Weight Loss

I've heart about this diet on the internet. I was wondering if any one has tried it before?

i am currently on it day three actually.  I used it to kick start my motivation to lose weight.  I am 227 and 25 years old and in 2 days i lost 5 pounds.  Day one i was extremely motivated but felt terrible at the end of the day... exhausted, cranky and starving.  Day two was much better but i still felt hungry no matter how many vegetables or fruit i ate.  Day three i weighed myself in the morning and i lost 5 pounds which motivated me to go through day three.  I actually feel great today, i am not hungry and i feel alot of energy.  i would reccommend it to anyone who wants greta weight lose or motivation in a short amount of time 

This is the type of fad diet that is not recommended, any diet that makes you feel cranky and hungry is suspect.  You may or may not get enough calories on it.  You will not get a healthy balance of carbs, lean proteins, and healthy fats on any particular day.  Losing 2 lbs of weight in 5 days is most likely water that you are no longer retaining and not fat.

Have you figured out how many calories a day are you consuming on this diet? That is what worries me, and it's not nutritionally well-rounded.

The Sacred Heart Diet is a fad diet that has been circulating for many years. The diet was supposedly thought to come from the cardiology department at Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital where it was used for overweight heart patients. However, like most of these diets - this is an urban myth and the hospital initially thought to be associated with it has denied the association and actually given a press release frowning upon the diet.

The Sacred Heart Diet has been called a number of different names (such as the Spokane Heart Diet, the Cleveland Clinic Diet, Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital Diet and the Miami Heart Institute Diet). The diet also bears a striking resemblance to the cabbage soup diet (which is also a unhealthy crash diet)

This diet is not recommended

• The Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal Canada (Hôpital Sacre Coeur) issued a press release in 2004 stating that "no nutritionist at the Hospital took part in the development of this diet" (ref - French).
• The American Heart Association have claimed that the diet is phony (ref).
• The Sacred Heart Medical Center also disclaim any association with the diet (read here).

The Sacred Heart Medical Center writes:

"One of our major concerns about this diet plan is it emphasizes the consumption of fruits and vegetables while excluding the consumption of meat or fish, cereal grains and milk products on most days. Any diet that focuses on only certain food groups will be low or deficient in essential nutrients and, therefore, lead to poor nutritional status long-term.

Our experience with any low calorie diets, like this one, is that they do not lead to permanent weight loss. Once individuals start eating in a more normal pattern, the weight is regained. ...."

The Sacred Heart diet is a soup-based diet, and claims that you will lose a lot of weight in the first week. This may be true, but most of the weight will tend to be water - and will be gained right back very soon after the diet ends and you go back to your normal eating habits.

This may lead to yo-yo dieting which can add to frustration, self-esteem issues and a life of constantly going up and down with your weight with no real progress.This diet is very clearly an unsustainable fad diet.

Most of these diets claim some magical fat-burning science is involved, or that there is something special about the combination of foods. This is simply untrue - it is nothing more complex than a reduction in calories!

Calorie Count is all abou sustainable weight loss, this can be done by using the Tools on this site to achieve a healthy reduction in calories leading to weightloss which can be maintained long-term without too much effort.

I have never heard of it. Is it like the Mayo clinic diet that was going around for a while? 

The doctor my Aunt works for actually has the Sacred Heart diet in his diet plan for his patients. He uses it to help cleanse the body before starting his diet and exercise plan. I did the diet once a while ago but couldn't stick with it due to the fact that I am not a big vegetable eater, not cooked ones anyways especially in a soup:) And it is usually used for people before they have surgeries to cleanse their systems. (Atleast that is what I was told).

Original Post by lkcmpb02:

The doctor my Aunt works for actually has the Sacred Heart diet in his diet plan for his patients. He uses it to help cleanse the body before starting his diet and exercise plan. I did the diet once a while ago but couldn't stick with it due to the fact that I am not a big vegetable eater, not cooked ones anyways especially in a soup:) And it is usually used for people before they have surgeries to cleanse their systems. (Atleast that is what I was told).

 I don't know who this doctor is, but both my cardiologists are horrified by this diet.  I go to the best doctors in the northeast and I've been a patient at the NIH for my heart, where they warned us about this high sodium, high saturated fat, low nutrition diet.  The only thing that is done before heart surgery is fasting.  No doctor I've ever met orders a "cleansing" diet.  This bogus diet wouldn't cleanse anything anyway.  You'd swell up from fluid retention and suffer from unbelievable gas.

Original Post by lkcmpb02:

The doctor my Aunt works for actually has the Sacred Heart diet in his diet plan for his patients. He uses it to help cleanse the body before starting his diet and exercise plan. I did the diet once a while ago but couldn't stick with it due to the fact that I am not a big vegetable eater, not cooked ones anyways especially in a soup:) And it is usually used for people before they have surgeries to cleanse their systems. (Atleast that is what I was told).

I am sorry to say but I think you should tell your Aunt to find a new doctor. As far as being used before surgeries, that is an urban myth and part of the reason this horribly unhealthful diet is being perpetuated.