One of the most ridiculous fad diets ever invented is the cookie diet. The diet relies on eating cookies to control hunger and thus help people lose weight.

Fad diets seem to be everywhere these days. In general a fad diet is a diet which is designed to last for short periods of time, during which large amounts of weight can supposedly be lost. Fad diets generally include some super food, like the cookie in the cookie diet, with miraculous weight loss properties. In this sense they are something like the old traveling medicine shows, in which a slick talking salesman would expound on the virtues of some magical formula created by a Guru of some type. Crack the Fat Loss Code on the other hand stands out by promising what it claims, doing so with the use of healthy, nutrition food that actually makes sense!

The cookie diet was created by a physician named Sanford Siegel in 1975 while he was researching a book on the effect of natural foods on hunger. The cookie diet consists of eating 6 cookies in place of breakfast and lunch, then consuming a normal dinner. All told the daily caloric intake was about 800 calories. The cookie diet exploded to 24 clinics around the world. By the 80’s 200 doctors were pushing the cookie diet. The diet was quickly expanded to miracle soups and shakes that also contained the amino acids. If you are willing to lower your calorie intake to such an extreme, why not just go on an intermittent fast for 24 hours? Check out Eat Stop Eat to find out more information.

There is another version of the cookie diet referred to as the Hollywood cookie diet because it became popular with many Hollywood stars. Stars and starlets made their use of the diet well known, which helped vault it to public attention. This diet is similar to the original in that it consists of a cookie for breakfast, a cookie as a snack in the morning, a cookie for lunch, a cookie as a mid-afternoon snack, and then a reasonable dinner. The four cookies allowed on this diet consisted of a combined 600 calories and various vitamins.

If you’re thinking of the cookie diet take Donnie Brasco’s advice – forget about it. If you want to lose weight, or maintain a healthy eating lifestyle, simply lower the amount of calories you eat from everyday foods and add some exercise. In general this is a much healthier way to lose or maintain weight than relying on some fly by night miracle food, even if it is endorsed by someone you recognize from a movie.