Introduction
Fitness professional, journalist and author Jorge Cruise is the creator of the 3-Hour Diet. Cruise has authored several books on the idea that the timing of meals makes a difference when it comes to losing weight.
Promise
You can lose up to 2 pounds of fat a week, without losing muscle, by simply timing your meals correctly.
Premise
By eating the “right foods” every three hours, participants can increase their Baseline Metabolic Rate (BMR), which controls how fast your body burns calories. Increasing BMR also leads to increased energy levels and decreased appetite.
Program Overview
In the 3-Hour Diet, timing is literally everything. According to Cruise, you can eat anything and lose weight if you follow three basic rules:
1. Eat breakfast within one hour of waking up,
2. Eat every three hours after that, and
3. Stop eating 3 hours before going to bed.
Cruise places great emphasis on needing to eat every three hours. It is a fundamental cornerstone of his plan that participants eat five or six smaller meals each day. While he provides no guidance on what foods to eat – there are no bad foods, just bad portion sizes — Cruise does offer up a visual map of sorts in regards to what a typical meal should look like.
Each meal should come in at around 400 calories, but participants are not expected to count calories. Instead, they should focus on specific visual cues to determine portion sizes. For instance, at each meal, carbohydrates should be the size of a Rubik’s cube, proteins the size of a deck of playing cards (about 3 oz), fruits and vegetables should measure the size of 3 DVD cases stacked on top each other, and fats should be no more than the size of a water cap (1 tsp).
Plan Strengths
The plan incorporates several weight loss winning components such as eating breakfast, controlling portion size, and reducing calories. Overall, it focuses on the importance of eating a low-fat, moderate carbohydrate, high protein, and fiber diet, which has proven successful for many people.
The books and website provide extensive meal lists, suggestions and tips for healthy eating, and a ton of recipes for vegetarians and carnivores alike. As long as participants can accurately measure portion sizes by the suggested visual cues, they should be able to stay within the suggested calorie guidelines. For people that do not relish counting calories, this may be a significant selling point.
No foods are off limits, including candy so for participants craving variety, this plan hits the spot.
Plan Weaknesses
Research studies are not conclusive or in agreement regarding whether BMR is affected by meal timing, or whether eating five small meals is more beneficial than three large meals. Currently, the only factor that has been shown to consistently raise someone’s BMR is exercise. Cruise does not place a lot of emphasis on exercise, but does provide participants with some guidelines and exercise videos on his paid-program website.
Some participants on the plan have reported gaining weight from eating five smaller meals. It may be difficult to pinpoint a specific reason, but one possible suggestion is that the opportunities to overeat are greater on a five-meal approach.
Eating religiously every 3 hours may also prove difficult for many people whose schedule does not allow them to stop, take a break, and eat. Finally, the cost may be prohibitive for some people. A 3-Hour Diet membership, which provides a variety of online resources including customized meal plans, live on-call support, member chat, and food journals, is about $5 a week and billed quarterly at $65.
Conclusion
Experts cannot agree on whether eating five meals a day versus three can stimulate BMR, but a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests it may have merit. Overall, the 3-Hour Diet has many healthy elements and may work well for some participants, especially if they were to incorporate plenty of exercise into their weight loss regimen.
The information provided here is for educational or informational purposes only. Dave DePew does not endorse any of the programs/services reviewed here.
Additional Resources
3 Hour Diet, www.3hourdiet.com
The 3-Hour Diet, http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-3-hour-diet