I have been hearing a lot about two “eat all you want” diets recently that claim that you can eat whatever you want on certain days of the week and still lose weight. Being the skeptic that I am, I decided to take a look at them and let you know how they stack up. Both diets, The Every Other Day Diet and the Xtreme Fat Loss Diet, recognize that there is a fundamental flaw in conventional dieting. The flaw is that as your body gets used to you eating less calories, your metabolism slows and you begin to burn less calories.
You can see the problem here right? The only way to continue to lose weight on a conventional diet is to continue to decrease the calories that you consume, which is nowhere near healthy. These “eat what you want diets” combat this by adding cheat days, or feed days which allow you to eat normally forbidden foods like pizza and ice cream (in some moderation) on certain days of the week while following a stricter diet on other days.
The Skinny: The gist of the program is that your week is made up of burn days and feed days. On burn days your body takes in less calories than it needs, and on feed days your body takes in more calories than it needs. On the primer level (there are three levels) the week is made up of two burn days, followed by two feed days, then two more burn days, and a final feed day. So you are not asked to diet for more than two days in a row, which is totally doable.
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I highly recommend this eat what you want diet. The calorie shifting allows you the comfort of eating the foods that you like, while losing weight, and speeding up your metabolism. But, this does take commitment and dedication. You need to stick with the diet strictly on the burn days and you have to exercise regularly for this to work. If you can stick with it (and of the effective diets that I have come across, this is the easiest one to stick with), the results are amazing.
The Skinny: An extreme (hence the name) and very detailed diet that you do for 25 days. The diet itself is extreme and the exercise program is as well. This is definitely not the program for you if you are out of shape, or if you lack self control.
The Pros:
The Cons:
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I would recommend this eat what you want diet to a very specific group of people – those who are in good shape, but want to lose the last 10-20 pounds of fat, and have incredible willpower. This will definitely help you to lose fat and you will look amazing at the end of the 25 days. But, if you are not already in very good shape, I would steer clear.