SubscribeEat Every 13 Minutes Diet
Needless to say, this one caught my attention. As an incurable snacker, I just had to see what this one was all about. Does the creator of this diet think this is practical? How big are the "snacks"? what kinds of food are you allowed? Let's delve deeper in to the world of relentless snacking.
The 13 minute diet is a 14 day plan created by Norah Lane. The claim is that by eating frequently (in this case, with blinding frequency) you will lose weight (an average of 7 lbs in 2 weeks). Lane also claims that the diet is specifically helpful for those who suffer from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Lane's contention is that overweight people don't eat enough food to keep their metabolism going. (Yes, you read that correctly).
Here are some of the particulars of the diet:
- For two weeks, you choose one breakfast, lunch and dinner each day (refer to article for the lists - they are pretty low in calories). In between each meal, you snack every 13 minutes or so on regular 'nibbles' and 'burns'. Shoot for about 30 nibbles or burns a day.
- Nibbles are tiny pieces of raw vegetables the size of your smallest fingernail. Carrot, celery, pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus, broccoli or cucumber are examples.
- Burns are similar-size pieces of lean protein. Options are chicken, cooked meat, fish, egg, cottage cheese or trimmed bacon. Your burns can also include hard cheese but only up to a maximum of 25g a day. Vegetarians can have Quorn, tofu or quark cheese.
- You can vary your nibbles' and 'burns as much as you like. You can even dip them in fat-free salad dressing or balsamic vinegar.
- In addition to the menus, have 1/2 a pint of semi-skimmed milk and three pieces of fruit (excluding bananas) a day. You're also allowed up to three level teaspoons of low-fat spread on crispbread and bread
- Don't drink any calorie-containing drinks. Stick to water, tea and coffee with milk from your allowance, or diet drinks.
My Thoughts
- The "to snack or not to snack" question is a highly contested one - with experts, authors and diet plans on either side of the fence.
- The most important factor at play is what you eat and how much you eat. "Snacking" can make or break your diet depending on how you use it.
- Studies are mixed as to whether snacking has an impact on overall caloric intake throughout the day.
- Snacking does not appear to impart a significant boost in metabolism, but can be helpful for those who tend to eat very large meals.
- The overall contribution of the "thermic effect" (the energy cost of eating) is anywhere from 8-13% of total metabolism. Even if snacking did have an appreciable impact on metabolism, it is highly unlikely that eating this often will rev things up any more - given that the portions are so tiny.
More like this in Diets · Sep 23, 2008
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Mike - pretty much agree with your assessment. This has all the hallmarks of a gimmick diet. It will certainly give people the sense that they are being pro-active if they manage to organise their days to follow this diet, but I wonder whether there would be any benefits beyond that, for the reasons you outline. Nevertheless, you could argue that aside from any effect on weight loss, correctly following this diet would be a triumph of project management skill in its own right.
ReplyAre people getting bored or something? This really sounds absurd! Did the words "reality" and "practicality" ever crop into their minds?!
ReplyMy point exactly. People are strange creatures when it comes to losing weight at all costs.
ReplyFunny. There was just a post recently about how silly fad diets were disappearing and then this. Maybe it's the last gasp.
ReplyLOL! I thought the same exact thing.
ReplySame old snack/timed diet with fancy new thirteen minute packaging. I wouldn't be surprised of course if you actually lost weight on this diet plan ,but who could actually keep up with this without looking crazy around other people.
ReplyHaha - why didn't they just make it every 15 minutes?
ReplyThis is crazy!
Rrright....
How do they come up with this non-sense?
I understand the importance of small snacks but I think is a little too much.
ReplyTOTAL B.S.
Alan Aragon has debunked the entire notion that meal frequency has ANY effect on metabolism.
He reports that all the research done into the subject shows that eating at consistent times rather than frequently is what's important. A haphazard eating schedule is what you want to avoid.
Of course those of us familiar with intermittent fasting know that the idea that not eating frequently enough will harm your metabolism is total and complete B.S. and this woman probably KNOWS it.
ReplyHey Barry,
Yeah, AA has definitely made made think differently about a lot of things I thought I knew... do you subscribe to his research review? I highly recommend it if you don't already.
Thanks for your input.
Reply7 lbs. in 2 weeks is a joke too. A properly executed protein sparing modified fast can result in far faster weight loss without any negative health effects while also sparing your muscle tissue so your metabolism is truly preserved.
Replyhi Barry,
Can you give me details on this?
ReplyI just wanted to say, Teeee Heee Heeeee @ carrot the size of my baby fingernail!
ReplyI'm with you and the other commenters here, Mike - I heard about the "Eat Every 13 Minutes" diet a while back and thought it sounded very impractical and scientifically rather implausible.
And as I have PCOS, it also bugs me to see this being promoted as helpful for sufferers -- fad diets are no substitute for healthy eating and appropriate medication.
ReplyRegardless of how effective it is, how convenient could it possibly be?
ReplyWhat? That's just...nuts. Now I think I'm just going to wait for her to start marketing a set of food cutters, one for each type of food she claims you should be eating. That's just...kind of nuts.
ReplyBrilliant idea, how about 12 minutes of intervals or less. Let's make food more center of our daily life and let's live for food and work anything else around it. Because eating healthy and in moderate portions is waaayyy harder then this.
ReplyI agree with comment above. Healthy eating in moderate portions is a lot better than this. Good info on this though...i hadn't heard of it. It's kinda funnny...
Replywhat is the point of snacking at all if the serving size is the size of your pinky-nail? even if i am misunderstanding and you can have more than that one tiny piece at a time... who has time to dice their veggies and proteins before they leave in the morning? might as well advise people to take one-half of a bite of a vegetable or protein every 15 minutes. at least it would save time!!
ReplySo, if I'm reading this review right, you basically eat a sensible, lower calorie diet composed of plenty of fruits and veggies and lean protein, but you add in a bite of carrot every 13 minutes? Oooohkay, whatever. The sheer inconvenience of that would drive me crazy. I work in a lab where I can't eat at all, so I have to go 2-3 hours without eating anything. Suffice it to say that I highly doubt there's any real difference between going 3 hours with no food and 13 minutes with no food.
ReplyIf I was constantly hungry all the time and could never eat enough to stay full then maybe a week of this would get me over it (a little reverse psychology.) With this diet you might actually get sick of eating, cooking, and dieting. Not for me.
ReplyI ate like this when I had an eating disorder. You take a serving size and break it up into tiny bites spaced very far apart throughout the day. The fact that anorexics also eat this way is not good.
ReplyI don't know about this.....it seems like too much work. 13 minutes snacking. Then what happends when you forget or life gets in the way?
ReplyExcluding bananas? Really?
I'll be excluding this pain-in-the-arse diet, thank you very much. Interesting though it is.
ReplyAccording to this diet, the way to stay thin is to eat in the exact opposite manner that humans have eaten for thousands of years.
ReplyHow long could someone sustain this kind of eating regime? A week? A month? If you can't sustain it you won't sustain the weight loss... like so many diets you'll just drop off it and go back to your old eating habits (or worse) and the weight will pile back on. Lifestyle.... lifestyle... lifestyle!
ReplyThey want you to produce frequent saliva from chewing, so chew sugar free gum, that quickens the digestion and keeps it ramped up.
Replyactually, this is how i lost weight. not THIS plan, which is ludicrous, but i broke up my meals into snacks basically, and just ate throughout the day. this works for me because i basically work at home, but would not be practical for someone with an outside job, obviously.
ReplyThis kind of eating lifestyle--perhaps not "by the clock" absolutely works for wieght loss. Not a fitness guru, or a skinny expert, I'm an actual fat person who has lost 40 pounds (and counting) since November of 2007. Three low cal/carb meals, plently of fruit, clementines, apples, berries and 'grazing' throughout the day. Water too! Toting around a bag of baby carrots, eating almonds or a hunk of cheese. This sort of eating is easy to fit in to your life and easy to keep low profile. It's not like you're eating cake every 15 minutes.
I was always angry because although I didn't eat much I gained lots. Not realizing that such eating behavior was actually slowing my metabolism. And resulting in binging (mostly on high carb foods).
This has also been an easy lifestyle to maintain over a long period. I've got another 30 or 40 pounds to go -- excuse me while I munch an apple!
ReplyEating every 13 minutes is nearly impossible and way too hectic to keep up with. I don't think that many peole would last past day one of this diet.
ReplyTECHNICALLY it could work... tho im not sure. anyone willing to try this "DIET".
replace those fruits and vegies with protein or carb rich food and you have a bodybuilder's dream!
Lol for business minded people... there u go. your new 13 min BODY BUILDING diet..
Sahil M
http://www.flawlessfitnessbook.com
Reply