Weight Loss & Diet Plans

17 Day Diet: Diet Review

The 17 Day Diet: What You Can Eat continued...

Healthy starches such as legumes, brown rice, bulgar, couscous, corn, squash, and sweet potatoes are just a few of the options to choose from.

During this phase, you alternate lower-calorie days with slightly higher-calorie days.

Cycle 3 allows for the addition of more healthy food choices to help you achieve good lifetime eating habits. Food lists are expanded to include more healthy fruits, proteins, fats, and starches. The meal plan is basically the same as Cycle Two, except protein is restricted to portions equal to the size of a sponge and an added option for one serving of alcohol and 100-calorie snacks.

Cycle 4 assumes you have met your goal weight. If you were lucky enough to lose all your weight in 51 days, this phase is about maintaining the new you. During the week, follow the guidance from cycle 1,2, or 3 and when the weekend rolls around, let loose.

Moreno allows 1-2 favorite meals, and 1-2 alcoholic drinks daily on the weekends, but cautions dieters not to binge; he calls it strategic cheating. “If you only splurge a little, it will keep your weight in check and make it easier to get back on track on Monday,” Moreno says.

He suggests weighing in weekly and when the needle goes up five pounds, return to cycle 2 until you get your weight back to normal.

The 17 Day Diet: How It Works

Dieters clean up their diets, getting rid of fast foods, sweets, refined grains, and more in cycle one. This phase is designed to ‘improve digestive health, help clear sugar from blood to boost fat-burning and discourage fat storage," Moreno says. 

Cycle 2 “causes calorie confusion, resets your metabolism by increasing and decreasing calorie intake to stimulate fat burning and prevent plateaus," Moreno writes in the 17 Day Diet.

Cycle 3 has a liberalized meal plan that reintroduces healthy foods in proper portions along with one alcoholic drink per day. Expect weight loss to slow down unless you forgo alcohol and/or increase aerobic exercise.

Assuming you achieve your weight loss goal by the end of cycle 3, you can progress to cycle 4 or maintenance. If not, return to cycle two and three until you arrive at your goal weight.

Strategic cheating is the bonus in the final phase, where you can enjoy your favorite foods, within reason, on weekends. Dieters are allowed up to three favorite meals during the weekends.

Throughout the plan, dieters are encouraged to use portion control, eat breakfast, lots of salads, make healthy substitutes (mustard instead of mayo, for example), get in touch with their hunger cues, drink at least 64 ounces of water daily, and eat slowly.

No fruit after 2 p.m. is a red-flag tip that Moreno explains is because “it is harder to burn off these calories and they might get stored as fat." Diet and nutrition experts say what matters is the total number of calories consumed, not the time of day or type of food.