Every New Year brings its own array of fitness gadgets and diets with their promises of being THE new thing sure to change your weight and life forever. Most of which simply fade into the diet and fitness Bermuda triangle only to be seen when cleaning out the closet for Goodwill. Of course, being in this industry, I love to investigate each new claim and product and formulate my own opinion of its benefits and longevity.

Today I want to take a look at the book entitled The 8 Hour Diet by David Zinczenko. In a nutshell, the former Men's Health editor and co-author of other bestsellers, including The Abs Diet and Eat This, Not That! series, suggests cutting back eating hours to just eight a minimum of three days a week for guaranteed weight-loss results. What you eat within the eight hour window is entirely up to you. For example, if you want to eat an entire pizza, and a bag of chips; great. The caveat, however, is the minute your eight hours is up, you are to fast for the following 16 hours. Their "theory" in this is that during the fasting phase, your body will digest the immediate food sources and then shift into fat burning mode. The book also suggests to exercise for 8 minutes before you begin the 8 hour feeding period.

My take:

• First and foremost, any diet that says you can eat anything you want and lose weight "without trying" makes me suspicious. Yes, you may lose weight initially following this program (or not depending on how much of worthless food you truly do eat); the idea behind this simply promotes our vanity approach to weight loss and not true health. And, once your 8 hour window eventually expands since would be very hard to maintain, you could form bad habits and dependency on poor food choices.

• It is quite unrealistic given our average lifestyle. For example, if you eat anything around a typical breakfast time say 9:00am, you are to eat nothing after 5:00pm. So, if you are having a hectic week at work and have to work through lunch and until after 6:00pm, well, better put Domino's on speed dial and grab a roll of paper towels while finishing your project! Therefore, this program promotes skipping breakfast unless you want to have dinner before returning home from work. . . neither of which, I feel, is healthy or easy to maintain long term. Think about it, it would be pretty challenging and a bit awkward to make and serve your family dinner while sipping on water.

• It could slow down your metabolism and make you quite crabby. Once your body realizes that you will not be eating for the next 16 full hours, it is going to retaliate by burning calories more slowly during the fasting phase. Your metabolism reacts to the changes you make, and will slow or speed up according to blood sugar levels, hydration, vitamins and minerals, and fiber. And once you abandon this plan, your metabolism will have a lag time to speed back to its original level which could result in weight gain.

• It devalues exercise and your heart. This program says to exercise just 8 minutes a day to promote further fat loss. What about getting the recommended 30 minutes a day for cardiovascular health? However, those that truly adhere to this 8 hour window may not even have enough energy to exercise much more than a very short period of time. If you ARE an avid exerciser, I would not recommend this plan. You may either eat your hand off, or end up with no friends 😄

• It doesn't account for those with eating disorders. Many people have an unhealthy relationship with food such as bulimia and chronic overeaters. This program would likely be a disaster for this population for many obvious reasons.

In summary, I am going to be redundant in regards to past articles I have written on diets. Eat more fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and fiber. Eat less high fat, high sugar and processed foods. Watch portion sizes, and drink 60-90 oz. of water a day. The sooner we accept that a healthy diet truly goes back to these basics, the better off we will be. Remember any "diet" that promises guaranteed results without even trying sounds nice. . . and this is why the author makes a ton of $ off of it; but it is probably not going to provide long or even short term results.