Cambridge Diet

How safe is this low-calorie diet?

Review of the Cambridge diet plan. When I moved to Surrey from the United States about two years ago as part of a job transfer, I got very hooked on some of the food, especially the meat pies. I had never been a big eater before that, but I As a result, I gained about 25 pounds by the end of the first year.

Not knowing what was available in the way of weight loss programs, some of my co-workers recommended the Cambridge Diet. They warned me that it was very low calorie but would help me quickly lose the weight I wanted to lose I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take a chance on such a low-calorie program, but I decided to try it anyway.

You work with a counsellor who helps you work out the best plan for you which is either three Cambridge Diet meals per day and a 200 calorie meal or four Cambridge meals per day with 200 ml of skimmed milk. You are only permitted to drink black coffee or tea and tap or bottled water with a recommendation of eight glasses of water daily to prevent dehydration.

You are not allowed any fruit-flavoured water or other flavoured beverages including alcohol. During the weight loss phase you are only going to consume 415-500 calories daily, so you will need to be careful of the amount of exercise in which you engage.

The stabilisation phase of the diet provides calories of 800-1000 and prepares your body for the maintenance phase. You will add some extra select foods and begin to learn how much you can consume without gaining weight. I have a very hectic lifestyle and a very stressful job, so I need to maintain a high energy level.

This diet made me feel as though I hadn’t had any sleep in a week. I was constantly tired and couldn’t perform my job as well as I had in the past. Fortunately I am a supervisor and not just a worker or I probably would have been unemployed.

The Cambridge Diet works well if you have the stamina to endure the limited number of calories. For someone who may had ten pounds or fewer to lose there may not be a problem. I did stay with it about a month and lost about twelve pounds, but I no longer had the strength to continue.

Even with vitamins, I was tired and quite often couldn’t sleep because I was hungry. When I made the decision to give up, my counsellor tried to encourage me to stay until the end, but I barely had strength to go through a day at work let alone another day on the diet.

I can only say it’s a good thing I’m single because the only thing I could do when I got home from work was have dinner, watch a little television, and go to bed. I had no social life because I was usually exhausted and in bed before nine o’clock.

Review by Elizabeth Swan