanut butter.
• Midday: consume only 1 slice of toast, with half a cup tuna. Drink water, black coffee or tea without sugar nor sweeteners.
• Evening: one cup green beans + 1 cup carrots (grated), 2 to 3 ounce of chicken or fish, 1 fresh apple and the usual water, tea or coffee.

Day 2:

• Morning: eat 1 slice of toast with 1 egg, 1 banana and unsweetened coffee, tea or just plain water.
• Midday: like yesterday: 1 cup of tuna (or 1 cup of cottage cheese if you wish), 5 salted crackers and drink the aforementioned unsweetened drinks.
• Evening: 2 hot dogs or 2 frankfurter sausages. 1 cup of grated cabbage or broccoli. 1/2 cup of carrots (grated) and 1/2 cup vanilla icecream without natural sugar.

Day 3:

• Breakfast: drinks as usual, add to that 5 salted crackers, 1 ounce cheddar cheese for some extra vitamins and minerals: eat 1 apple.
• Lunch is extremely little: 1 slice of toast and 1 hard boiled egg, lots of unsweetened drinks.
• Dinner: the cup of tuna will be served now, together with an equal amount of cauliflower, carrots, and melon. Finish it off with 1/2 cup vanilla icecream without sugar and drink the usual

Because of the lack of nutrients diversity in this diet, it is recommended that you stick to the 3 day dietary plan and don’t prolong it. You can take a 4-5-day break and then resume, providing that it helped you lose weight in the first course.

If you manage to avoid going into extremes, then a crash diet might be the perfect solution to your weight problem. The real challenge is to be able to distinguish those certain particular foods that you need to replace with healthy foods, and maintain your daily calorie intake stable.

Good weight loss tips on how to crash diet

Here are some tips that will help you lose weight on a reasonable crash diet:

• Do not cut your calorie intake with more than 20-30% than what your body needs. Women generally need 1500 calories to maintain their weight, while men need 2000. These general estimates depend on the age, weight, gender and daily habits of the individual. A good start would be to count your necessary calorie intake with a calculator you can find online, and then eat 20-30% less calories.
• A crash diet that includes only one apple a day or a 300-calorie daily menu can work for three-four days and it is helpful to jumpstart your weight loss. However, don’t follow such diets in the long run, as they will cause severe nutritional deficiencies.
• Regardless of what various ‘make-your-life-easy’-tips recommend: never buy food for a whole week or month. If you want to follow a healthy, restrictive diet plan, which offers you a minimum intake of calories and a maximum intake of nutrients, then buy fresh food every day. Fresh fruit and vegetables lose nutrients when they are refrigerated or kept in a storage drawer and this defies your purpose in dieting: obtaining the optimum benefits from the foods you eat.
• Set realistic goals. Don’t dream of losing 30 pounds in one week, as this is simply not possible. The human body can only lose about 3 pounds of pure fat a week. Of course, you can lose much more than that, but the rest of the lost weight consists of water.

Crash diets are not meant to be followed in the long run. They will help you to lose some weight (5-15 pounds) in a very short amount of time, and this weight loss will in the first place extremely motivational. However, in the long run you will have to change your dieting plan with a healthy, balanced one, which includes a very small, but steady reduction of the number of calories.

HCG diet phases: Loading, Maintenance and Stabilization

The HCG diet has three phases according to the British endocrinologist:

1. The loading phase, which lasts for 2 days, when the dieter needs to eat as many sweet and greasy foods as possible, so that he creates energy reserves for the restrictive diet to come;

2. The maintenance phase, which has a variable length, depending on the number of excess pounds the individual wants to get rid of. Considering this factor, there are:

• short 21-day HCG programs, for those who want to lose between 5 and 15 pounds,
• 30+-day programs, for individuals who are slightly overweight, and
• 40+-day programs, for the obese.

There is a large variety of HCG weight loss products, such as homeopathic HCG, HCG liquid drops, HCG shots and slimming pills with HCG. The length of each type of program depends on the mechanism of fabrication of the HCG products. Some products contain highly diluted hormone, thus the frequency of administration as well as the duration of the program is slightly longer,
while other products have a higher concentration of hormone, and thereby work faster.

During maintenance, the dieter will start taking HCG and follow a very low calorie diet (VLCD) of only 500 calories a day.

3. The stabilization phase, which lasts for exactly 28 days (4 weeks), is supposed to help the dieter’s body adjust to a normal eating style. In this phase, the dieter will gradually add new foods into his diet, and increase the calorie intake.

Many nutritionists have transformed and adapted Dr. Simeons’ HCG diet, modifying the diet protocol, the means of administration or its phases. For instance, Kevin Trudeau suggests that the dieter can accelerate the weight loss process by following a one-month detoxification diet prior to the loading phase.

Even though the HCG diet program is a source of constant controversy, thousands of people managed to lose weight on HCG products and transform their lives completely. In most cases, the diet causes no side effect and does not encourage the yoyo reaction either.

The best 5 weight loss drinks

1. Ice-cold water

It is extremely good for losing weight and it helps you burn between 200 and 500 calories every day, as your body will consume energy reserves in order to heat the cold beverage up to your normal body temperature. The calories you get rid of this way do sum up in time: in just three days, you will already notice that you lost up to 5 pounds just by drinking ice-cold water.

2. Green tea

Green tea has three types of benefits for weight loss:

• First, it increases the temperature of your body and as such increases the pace at which your body burns fat in a process called thermogenesis.
• Secondly, it helps control your appetite. The nutrients in green tea send signals to your brain and your stomach, decreasing your appetite and the quantity of food your body requires.
• Finally, this beverage stimulates your energy by balancing and synchronizing the processes in your body.

3. Mint tea

Like green tea, mint tea is anther delicious drink with zero calories. Even though many of you already drink mint tea for its chilling effect, this beverage also has benefits in weight loss as it helps to suppress your appetite.

Mint tea is a proven natural remedy: it eases stomach cramps (it is a natural antispasmodic remedy) and helps digestion (preventing indigestion and bloating).

4. Skimmed milk

Besides that this dairy product prevents osteoporosis due to its calcium and vitamin D content (the latter helps with calcium assimilation), skimmed milk prevents the hunger sensation and has very few calories as well (100 ml of skimmed milk has less than 50 calories.)

Unlike the other drinks mentioned above, skimmed milk contains proteins, which is great for people who are exercising to build muscles. If you don’t like the taste of skimmed milk, 100 ml of full milk contains only 60 calories and an equal amount of proteins.

5. Vegetable juice

Serving a glass of vegetable juice 30 minutes before meals, helps decrease your appetite. In addition, vegetable juices contain vitamins and minerals, and have plenty of benefits for your health, which of course depends on the type of vegetable you use to make the juice. Take for instance spinach and tomatoes:

• Spinach juice contains lots of iron and is therefore especially recommended for anemia, convalescence, scurvy (due to vitamin C deficiency), rickets (caused by vitamin D deficiency), nervous and physical fatigue (no wonder the cartoon Popeye eats spinach to strengthen!) and burns. It is also very good for cleansing the entire digestive tract.
• Also rich in iron, tomato juice is highly nutritive, highly energising and a great tonic for people who are under a lot of stress or suffer from nervousness and insomnia. Further on tomatoes help eliminating uric acid and as such are beneficial for people who are on a gout diet. Add to that detoxifying qualities that help with skin problems like acne and abscesses. Tomatoes are very tasty when juiced with celery, apple or carrot juice

How to make tasteful, healthy drinks

For better taste, when preparing tea, use dried leaves instead of tea bags. The tea will have a stronger, more refreshing flavor.

Avoid buying vegetable juice from supermarkets; it will most likely have plenty of food additives, which contain chemicals. If you want a natural drink, prepare the vegetable juice yourself, at home, from fresh vegetables.

The perfect approach to losing weight healthily is neither the burst of physical exercise, nor restrictive diets, but making slight and steady changes in your life style.

How to lose weight the healthy way

The healthiest ways to lose weight include:

• Regular working out. You don’t have to spend endless hours in the gym, only to abandon the exercise project the next month. Even if you’re a busy person, you can still make time for half an hour of physical exercise or you can simply take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk instead of driving, do some housework instead of hiring a cleaning person.
• Keep yourself active constantly. Give up the sedentary life style, especially if you work in an office all day long. Go out with friends after work, go on trips, play soccer, volleyball or other sports with your friends and family, go shopping on foot or simply go for long walks in the evenings.
• Slowly decrease the calorie intake. Don’t make drastic changes regarding the amount of food you consume daily. Your body likes slow changes better. Moreover, if your body is not fed enough, it will slow down and adjust its metabolism accordingly, making sure to create additional fat reserves in order to survive the new, harsh conditions. Consequently, instead of losing weight when following long-term crash diets, you will only manage to either keep your weight constant or lose weight only during the first days of the diet, or even manage to get fatter than before.
• Focus on quality over quantity. Give up eating junk food, processed foods, or those items containing high amounts of food additives. Even if you cannot afford to buy 100% organic foods, you could afford to buy from the organic butcher only 25% of the portion of meat that you would normally add to your meal. Replace ingredients and cooking techniques with healthier alternatives, e.g.:
  • in stead of frying your meals, try boiling or even better: steaming them,
  • replace processed flour and refined sugar with whole-grain flour and (brown) unrefined sugar.

The key to losing weight in a healthy manner is to avoid subjecting your body to further stress. Focus on healthy nutrition and remember that no one knew the healthy eating rules at birth. You can learn any habit in time, and eating healthily is no exception. Learn:

• which foods are healthy,
• what you should avoid,
• how to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy fats and cholesterol,
• how to distinguish between soluble and insoluble fibers.

Once you learned what’s healthy and what’s not, you can start creating your own healthy diet plan adjusted to your taste and lifestyle.

Keep in mind that a “main” meal does not include an oversized ratio: it barely describes the traditional eating schedule – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Another important difference between main meals and snacks is that the former should include all food categories – proteins, carbs, fruit and vegetables -, while the latter may include only one food category.

If you eat whenever you are hungry, you will constantly supply your body with energy, so that your metabolism will constantly function at its maximum capacity. A fast metabolism determines fast digestion, which is one of the main catalysts of weight loss. On the other hand, eating whenever you are hungry does not mean you should eat all the time. Learn to make the difference between eating out of hunger and eating out of boredom or habit.

List of healthy snacks

• Whole grain cereals (instead of processed cereals or cereal bars)
• Fruit (instead of chocolate bars)
• Salad with no dressing
• Raw veggies (instead of fast food)
• Low-fat yogurt (instead of sweet dairy products or fruit yogurt)
• Whole-grain toast (instead of pastry)
• Sunflower or pumpkin seeds (instead of oil popped popcorn or crackers)
• Fresh, homemade fruit juice (instead of sodas)

Remember that healthy snacks must cumulatively meet three conditions:

1. to fill you up,
2. to be rich in nutrients and
3. have few calories.

Try to avoid snacks that are made of more types of foods – such as snack bars or fruit yogurt, as they usually contain more than their basic ingredients, including food additives or salt and spices. While food additives should be avoided during any type of weight loss diet, the latter only increase your appetite. For instance, salt causes sweet cravings.

In the following, we will present you two options of fast weight loss diets: the 5-factor diet and the cabbage soup diet.

The 5-factor diet

It lasts for 7 days and follows 5 principles:

1. Serve 5 meals every day.
2. Follow the 5 criteria for each of these meals.
3. Don’t spend more than 5 minutes preparing a meal, and only use 5 ingredients.
4. Work out 25 minutes a day, for 5 days a week, for 5 weeks in a row.
5. Eat whatever you please in the last day.

The 5 criteria:

1. Only eat quality protein, with low fat.
2. Eat fibers.
3. Drink unsweetened beverages.
4. Only eat healthy fat.
5. Eat carbs with low GI: low Glycemic Index carbohydrates produce only
   small changes in your blood sugar and insulin levels and are found in: wholegrain bread and pasta, bran barley or oats based cereals, doongara and basmati rice (avoid eating potatoes!), fruit and salad vegetables.

This diet comes together with a detailed meals plan, guidelines and suggestions of foods you can serve.

The cabbage soup diet

This diet is extremely famous and successful among many women. Even though it will make you starve, it also gives good results. Considering that it lasts for only 7 days, you should be able to resist the temptation of cheating on the diet.

The diet plan:

You can have as much soup and water as you want. Besides soup, this is what you should eat every day:

• Day 1: Fruit, except for bananas, cranberry juice and unsweetened tea and coffee.
• Day 2: Vegetables in any form – raw, cooked or salads, except for dry beans, sweet corn and peas. A baked potato with butter for dinner.
• Day 3: Combine the first two days, but don’t eat the potato.
• Day 4: Eat maximum 8 bananas and drink as much skimmed milk as you want.
• Day 5: 300-500 g of beef or broiled or baked chicken, and up to 6 fresh tomatoes.
• Day 6: 2-3 beef steaks and vegetables.
• Day 7: Eat as much brown rice as you want, vegetables and unsweetened fruit juices.

Even though the cabbage soup diet includes many foods you can eat in any quantity, it will make you starve more than the 5-factor diet.

Both diets had success among dieters and helped them lose weight. Yet, none of them should be followed more than 7 days, but with a certain break in-between (of at least another 7 days). For long-term weight loss, focus more on combining a healthy life style with a lot of work out.

Consequently, people who manage to lose stomach fat can improve both their appearance and their health. Unfortunately, there is no miracle strategy to lose stomach fat fast. You will need to give it your best and pay attention to every aspect of your life style.

Tips to lose stomach fat fast

• Cardio exercises are the fastest way to lose weight and get rid of belly fat. They include jogging, bicycling, swimming, fast walking, rowing and step aerobics. Even if you’re a busy individual, you can still find at least 20 minutes a day to invest in one of these cardio exercises. Ideally, you should do cardio training for 30-40 minutes each day. On the other hand, avoid physical training that only affects the stomach area – it will not give the results you wish for.
• Monitor your diet closely. Do not overeat under any circumstances. In order to lose weight: a person who does not work out needs to eat less calories than what he or she burns. Considering you work out regularly, a woman shouldn’t eat more than 1300 calories a day and a man must eat less than 1700. However, don’t eat too little either and never go below 1000 calories a day, unless you’re following a short-term diet (2-7 days).
• Manage your stress. High stress levels increase the production of a hormone called cortisol, which is partially responsible for increasing your body weight. The best ways to keep your stress under control are relaxation exercises and, of course, avoiding stressful situations (especially direct conflicts).
• Get enough sleep (minimum 8 hours a night) at regular hours. Don’t go to sleep too late, nor too early and wake up early in the morning. A good night’s rest also decreases the stress level. For a quality sleep, avoid eating late and drinking coffee, green tea or black tea in the afternoon.

The tips above will help you lose weight in less than 7 days. However, they can be applied in the long-term, so that you can keep up your weight loss pace. Not only will respecting these tips help you lose excess pounds, but they will also increase the quality of your life due to their holistic approach. For instance, a cardio workout also decreases your stress levels and a low stress level encourages a good night’s rest.

A liquid type of diet is recommended for detoxification. Added weight loss comes as a direct consequence of eliminating toxins and excess water. In other words: you will only eliminate very little fat. Considering that water retention is also responsible for cellulite and a chubby look, your body shape will change significantly after following this diet.

Principles of liquid diets

• As the name suggests, you are allowed to drink only liquids during the whole diet. No solid food is allowed.
• Each meal should consist of minimum 400 calories, so that your overall daily menu reaches a number of 1200 calories.
• Drink plenty of water every day (8 glasses).
• Drink homemade fruit and vegetable juice, as they offer antioxidants and nutrients.
• Do not work out, as the liquid diet only provides enough energy for you to perform your daily tasks: it cannot support a sustained workout program.
• You can drink one glass of homemade garlic juice, to accelerate digestion and elimination of feces.

What can you eat?

• The clear liquid diet allows as the name indicates liquid foods that are transparent like, bouillon or broth, coffee, tea and clear fruit juice.
• The full liquid diet allows both clear and opaque liquids as well as any drink that has a smooth consistency and find its origin with people that have problems chewing.

Advantages of liquid diets

• They help you lose weight in a short amount of time.
• They eliminate excess water.
• They detoxify your body.
• They are low cost.

Disadvantages of liquid diets

• They might be dangerous for your health, so consult your doctor first.
• They don’t burn high amounts of fat, but mostly eliminate water and toxins.
• Liquid protein diets may cause cardiac arrhythmia: an abnormal rate
  of muscle contractions in your heart.
• Not recommended to diabetics, unless they monitor their blood sugar level constantly.
• They may cause nutrients imbalance.

Conclusion

Take into consideration both pros and cons for these liquid diets. People who suffer from health issues must consult their personal physician before beginning any type of diet. Since the liquid diet offers a low calorie intake, you should follow it for only a few days and then start eating solid food again. Moreover, make sure you consume juices that include a wide range of nutrients and vary your menu as often as possible.

In the video Dr. Susan correctly addresses that the more fibers you add in your diet, the more you body will get rid of LDL cholesterol also known as bad cholesterol (bad, as it contributes to cardiovascular diseases like strokes and heart attacks).

In front of her you see some food items that she is going to recommend to add to your daily diet. You immediately see bananas and other items in a fruit basket. However the first item displayed are deep fried Original Vegetable Chips from the brand Terra… which she accidentally labels as healthy junk foods. She quickly stumbles that actually it isn’t junk food but that it is really healthy for you.

Lets show some nutritional values of 1 serving of the food items Dr. Susan is talking about (thanks to http://caloriecount.about.com):

• Terra Original Vegetable Chips : 28 gram has 3.0g of fiber (and 0.5g saturated fats!)
• 1 banana of about 118 grams has 3.1g of fiber
• 1 cup chopped carrots of 128 grams has 3.6g of fiber
• 1 golden delicious apple of 102 grams has 5.1g or fiber

As you notice, the doctor ordered the food from low to high fiber content, with her so called healthy fast food having the lowest amount of fibers per serving.

Also be aware that when the doctor says you need to eat white rice in stead of brown rice, make sure to look for products that are labeled with "whole grain". Again always read the labels: as the food industry does fool you by adding brown colorants in order for you to believe you are not eating unhealthy white food.

For those who love to eat bread but have troubles reading the small print: take 2 different breads of the same size: the heavier of the 2 most likely contains more fibers. Better still: buy whole grains and a breadmaker, so you know exactly what goes into your daily dose of bread.

When you really need to snack on something that resembles crunchy junk food, try healthy air popped popcorn: 3 cups air popped popcorn of about 24 gram has 3.5g of fiber. A healthy daily intake of fibers ranges between 25 and 30 grams.