Will Yet Another Fad Diet Work? The Celeb Sirtfood Diet, Decoded

Forget all your crazy diets (including Sirtfood) – you can lose weight the normal way.

Diets don’t work. And a fad diet works even less. In fact it can even be disastrous for your weight loss efforts, as after the quick weight loss in the beginning, more often than not the lost pounds all pile back, quickly. And along come some serious side effects like nutrient deficiencies, appetite mess-up, irritability, fatigue, muscle loss…

The latest in the list – the sirtfood diet (yes, move over Paleo, 5:2 and Dunkan) is no different.

So what is this diet actually? Well, it is quite a rage these days (like most fad diets are in the beginning) and involves eating ‘only’ those foods that activate specific proteins in the body called sirtuins. Sirtuins apparently protect cells in the body from dying under stress, help cut down inflammation, increase muscle, activate the body’s ability to burn fat, and boost metabolism. In simple words, sirtuins make us fitter, leaner and healthier.

There are two phases in this diet (1 week + 3 weeks) where dieters are mandated to eat ONLY sirutin activating foods – and nothing else. The list includes foods like: green tea, dark chocolate, apples, prawns, salmon, dates, walnuts, citrus fruits, parsley, turmeric, kale, blueberries, strawberries, red onion, olive oil, coffee, buckwheat, rocket leaves, soy, capers, red wine and a few more such foods.

Four Problems With This Diet:

It sounds like a modern day miracle, but, its celebrity fans notwithstanding, there are lots of problems with it.

Firstly, any diet that recommends fast and sudden weight loss is simply farcical – no science behind that at all. In fact, science is clear that to lose half a kg you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories. So, if you slash 250 calories a day you lose about 25 pounds in a year (slash 500 calories a day to lose about 50 pounds in a year). It’s plain and simple math. The seven pounds weight loss this diet claims to deliver in a week is simply not achievable and is most likely simply loss of fluid from the body – which is bound to come back sooner than later.

Second, it is non sustainable and impractical – specially for us Indians. Why? Take a look at this sample menu: a sirtfood rich juice that includes kale, celery, rocket, parsley, green tea and lemon, and two meals with dishes like turkey escalope with sage, capers and parsley, prawn and kale curry, grilled salmon, buckwheat noodles… Unfamiliar, right? And absolutely non-sustainable! How many days can you eat alien (to us) food like this… one, perhaps two, maybe three? No one can drastically and completely change one’s palate for a diet. And even if you do, it is difficult to keep at it, so benefits don’t accrue. As soon as the urge to eat the familiar wins – the diet will go out of the window.

Third, any selective eating (that involves banning all other foods) does not work. No doubt the foods in this list are healthy, but eating just these exclusively is not a great idea. A better way would be to include these foods as part of a healthy balanced diet. For example, having a glass of red wine or a small amount of chocolate once in a while, or maybe even everyday won’t do us any harm but we must continue eating a whole lot of variety to ensure scoring benefits of all – yes, even of the foods not on the sirtfood diet list.

Finally, one fact you need to know is that sirutins are also produced when we exercise.

There!

Takeaways From This Diet

So should we just dump this one, and wait for the next fad diet? Well, I don’t think the sirtfood diet is legit, but that said, there are some good takeaways here. For one, countries where people already consume a vast number of sirtfoods like Japan and Italy are ranked among the healthiest countries in the world. We in India eat some of these foods already as part of our traditional diet – onions and turmeric in particular, and could definitely try and incorporate more from the list. For example, an apple or two a day, a salad with olive oil dressing, a cup of green tea at bed time and salmon twice a week are all possible.

We definitely need to shift focus from weight loss to healthy eating – and these sirutin boosting foods can help us achieve that.

All you need to remember is that a quick fix just won’t work!

(Kavita Devgan is a weight management consultant, nutritionist, health columnist and author of Don’t Diet! 50 Habits of Thin People.)