Medical Center Diets That Aren’t

Fast and Easy Weight Loss Secrets? Don't Count on It

The Internet is rife with diets that claim to provide the secret to quick and substantial weight loss. If you assume that any diet attributed to world famous medical centers must be trustworthy, think again. Top-rated medical centers encourage weight loss through intensive multidisciplinary programs based on balanced diets that meet nutritional needs. If you see a diet espousing rapid weight loss by sticking to just a few foods over and over, go directly to the Web site of the hospital that supposedly endorses the diet and you’ll probably find that the diet claim is a hoax.

The “Cleveland Clinic Diet,” for example, claims to produce weight loss of up to 10 pounds in three days. The three-day program includes meals of specific foods, such as hot dogs, vanilla ice cream, cabbage and eggs, which supposedly increase metabolism to burn fat. Actually, it promotes short-term weight loss through an extremely low calorie level and a low carbohydrate content that leads to water loss. The three-day program is followed by four to five days of “normal” (not extreme) eating and then restarting the three-day plan. This cycle makes long-term weight loss unlikely. After a few runs through the cycle, there’s a good chance those “normal” days may get even less normal, since studies show that the greater the rigidity of dieting rules, the greater the likelihood of binge-eating when the rules end.

The Cleveland Clinic expressly denies any support for this diet. The center’s Web site includes a statement denying the diet, saying its restricted calories and rules of allowed versus forbidden foods are “not the way to long-term, sustained weight loss and health.” The Cleveland Clinic does not recommend any rigid diet. Instead, it recommends a mostly plant-based Mediterranean-style pattern of eating with abundant vegetables and fruits, limited animal protein and moderate amounts of healthy fats like olive and canola oil, nuts, seeds, olives and fatty fish.

A diet circulating for decades purportedly from the prestigious Mayo Clinic is another hoax. The plan allows unlimited meat, fish and poultry, plus daily eggs and limited vegetables, and adds grapefruit at each meal “to burn up fat.” By eliminating sugar, starch, fruit and “white vegetables,” this diet ends up high-fat, low carbohydrate and moderate to high in protein. It’s nutritionally inadequate and the direct opposite of dietary recommendations to reduce risk of cancer and heart disease. Furthermore, specifically saying you can “eat until you’re so full you can’t eat any more” is exactly the opposite of the skill most people need to learn—to stop eating at a satiation point well before “stuffed.”

The Mayo Clinic’s Web site denies any support for this diet. Its approach to weight loss involves a balanced diet with plenty of vegetables and fruits, as well as physical activity and goal-setting. There is a Mayo Clinic eating plan, called the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, but far from the rigid, limited diet circulating the Internet, it includes a wide range of healthy foods, including up to 75 calories per day of sweets.

State-of-the-art nutrition care doesn’t mean highly restricted, rigid plans, at least not without intense medical supervision. Premier medical centers employ registered dietitians to create individualized plans that lead to weight loss and also meet nutritional needs, fit personal preferences and lifestyle, and work long-term. But like the Duke Diet from the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, these world-class centers all emphasize an approach that also includes re-learning skills like grocery shopping and cooking, daily physical activity, behavioral change and record-keeping (such as food and activity logs).