The Military Diet is a popular 3 day diet that involves cleansing your body and losing a small amount of weight over a 3 day period. Read our review to learn more about The Military Diet.
What is The Military Diet?
The Military Diet is a 3 day diet that claims to help you lose 10 pounds in just a week. It involves eating fewer than 1000 calories for 3 days and then eating fewer than 1500 calories for the next 4 days.
The Military Diet is unlike most other trendy diets available today. It doesn’t involve cutting out carbs. It doesn’t force you to stop eating meat or cut out other arbitrary foods. In fact, you even get to eat scoops of vanilla ice cream every day of the diet (and hot dogs for one day).
Does that sound weird? You bet. This free diet is available online and appears to have been started by themilitarydiet.com – or at least, that’s the primary source of information for the diet online.
The diet is particularly popular for emergency weight loss – like when you’re trying to squeeze into a wedding dress or shaping up to fit into a bikini in Mexico.
Why Is It Called the Military Diet?
When you start a diet called The Military Diet, you expect the military to be involved in some way or another.
In reality, The Military Diet has no apparent connection to the military. SkinnyBitch.net did a write-up on the diet and wrote:
“We have to confess, we’re not sure how this one came about, or at what level the military was involved…”
Basically, The Military Diet uses the “military” name to make it sound like a tough diet for tough women. In reality, if you’re already in the military, you probably don’t need to go on a diet.
How Does The Military Diet Work?
The Military Diet doesn’t involve reading an eBook. It doesn’t involve buying some recipe book from Amazon. You don’t need to buy weird new foods from the grocery store. In fact, you may not even need to visit the grocery store at all prior to doing this diet.
All you need to do to follow The Military Diet is to eat the following foods in the following amounts (while also drinking as much water as possible):
Day 1 Breakfast
- 1 slice of toast (ideally, whole wheat toast) with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
- 1 cup of coffee or tea (with caffeine, and yes you can add stevia – but nothing else)
- 1/2 grapefruit
Day 1 Lunch
- 1/2 cup of tuna
- 1 slice of toast
- 1 cup of coffee or tea (with caffeine)
Day 1 Dinner
- 3 ounces of any type of meat (approximately the same amount as a deck of cards)
- 1 cup of green beans
- 1 small apple
- 1/2 a banana
- 1 cup of vanilla ice cream
Day 2 Breakfast
- 1 egg (cooked however you like)
- 1 slice of toast (again, whole wheat is preferred)
- 1/2 banana
Day 2 Lunch
- 1 hardboiled egg
- 5 saltine crackers
- 1 cup cottage cheese
Day 2 Dinner
- 2 hot dogs (no buns)
- 1 cup of broccoli
- 1/2 cup of carrots
- 1/2 a banana
- 1/2 a cup of vanilla ice cream
Day 3 Breakfast
- 5 saltine crackers
- 1 slice of cheddar cheese
- 1 small apple
Day 3 Lunch
- 1 hardboiled egg (or cooked however you like)
- 1 slice of toast
Day 3 Dinner
- 1 cup of tuna
- 1/2 banana
- 1 cup of vanilla ice cream
Why It Works
Obviously, The Military Diet is a unique diet because it involves you eating hot dogs, white bread, and ice cream. So why exactly does it work to help you lose weight?
You’re Only Eating 1,000 Calories Per Day
Well, it primarily works because you’re eating a very small number of calories. You’re only taking in 1,000 calories per day. The average woman burns 1800 calories a day without going to the gym or doing any other form of exercise. Each pound of fat is made up of 3500 calories. Gaining a pound of fat requires you to eat 3500 more calories than you burn, and burning that pound of fat requires the opposite effect.
And Because It Involves Intermittent Fasting
The diet also works because it’s based on intermittent fasting, a diet trend that has shown increasing promise for its ability to help you lose weight. The official Military Diet website claims that intermittent fasting in their diet helps to lower levels of IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor). When you have low levels of IGF-1, you lose weight, increase your metabolism, lower your risk of diabetes, and boost your lifespan. It forces your body to switch from growth mode to repair mode.
And It Contains Foods that Kickstarter Your Metabolism
There’s also a third advantage behind The Military Diet: it contains ingredients that kickstart your metabolism and promote fat burning. Caffeine, for example, is a well-known fat burner and gets your metabolism going in the morning. Grapefruit also kickstarts your liver into fat burning mode.
Meanwhile, high-protein foods like peanut butter, eggs, tuna, and others force your body to burn more energy while digesting them.
There are also smaller advantages with the other foods. Apple, for example, contains pectin that limits the amount of fat your cells can absorb, while cottage cheese and ice cream are rich with calcium.
Ultimately, all of the foods in The Military Diet appear to have been chosen at random – however, if you look at the science behind it, there really is a method behind the madness of The Military Diet.
Days 4 Through 7
Up above, we talked about what you should do during the first 3 days of the diet. But the diet claims you can lose 10 pounds in a week – so what do you do for days 4 through 7?
The official Military Diet website claims you can eat what you like – but you need to keep it to a maximum of 1500 calories per day. Most people are unaware how little 1500 calories is – so be sure to track your consumption.
The Military Diet Tips and Tricks
Vegetarian and Vegan-Friendly Military Diet:
You can easily swap out most of the foods in The Military Diet for vegan or vegetarian-friendly options. For example, replace the tuna, meat, eggs, and hot dogs with an alternative protein replacement (the website recommends lentils, Quorn, nuts, soy or tofu, or cottage cheese)
Avoid Grapefruit:
Some people don’t like grapefruit. If that’s the case, you can add half a teaspoon of baking soda into a glass of water to have the same fat-burning benefits.
Avoid Tuna:
You can substitute tuna with any other fish if you like.
Avoid Feeling Hungry:
Water has no calories. Drink that to satisfy food cravings. You’re going to feel hungry on this diet – especially if you’re exercising. Hunger is inevitable. Part of the appeal of the diet is that it only lasts 3 days – you can tough anything out for 3 days, right?
Don’t Snack:
The Military Diet lets you eat some unique foods, but there’s one thing it doesn’t allow: snacking. The diet relies on intermittent fasting, which means no cheating in between meals.
Be a Man:
If you’re a man following The Military Diet, then add 100 calories a day to your plan.
With these substitutions, remember that your goal is to stay under 1000 calories per day. So you can cheat on it a bit to substitute different foods – but you’re still only cheating yourself. These substitutions should, however, all have the same number of calories as the foods they’re replacing.
Should You Follow The Military Diet?
The Military Diet is a strange diet created by themilitarydiet.com. It has absolutely nothing to do with the military. However, it is an effective way to help you lose a few pounds in a few days. Weight loss is inevitable when you’re restricting your caloric intake to fewer than 1,000 calories per day.
If you want an unconventional diet designed to help you lose a decent amount of weight in a short amount of time, then The Military Diet is one option. However, eating hot dogs and ice cream on a diet isn’t exactly going to detoxify your body – so you can certainly modify some foods to make it healither.
