Yep, the way they're doing it, it really is an eating disorder.



Several years ago, one woman told her doctor about the diet, and asked if it was ok to do the diet to lose the weight she'd been battling for a while, and her doctor said "It's only three weeks? Sure, that's fine."



The basic description of this diet is 500 calories/day, using a very limited list of zero fat proteins (two 100 g servings daily, mostly white fish and chicken breast), a very limited list of vegetables (2 servings/day), and an extremely limited list of fruit (2 servings/day), plus they could have the juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 Tablespoon of milk, and the equivalent of about 1/2 slice of bread each day, with small amounts of dry seasonings (spices, herbs, salt, pepper). There were to be no added fats of any kind at all, so it was a zero fat diet. That's all they're allowed to eat - but from the very limited list of foods allowed, they could choose which proteins, vegs, and fruits they wanted each day, and they're allowed to drink as much water and black coffee as they want. In the doctor's eyes, the fact that it's based almost entirely on whole foods was in it's favor, and limiting such a restrictive diet to a 3 week stint meant it couldn't do a lot of damage.



Of course the way she presented it to her doctor made it sound like it would be a one time thing - a single 3 week diet. She didn't tell her doctor about the schedule for how to repeat the diet to lose more weight (the original diet plan assumed complete maintenance in between each repetition of the diet, so that you could lose down to goal weight), or that when she did the diet, many of the ones doing the diet were already lengthening the duration of the diet, and shortening the breaks in between dieting. This lady went on to do it a couple more times before finally giving up on the diet (thank goodness), because the weight came back on so fast, and she had enough sense to realize that's not the way to lose weight and keep it off. Not so with some of the others who have been doing it off and on for several years (I just checked, it's been a decade now!), battling the same pounds (often with a few extra pounds) over and over and over, always with the claim that "this time I'll keep the weight off for good!"



But anyhow, this is the long explanation of why alarm bells went off in my head with the first article I read about Mosley's diet - 800 cals is not quite as low as this cockamamie diet, but still extremely low, the fact that it was to be done for 3 weeks (and didn't say anything about what to do after that), and calling it a low carb Mediterranean diet made it sound extremely similar to the 500 cal diet. Then there was the claim that always sends up red flags in my mind, the promise that you'll lose of a lot of weight in a very short period of time.



Thank goodness in reality, despite what at first glance looks like similarities, Mosley's diet is not anything like the 500 cal diet, and he actually has a reasonable maintenance plan.