The Ideal Protein Diet

The Ideal Protein diet is a low carb and low fat diet that relies heavily on protein supplementation.  The protein is designed to be easily assimilated to ensure as little muscle loss as possible.  The dieter makes the transition from burning carbohydrates to burning fat, a metabolic state called ketosis.

My wife started the diet on Thursday under the weekly care of a multi-specialist clinic that includes a nutritionist/cardiologist.  She's been having the diet drinks for breakfast and lunch, diet snacks plus a meat and vegetable dinner, which she prepares herself.  The meat portion is 8 ounces, and the vegetable portion is 2 cups cooked, plus some raw.  She must also drink 8 glasses of water each day, and she eat or drink anything else that's 0 calorie, such as tea, coffee, diet soda.  She's allowed to have skim milk.

How's it going?  She feels like shit.  Totally.  I've never seen her so inflamed.  We don't know whether the inflammation is due to the diet or from the undiagnosed MS-Sjogrens-Fibromyalgia-Lupus that has been torturing her since Fall of 2006.  The primary care doctor recently stopped prescribing the $3 prednisone, which allowed her to function well.  Instead, he wants her to undergo the $35-copay physical therapy and work with a $35-copay rheumatologist.  The most intense pain appears to be from flare up of sacrolitis.

Anyway, and inflammation aside, this diet seems to be a good fit for my wife because:

1. You pay a shitload of money upfront.  Anything that's expensive must work.
2. All literature and products feature a special logo and graphic layout with pleasing colors that must've allowed an advertising agency to buy its own tropical island.
3. The diet tells you exactly what to eat.  You don't need to think about it or know anything about the relationship between various foods and their impact on your weight and health.
4. You need to buy most of the stuff that you eat and drink.
5. You need to check in every week for evaluation.

The above list of reasons are the reasons it wouldn't work me.  Besides, the food they give you is highly processed.  The sweet desserts and snacks certainly use some artificial sweetener that will probably give you cancer or seizures eventually.

But if I had to choose between the Ideal Protein diet and, say, bariatric surgery, I'd pick the diet without hesitation.