The 3 Hour Diet: How Low-Carb Diets Make You Fat and Timing Makes You Thin -Review

 

Fitness expert Jorge Cruise (author of "8 Minutes in the Morning" and "The 12 Second Sequence") has a new plan for weight loss, promising that you can lose 2 pounds a week and banish belly fat. In The 3 Hour Diet, Cruise extols that there are no bad foods, there are just bad portions, and the timing of meals is the key to everything.

Cruise backs his assertions about the importance of timing of meals with research on what is called Starvation Protection Mechanism, which (as its name suggests) causes the body to store fat, slow metabolism and burn muscle when it is not getting enough nourishment. In order to disable SPM, Cruise insists we eat on the following schedule:

• Have breakfast within one hour of rising
• Eat every three hours throughout the day (one lunch and two 100-calorie snacks)
• Stop eating three hours before bedtime

Cruise believes that this eating strategy increases the baseline metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories) and decreases your appetite while increasing your energy. He says that this practice teaches your body to constantly reset its metabolic rate, which will keep you burning fat all day.

As to what to eat, for meals Cruise only insists that there be a protein, a carb, a fat and a fruit or vegetable. He doesn't care what they are, only that they are properly portioned. His guide for how to portion your food:

Take a 9 inch plate. On it, visualize the following four items:

1. A Rubik's cube, which represents your carbohydrate portion for each meal.
2. A deck of playing cards, which represents your protein portion for each meal. (3 ounces)
3. A water bottle cap, which represents the amount of fat allowed per meal. (One teaspoon)
4. Three DVD cases stacked up represents fruit or vegetables for each each meal.

No foods are off limits - mini Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups are even suggested as a treat - because Cruise believes that prohibitive diets are miserable and defeating. So he wants you to eat what you want - bread, pasta - under this timing and portion guidance and be happy while you're losing weight.

Sounds pretty good, but the experts still don't agree that the mini-meals and the timing are the key to boosting the base metabolic rate. The only thing that has been proven to raise the metabolic rate and keep it up steadily is regular, substantive exercise. Additionally, eating every three hours may be impossible due to your life circumstances. Regardless, the bottom line of 3 Hour Diet is that it's just another spin on a reduced calorie diet with portion control. They all work if you can stick with them, and find a way to make healthy eating and regular exercise a part of your life for the long term. FYI there is now a 3 Hour Diet at home meal delivery.