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Feb 10

Andy De Santis, RD: Is the ‘Snake Diet’ worth it? – The London Free Press

Long Term Weight Loss Comments Off on Andy De Santis, RD: Is the ‘Snake Diet’ worth it? – The London Free Press

Conceived by a self-proclaimed fasting coach with no apparent credentials in either the fields of nutrition or zoology, the Snake Diet appears to be nothing more than a contrived version of intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting, or extending the period of time between your last bite and your first bite (often from between 16 to 20 hours) is a potentially effective weight loss tool for those who can tolerate it. But the snake diet takes it to a whole other level hence the extreme weight loss results you might see online.

Robinsons protocol is based similarly on the One Meal A Day (OMAD) strategy. OMAD generally entails a daily fasting period of 22 to 23 hours with the remaining hour allotted to eating what would presumably be a large meal, whereas the snake diet regimen follows a multi-phase regimen that includes fasts of various lengths, between 24 to 96 hours, which are to be broken up by single large meals.

The diet also recommends drinking snake juice throughout the fasting period. The juice sold on Robinsons website is an electrolyte-enhanced beverage, which is essentially the equivalent of a sugar-free version of sports drinks like Gatorade, which contain sodium and potassium to make up for losses from sweat during activity. The purpose of this is likely to keep up electrolytes which tend to flag during fasts of this length. Sodium and potassium levels also could drop to dangerously low levels.

Is this a diet protocol worth trying? Unfortunately, many of the studies looking at fasts of this extreme length have been done in snakes hence the name rather than humans, so not all that much is known about the long-term safety, sustainability, or efficacy.

That said, while its not at all that absurd for an otherwise healthy individual who felt so inclined to do so to actually enjoy this style of fasting, it would take a lot of diligence and oversight to ensure a diet that was nutritionally adequate over the long-term. And lets not forget that because of the caloric restriction that tends to follow eating far less frequently, weight loss is not surprising.

But as a dietitian who has written about and reviewed the evidence on intermittent fasting, as well as practiced it personally, I can attest there are a number of metabolic benefits. However, the line between fasting and self-starvation becomes blurred when you start going multiple days in a row without food.

My advice to otherwise healthy people who feel compelled to try intermittent fasting is to steer clear of gimmicky approaches that give fasting a bad name. Ask yourself how long you can go from your last bite one day to your first bite the next and start by trying to go a bit longer. You may find that you enjoy it, or you may not. But if you find that intermittent fasting fits well with your lifestyle and supports you eating a high quality nutrient dense diet, then perhaps its worth taking a closer look at.

And with that, I slither off into the sunset.

Andy is a registered dietitian and multi-book author who has operated a private practice in Toronto since 2015.He spends his free time eating, writing and talking about kale @AndyTheRD. He can be reached at AndyTheRD.com

Original post:
Andy De Santis, RD: Is the 'Snake Diet' worth it? - The London Free Press

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