Is Your Hand in the Cookie Jar?

That's the question that Smart for Life Cookies asks on its TV commercial. This is another fad diet that claims to have the solution to fat loss. Here's the concept in as few words as possible:

Eat specially-formulated cookies six times per day and lose weight. It's that simple. It was created in the early 2000s by Dr. Sasson Moulavi, a bariatric physician.

The diet, as silly as it sounds, actually has quite a few benefits:

-It’s cheaper than food. It costs as little as $10 per day to sustain your body on this program. Of course, that also depends on your nutritional needs, but if you ate nothing but cookies all day, you could certainly save money. You only save money on this program because you're eating so little. Want to really save money? Eat one fast food meal and take a multi-vitamin to cover your nutritional deficiencies. I guarantee rapid fat loss without expensive programs like this.

-Reduced hassle. I like this one. I like good meals, but I'm a busy person and I don't have time to cook a different meal every night, much less for every meal of the day. Even if you did, your life would be spent procuring ingredients and cooking them. We live in an age of convenience, and Smart for Life is certainly compatible with that.

-Good taste. According to the testimonials, they taste good. All diets must include food that is palatable to the person on the diet.

-Plenty of nutrition. It has no preservatives, and it somehow incorporates fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and plenty of protein and carbohydrates. It sounds like Alive! Energizer to me.

-High level of satiety. According to Smart for Life, a few cookies every few hours will keep you satisfied. I highly doubt this. Who actually feels full after a couple of cookies? I suspect people who eat these cookies count the hours and minutes before they can eat another cookie. If it does keep you full, it’s because it has fiber and a generous amount of protein. But you don’t have to eat expensive cookies to get fiber and protein.

-Support. Smart for Life has over 30 weight-loss centers to help and counsel their clients.

-Benefits. According to the web-site, a cookie diet will reduce your cholesterol, increase your insulin resistance and keep your insulin levels in balance, lower your weight and improve bone health. But I imagine this is due to the caloric deficit it creates. If you ate two pieces of cake everyday, you'd get all these benefits too (but also a sharp rise in insulin).

Of course, there are two big catches here. First, it's not really a cookie diet. Smart for Life sells shakes, muffins, supplements, and other food. Perhaps even they realize that the monotony of cookies is not sustainable for most people. So it's not really a cookie diet, but really a diet of Smart for Life products.

The other big catch is that the Lifestyle Program that they offer places the "patient" on a very strict diet of 800-1200 calories per day. Anything less than 1500 in my opinion is death. An old lady in a wheelchair would need more than that. Of course, if you're trying to lose weight, you have to create a deficit. Smart for Life says most people need 2500 calories per day (not true), and that if you ate only 800 calories per day, you'd create a 1700-calorie deficit per day, which would be one pound of fat per day. So they then calculate that you can lose 15 pounds in one month. Of course, they used the highest estimate for average intake the lowest estimate for caloric intake on the Smart for Life diet to come to their outrageous calculation.

If you want to get results like that, eat 800 calories per day of real food and skip the Smart for Life cookies. Good luck.

Kevin