Is the 3-Day Military Diet Safe and Effective for Weight Loss?

Ice cream and hot dogs are allowed on the military diet.

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Experts say the popular diet can help you drop weight fast, but keeping it off might be harder. In fact, fad diets like the Military Diet may even lead you to gain even more weight than you initially lost

       

What Is the Military Diet?

The Military Diet is an extremely low-calorie diet designed to help you lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. In a nutshell, Julie Rothenberg, RD, a licensed dietitian-nutritionist and owner of JuliENERGYnutrition in Miami, explains, “The three-day military diet markets itself to lose 10 pounds (lbs) in one week.”
Still, the Military Diet isn’t associated with the military at all. It also doesn’t follow the principles used in the actual military. In fact, as one review published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences that examined of nutrition in the military stated, “Nutrition and the military are fundamentally entwined.” (1) Historically, a lack of a balanced diet has led to poor military performance.
Instead of military-based nutritional practices, the Military Diet requires persistence when the going gets tough. There are numerous risks associated with such restrictive diets, including gaining all the weight back — and then some — once you’re finally done with the program.