Being hungry and craving sweets are two of the main reasons people fall off their diets. But what if eating cookies and not being hungry was part of your diet plan? The Cookie Diet uses cookies to entice dieters into easy weight loss. After all, what could be more appealing than losing weight while indulging in one of our favorite treats?
But these are not your grandmother’s cookies. Instead they're designed to be meal replacements -- made with fiber, protein, and other ingredients intended to keep you full. They're not nearly as sweet as Grandma's, though they're certainly palatable. They contain no drugs or secret ingredients, other than amino acids (the building blocks of protein) and fiber that act to suppress hunger.
Several cookie diet plans exist; the most popular are the Hollywood Cookie Diet, the Smart for Life diet, and Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet. Sanford Siegal, MD, a Miami obesity physician who developed a cookie formula in 1975 to help his patients lose weight, is considered the originator of the cookie diet concept.
Some of the cookie diets are designed for people to follow on their own with some online guidance; others are done under medical supervision.
The Cookie Diet: How it Works
On the Cookie Diet, there are no decisions about what to eat except which flavor cookie to eat, and what to have for dinner. It's a relatively mindless diet strategy that has reportedly helped half a million of Siegal’s patients lose weight.
The cookies contain select amino acids thought to suppress hunger, fiber, and other ingredients that digest slowly to help keep you feeling full. Eating 4-6 of the cookies a day will give you somewhere around 500 calories.
Dinners are simple: Lean protein and veggies, or a light frozen dinner and a salad. The dinners range from a low of 300 to a high of about 1,000 calories each, meaning the diet has a grand total of 800-1,500 calories per day
Kaiser Permanente physician Evan Bass has been following the Smart for Life cookie diet for more than a year, and has lost (and kept off) 45 pounds.
"The first two weeks were the hardest," he says. "I was tired with no energy for exercise but once I got used to it, I felt great and could be more physically active while eating cookies daily for breakfast and lunch."
He says he loves the chocolate chip cookies, especially when they're warmed in the microwave, and has not grown tired of eating 6-8 cookies a day.
Celebrities on Cookie Diet
- Madonna
- Jennifer Hudson
- Kelly Clarkson
Speaking of chocolate chips… there are quite a few varieties sprinkled throughout the pages of The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur, as well as many peanut butter cookie recipes. There is even a recipe for “Peanut Butter Dog Treats,” which I’ll bet Charity Marie Doggy-Dog (and her new brother, Rocky Top) are going to love.