Yes, the Military Diet works!
You can expect results with this diet. There’s a few reasons why the Military Diet works… And it’s not because the diet was designed by top secret nutritionists in a US military laboratory to get soldiers into tip top shape. But you will get results on the Military Diet if you follow the diet.
WHY the Military Diet works:
The Military Diet is low calorie:
The average woman burns about 1800 calories a day, before going to the gym or doing any other form of exercise. The Military Diet averages out to about 1000-1200 calories a day, so you’re going to lose weight if you follow it. A pound of fat is made of 3500 calories. To gain a pound of fat, you have to eat 3500 more calories than you burn. And to lose a pound of fat, you need to burn 3500 more calories than you eat. The Military Diet is designed to burn calories because you eat less than you burn for three days a week.
Source: Use the Calorie Burn Rate Calculator from the University of Rochester Medical Center
The second reason why the Military Diet works…
The Military Diet is a form of intermittent fasting:
Any diet with around 1000 calories a day is a type of fasting. And fasting changes the way the body works. For starters, fasting lowers levels of IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor). Lower levels are a good thing. Besides weight loss and increased metabolism, low IGF-1 lowers risk of diabetes and increases longevity. With lower levels of IGF-1 from fasting, the body switches from growth mode to repair mode. This turns the body into a fat burning machine.
A woman called Dr. Varady did a study on fasting with two groups of volunteers doing alternate day fasting for 10 weeks. One group was put on a low fat diet on their ‘eat anything’ days, like the four days off on the Military Diet.
The other group was encouraged to eat a typical high fat American diet with pizza and lasagna on their days off. The results were interesting to say the least. The people on the high fat diet were losing the same amount of weight and sometimes more as the low fat group.
Contrary to popular opinion, fasting is a healthy way to lose weight. Fasting does not lower your metabolism when done properly. In fact, fasting boosts your metabolism by switching your body’s repair genes into ‘on’ mode.
Source: Dr. Krista Varady, Professor of Kinesiology and Nutrition
And the last reason why the Military Diet works…
The foods in the Military Diet plan kick start your metabolism and promote fat burning.
For instance:
Caffeine raises the metabolism slightly, helping the body burn fat and lose weight. Your morning cup of joe gives your metabolism a boost for up to two hours after drinking it.
Grapefruit kick starts the liver into fat burning mode.
High protein foods like peanut butter, eggs, tuna and other protein require more energy from the body to process, so they burn more fat to digest.
Studies have shown that the more calcium there is stored in fat cells, the more fat the cells will burn. The Military Diet includes two sources of calcium with cottage cheese and ice cream.
Apples are high in pectin, an ingredient that limits the amount of fat your cells can absorb.
As for the other foods in the Military Diet, veggies have very few calories and carbs are kept to a minimum.