One of my friends told me about a new diet she was trying called the ‘Cookie Diet.’ She explained she would eat six of Dr. Sanford Siegal’s cookies a day and then would have one meal – dinner – each night.

I tried it after she told me about the success she was having a few weeks into the diet. One week after ordering a few boxes of cookies online, I was so sick of them that they didn’t really taste much like cookies at all. So, I called it quits.

According to the diet’s Web site, though, 500,000 people have lost weight on Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet. But the cookies don’t provide the proper nutrition other diets offer.

‘I am not in favor of these kinds of diets,’ said Lynn Brann, a Syracuse University assistant nutrition science and dietetics professor. ‘It seems as though the diet is based on limiting your calorie intake. If you take in fewer calories than you need, then you should lose weight. It doesn’t really matter where those calories are coming from. However, (on the diet) you are not consuming other important nutrients in foods if you are only eating cookies and drinking shakes.’

According to a New York Times article last week on the Cookie Diet, Dr. Siegal expects revenue to be up $6 million from 2008 due to endorsements from celebrities such as Kelly Clarkson, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Hudson.

The diet has become so popular in the last few years that imitator cookie diets have emerged on the market. The Hollywood Cookie Diet, Smart for Life and Soypal Cookie Diet are now competing with the original.

In 1975, Dr. Siegal created the Cookie Diet for his own patients and supplied them to about 200 other doctors and their patients as well, according to the Cookie Diet Web site. Until a few years ago, interested dieters could only buy the cookies online or by ordering them. They are now also available in stores.

The diet aims to control hunger and eating habits. The six cookies that dieters get to eat each day on the Cookie Diet are not designated as specific meals but can be eaten whenever hunger strikes.

Don’t get the idea that these are cookies you can substitute with Chips Ahoy. They are pre-packaged cookies not comparable to most, if any, store bought snacks.

Dr. Siegal’s shakes, which contain an amino acid protein blend, are also available for dieters to substitute the cookies.

Though the Cookie Diet sounds tempting, the faux cookies become sickening after awhile, and the thought of having six a day becomes repulsive, or at least it did to me. Short-term diets like this are often not a good idea because although you quickly lose weight, it is easier to gain it back if you stop dieting.

‘These diets may work for a short period and result in weight loss, but the problem, aside from no dietary variety, is that people cannot maintain this kind of eating pattern for long,’ Brann said. ‘It’s not realistic. When people start eating regular food again, then they tend to overeat and gain back the weight plus more.’

The Cabbage Soup Diet, a seven-day dieting plan, promises users they can lose up to 10 pounds in a single week. But at the end of the week, you probably would go back to your normal eating habits and gain back any weight you may have lost.

What the Cookie Diet disregards is an exercise plan. Brann said it is possible to lose weight without exercising if you are limiting your calorie intake enough, but she does not recommend it because of the numerous benefits of exercising regularly.

If you take part in the Cookie Diet, be diligent: Withstand the faux cookie taste and don’t overeat. The diet can work and result in weight loss, but not many people can keep up with all of that. The challenge, as for other diets as well, is to lose weight and keep it off.

Rebecca Toback is a sophomore magazine journalism major and the health columnist. Her columns appear every Thursday. She can be reached at rltoback@syr.edu.

Published on October 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm