The Mayo Clinic Diet: I will Have The Diet Platter, Hold the Mayo

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First things first, the Mayo Clinic Diet is not affiliated, recommended, endorsed or even liked by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. As a diet plan, the bogus Mayo Clinic Diet is a real dud - an unhealthy, veritable orgy in bad ideas and fatty, fried foods that all the while claims that you will lose about fifty pounds in about ten weeks. To be fair, and to differentiate between the two diets, they shall be referred to as: The Real One and the Fake One. While it may make little sense to discuss a phony and potentially harmful diet, it might actually become abundantly clear how truly bad some fad diets can be when they are compared side by side with a healthier, more reasonable diet plan.

The Real Version of the Mayo Clinic Diet
Technically called The Real Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid, the plan focuses on eating servings from each food group, to meet the right amount for your own personal needs. (There is no such thing as a one size fits all diet plans). It is a good diet plan, focusing on real, sustainable weight loss by asking each dieter to set realistic and achievable goals for themselves. All foods on the food pyramid are represented on this food plan, and the focus is on making good food choices and moderation rather than deprivation or fad dieting.

The Real One also encourages and strongly recommends an increase in physical activity. While your weight loss may be slow, it will be steady and long term rather than the up and down, dangerous weight loss you might get from fad dieting.

The Fake One
Okay, don't get me wrong, I like bacon. Oh, there is nothing like a crispy, crunchy, still slightly chewy hunk of our piggy friends that makes me go all glazy in the eyes. However, there is a major problem with a diet plan that not only suggests you might have a bit o' bacon every now and again, but actually advocates it on a regular basis. Feel free to read that another time or two. Yes, you did read this correctly. This DIET plan suggests that eating bacon is actually a good thing. Gasp!

The plan starts this way: you eat a high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet which has the added fat burning benefit of grapefruit which is apparently magical when eaten with great glopping racks of fried foods. Who knew? You continue to eat this way for 12 days, off 2 days and then back at it for a total of ten weeks. What do you do at the end of the ten weeks? Can everyone say angioplasty? Maybe that is how you achieve the promised 50 pounds of weight loss- it's the rare person who gets fat eating hospital food.

And while it is almost laughable to think that a diet which suggests bacon is perfectly fine on a regular basis would have rules, this one actually does. (One of them is about diet salad dressing - I hear the Ironic Police approaching from the west, fast.)

First, you can eat fried foods, meats, fats, vegetables, salads until you are full because rule number one - no eating between meals. Someone with a smart fanny is going to have to say it, so it might as well be me, here: if you never waddle away from the table, does that mean the meal never technically ends?

You must eat exactly what is recommended (bacon, bacon, and more bacon) but you cannot have sugar, starch, dessert, sweet potatoes, bread, white vegetables, diet salad dressing or alcohol. You can eat the fatty, crinkled skin of a pig, but you cannot have the heart healthy soul of the grape?

All kidding aside: this "diet" plan offers very limited food choices and makes an almost saint out of the grapefruit. While it does have the regular vitamins and nutrients of other citrus fruits, there are no magical fairies living with its pith and peel that negates all of the tragic things you are doing to your arteries with the other food choices.

For further information on the Mayo Clinic Diet, visit: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mayo-clinic-diet/WT00016

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