14 DAY TRIAL // One of the hottest fad diets making the rounds right now is the so-called the 5 Bite Diet, which involves exactly what you think it does: you’re allowed to eat 2 meals a day, lunch and dinner, with each of them consisting of nothing more than 5 bites of whatever food you happen to fancy at the moment. Black coffee and a multivitamin are also allowed for breakfast.
Created by Dr. Alwin Lewis after analyzing the diets of patients who had undergone gastric bypass and are actually not able to eat more than a few bites of their meals, the diet promises instant weight loss: as much as 15 pounds (6.8 kg) in the first week by limiting the number of daily calories to about 800.
As Dr. Oz points out on his website, that’s almost half the calories recommended to someone looking to lose weight in a sustainable fashion. The diet, though it might seem like a promising one, is also faulty by its complete ignorance of the importance of nutrition.
In other words, don’t get on the 5 Bite Diet no matter how desperate or eager you are to lose weight. The promise that you’ll be allowed to eat whatever you want (albeit in such small quantities) should not make you forget that nutrition is also important, Dr. Oz underlines.
With this plan, nutrition comes last. Dr. Oz offers the example of a “meal” consisting of 5 bites of pizza: you might feel like you’ve indulged a craving while also keeping the calorie intake in check, but you haven’t really provided your organism with anything healthy.
“Though Dr. Lewis suggests people take a multivitamin and make sure their 10 daily bites includes at least some protein, this is simply not enough to get people all the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients they need to support all the functions that the body needs to perform on a daily basis,” he writes.
“In a healthy, balanced diet, you get calcium, magnesium, fiber, anti-oxidants, fat, omega 3 fatty acids and iron – among many other nutrients. In the five bite diet, you could eat pizza for each meal, and essentially nothing else. You’d be missing out on the vast majority of nutrients that keep you healthy and allow you to feel your best,” Dr. Oz continues.
So the idea with healthy dieting is to do just that: go on a diet that’s healthy. In today’s world, this means a diet that doesn’t promise you overnight results because, really, this is not how things work in real life.
A smart diet implies calorie counting and portion control but also – and this is just as important – paying attention to nutritional facts so that you don’t deprive your body of the nutrients it needs to function properly. And, of course, regular exercise.
Dr. Oz recommends the Mediterranean or the DASH diets as alternatives for this ill-advised 5 Bite plan.