Wednesday 15 May 2013

IN SEARCH OF TORTURE: The Danish Hospital Diet

“...at the end of the diet one can come back to the normal alimentation without gaining weight for two years" 
This is what caught my eye - Nothing else, not the details, not the insane rules and guidelines, nothing. 


The testimonials looked good; however, I couldn't find any evidence or science backing it up, at least not at the time. 

The following is what the Danish Hospital Diet claims to be able to do:

The Diet
"diet lasts 13 days and although difficult, it is efficient. The metabolism's change is that fundamental that at the end of the diet one can come back to the normal alimentation without gaining weight for two years. If the diet is respected daily, step by step, one can lose all the fat accumulated in tissues. The diet must last exactly 13 days, not more and not less.


Recommendations:
Any aliment added beside the aliments allowed by the diet (a candy, a chewing gum, a biscuit, a glass of beer or wine) imposes the immediate stop of the diet as it has no longer effect. You can start over again only in six months. In case you cannot resist to keep the diet more than 6 days (respecting all the alimentary indications), stop it and begin again the diet after three months.
If you are hungry, drink water, at least 2 l/day.
The lettuce should be fresh.
The code (the fish) can be replaced by trout or plaice.
Coffee cannot be replaced by tea or the other way round.
The natural yogurt is the non- pasteurized one, without sweeteners or fruits addition." - http://www.weight-loss-forums.com/about7606.html


This is the site I used, I followed the STRICTEST form of the diet as possible – there are variations of the diet, some which allow you to eat as much as half a loaf for breakfast and others that don’t. I went in search of torture.

NOTE: everything following this, was written and recorded last year. This is from a previous blog where I had recorded everything.This is simply a copy and paste (unless stated otherwise)




THE DANISH HOSPITAL DIET.
Starting: July 15, 2012 at 9:40am

Ok. So it's Sunday and it's 9:21am. Here goes my first cup of black coffee with 1 cube of sugar(This stuff is disgusting). I'm busy recovering from a rough night out with friends and for someone who doesn't get hangover, today seems to be an exception.
For the next 13 days, I'm going to be testing the claims of The Royal Danish Diet. There absolutely no science behind the diet or anything else to read up on but according to people who have tried it, it works. All I know is that the diet was made for extremely obese people who needed to lose weight fast  so that they could have operations performed on them asap.

NOTE: Due to the nature of this diet please don't try this without the consent of you doctor/physician (I doubt in a million years he/she would give you the go ahead anyways). Let retards like me try it first.

DAY 1:

I will be extremely strict with this experiment. If it's not on the diet list for the day, I will not take it. I have tried to find the most strictest form of the diet that I possibly could. I don't care if some of the diet variations allow you to have tomato sauce/mayonnaise etc. If it's not on the list - I won't consume it. 

So here's my diet for the day (day 1)
Breakfast - 1 black coffee and 1 sugar (cube)
Lunch: 2 hard-boiled eggs + 400 g spinach + 1 tomato
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice
I'm going to go finish off this coffee now. How you people drink this stuff every day, I will never know.
Enjoy the rest of your sunday and peace out.

DAY 1 REVIEW:

That was tough but I managed to get through it. I'm so tired and worn out so I think it's just time for bed or something and it's not even 7:30pm. I don't think I've gone to bed this early since gr2 or something. I'm pretty much just completely run down.
Bring on Day 2


DAY 2
So I woke up at the usual time 5am. I felt fine for a while, until I had my black coffee. After about 20 mins, I seemed to be going through a mini-fever like session. Besides the fact that it was freezing, I was feeling rather warm. T-shirt and shorts suited me just fine so I'm thinking that it's just my body still getting used to coffee in the morning (as I have never touched an entire cup of coffee in my entire life...prior to Sunday)

I didn't feel as weak as I expected. Felt rather energetic when I awoke which is usually not the case mind you, I have stopped taking my sleeping medication for the duration of this experiment. As I said before, if it's not on the diet list for the day, I will not eat/drink it (all supplements have been packed away. I will not be taking medication if for whatever reason I need to. This has to be performed like an experiment)

So today's gourmet meals looks a little something like this:
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar
Lunch: 250 g ham + 1 can of natural yogurt
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice

(thank god there's no spinach today)
The non-pasteurized yoghurt, I got from Steps to Health. Was R40 for a litre and has no sweeteners or any additives. The cows graze on a field with no insecticides and yadda yadda yadda. Basically I just tried to find the most natural yoghurt I could. 

So today, I had my weight taken at the gym. I will only be using that scale. No other.

Current weight is 66.8kg
which is a bit strange as on Friday, I was weighing in at 68.7kg and I still pigged out for Friday and Saturday...actually I pigged out for the majority of the week. 

Current body fat skyrocketed in the last 3 weeks. from 13.3% to 17% - but that's good in this experiment as the more weight/fat, the better (plus if this doesn't work, I have a back up diet that has always proved to help when needed)

Starting test body weight: 66.8kg
Starting Fat%: 17

I'll take my weight every day but I'll only be posting weight scores every 2 days (just so it doesn't take up too much space)

FINAL NOTES:
I'm feeling ok at the moment, however I do have little bouts of nausea and sessions of feeling a bit tired - but that's expected. I will not stop this diet just cause I feel a bit ill or tired, 12 days left. 11 after this one.
They weren't lying when they said this is tough. Hunger pains set in and all you can do is drink water. Luckily I'm one of those lucky few who loves water

DAY 3

So this morning I woke up at 4:35am for some reason. I was also feeling quite energetic besides the fact that I'm sick as a dog. The energy didn't last that long though. By 7:30am, I was back in bed and only just woke up a little while ago...but like I said. I won't stop this for a cold.

Breakfast: 1 black coffee, 1 sugar and one slice of toast (whole wheat)
Lunch: 2 boiled eggs. 4 slices of shaved ham (as I didn't have one slice of ham) and a hand helping of lettuce
Supper: Celery. 1 Tomatoe. 1 fruit (orange, apple, pear etc)

So I've just had lunch and I can tell you that, that was one of the best tasting meals I've had in a long time. After this diet, I think I'm going to appreciate every meal I get...as long as there's no spinach.

I'm going to go back to bed for now. Need to rest up.
Hope you're all having a good week so far.

DAY 4

Weight - 65.7kg

So already a 1.1kg drop since day 2. This cold is really making it tough but I'm still sticking to it.

Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar + 1 slice of toast
Lunch: 200 ml orange juice + 1 can of natural yogurt
Dinner: 1 hard-boiled egg + 1 rubbed out carrot + 250 g cow cheese


Not going to lie...it has been one of the toughest days. The last time I ate anything solid was at 5:30am this morning, which was one piece of whole wheat toast.

So I am pretty hungry, but I'm sticking to water whenever I feel like my stomach is about to devour itself. Supper up in a bit. Looking forward to it...eventhough it's not much to look forward too. Tomorrow on the other hand, looks pretty damn amazing. Can't wait for that. Going to see if I can muster up the strength/energy to do a little training session tomorrow. Need some weights to do!!!



"Anyone that will show you that sympathy is no friend of yours" - Frank McGrath


DAY 5

So today is over and I'm busy drinking water to help fill my stomach as 1 grated celery and one 250g beef rump wasn't exactly too filling. So water it is.

I seem to be recovering from my cold quite quickly. My nose runs now and then but thats about it. I'm not dead tired like my sister who looks like a zombie and I'm not as sick as my mom is and we all caught the cold/flu at around the same time (sunday/monday) so I'm not sure if it's the diet that has something to do with it or if it's just my body. Either way, I'm feeling a lot better.

so the menu for today was (a hell of a lot better than yesterday)

Breakfast: 1 big grated carrot
Lunch: 200 g steamed code with lemon juice + 1 spoon with butter
Dinner: 200 g roast beef + 1 grated celery

I couldn't find cod or trout anywhere...so I went to a fishery to ask what the closest thing to Cod was, and I was told that Yellowtail is pretty much the same so I bought 1.3kgs for R52 - which isn't bad...I don't think?

Tomorrow is DAY 6 and that's pretty much half way. At this point, I haven't cheated or eaten/drank anything that I'm not allowed to. If there's no coffee for breakfast on the menu then I don't have coffee.

My energy levels seem to be pretty high, which is rather pleasing compared to the first few days where I felt like death.


Tomorrow's an early start to the day and I can't seem to get anything longer than 5 hours of sleep in at a time without waking up for an hour or so, so off to bed it is for me. 

DAY 6 and 7

Sorry for not posting yesterday. Got a bit caught up. So here's day 6 and 7. ONE WEEK DONE. One more to go.

DAY 6
Weight: 65.3kg
this was a bit worrying as I had only dropped 0.5kgs since day 4 but that all changed when I measured myself on DAY 7 (today)
CURRENT WEIGHT: 64.6kgs

that's almost an entire Kg in a day. So it seems to have made up for DAY5-6.

Menu for day 6
Breakfast: 1 cup of coffee + 1 cube of sugar + 1 slice of toast
Lunch: 2 hard-boiled eggs + 1 big grated carrot
Dinner: 1/2 chicken + 1 lettuce with oil and lemon juice


Menu for Day 7
Breakfast: 1 cup of unsweetened tea (no milk)
Lunch: 1 naartjie
Dinner: 200 g lamb steak + 1 apple


This was pretty damn hard. Starting off the day with nothing to eat and then only getting something in at 7pm. What made it worse was that I went to go watch the football at Cape Town stadium with some friends and they were eating pies/burgers, drinking whatever and there I was drinking water. Was tough, but I managed to pull through. TIP - don't do that to yourself. Your stomach will feel like it's about to turn in to a black whole and devour you.

My energy levels seem to be fine. I'll probably train again tomorrow. Managed to get in a solid session of Tricep training and still managed to do all my max weights.


Tomorrow, it's back to spinach for lunch. I'm hoping I survive. Not keen for that at all.

Enjoy your saturday and your weekend

DAY 8

So the diet starts from day 1 again and I'm going to try something different with the spinach. Bought some baby spinach leaves. It didn't really help. They seem to feel like what I imagine Sea weed feels like if you were trying to eat it. blegh. I can quite easily say that I will never be eating spinach by itself for as long as I live. EVER AGAIN!

so there goes lunch. Tomorrow is another reading on the scales. Looking forward to it. If you're not sure on the menu for the day, just refer back to the first post.


From now on, I will just be posting measurements and anything else that I feel deserves to be posted - as the diet has already been given.

DAY 10

Something to note. Yesterday, I decided to test a little idea. I decided to over eat for supper and by over eat, I don't mean I ate like a beast. All I did was add another +-100g's of roast beef to supper and decided to see what the scale would say the next day

So I went in this morning and had already come to terms that I'll most probably not have lost anything since Day 9 where I weighed 64.1kgs.
I smiled like a retard when the scale read 63.6kgs. So that's another 0.5kgs down even with the "over-feeding".

I'm starting to think that as long as it's meat, don't feel too bad about going slightly over. This isn't the first time I over-fed on meat, that was the 2nd day in a row and both days had 0.5kg's of weight loss.

CURRENT WEIGHT ON DAY 10
63.6kgs


So that's it. That was the last meal of DAY 13

Current Weight  (as of 17:00) = 62.3kgs

I don't think I've woken up with such a big smile on my face ever. Just had my chicken, lettuce and lemon juice. Feeling great.

Tomorrow is a cheat day for me, before going back to normal dieting on sunday (low/no carbs and high protein intake).


I will post a more in-depth comment on Sunday 

Until then, enjoy your weekend
So I can quite easily say that, that diet helped me achieve an even higher level of self-control and discipline. It's insane. I don't have cravings, I don't feel like I should be eating more junk food etc

I woke up on saturday, cooked scrambled eggs - 4 full eggs. 2 egg whites. 1 tablespoon of Cottage cheese and 2 slices of ham. Boy did that taste good. With that, I took my EFA pills with a cup of black coffee (1 sugar)


I relaxed until 11pm - Headed over to Kauai and picked up a Caesar Chicken Sandwich with honey mustard and all the rest. (decided that this would be my post-workout snack)
Made my way to the gym with 75g Protein shake. 18g's of mixed aminos and BCAAs. I had a solid training session. By the end of the hour, I had taken in my entire protein shake.

By 3pm, I had finished off my Chicken sandwich and had had a toasted cheese and ham pita.
And then came 6pm. PANCHOS!! this had been the highlight of my weekend since day 1 of the diet.
4 Chilli poppers with sour cream. and shared a large portion of Nachos with extra sour cream and beef. - Was that good.
Went out after that, had a few drinks to some pool and got home rather early - around 12pm

__________________________________________________

THE END

So just re-reading that, brought back some memories of that experiment. Most of them weren't that great but I remember the feeling of being victorious and overcoming the challenge. Stronger than I was before...and a few kg's lighter. 

It's been almost a year since then and I think I can now give my final views on the Danish Hospital Diet.

CONCLUSION:
Let's look at the claims of the hospital diet one more time:

"The metabolism's change is that fundamental that at the end of the diet one can come back to the normal alimentation without gaining weight for two years. If the diet is respected daily, step by step, one can lose all the fat accumulated in tissues"

Will this diet help you lose fat fast. YES. Without a doubt, with only getting in such a small amount of calories in, it would be impossible not to...unless you're a field mouse. 

Will it stay off. No. The claims that it will help boost your metabolism is just myth. There is not science backing this diet. No hardcore evidence and I have yet to see another documented version of this diet.

WOULD I RECOMMEND IT?
NOT A CHANCE!!!

It is what it is: Intended for obese people who need to cut fat and cut it quickly so they can go under operation. That's all it is.

The diet is in no-way a miracle solution to stay skinny while binging on junk food after you've completed it. You'll put that weight back on. I would know.
 
As stated before. This diet is dangerous and one should check with your physician/gp/doctor before trying it.


I've had MANY MANY MANY requests on tips on how to do the diet and each time, my first reply is "why not try something else" but people want quick results. Trust me, you'll get it, but the results will be short lived.

There is one POSITIVE point to this diet and that is; Self-control and discipline. 
Before the diet, I had fallen off the wagon. I was in a state where I couldn't fully commit to my old lifestyle where I was controlled. With this diet, I was put back on that road, just this time, I was in a battle tank. 

So that's it for the Danish Hospital Diet.









11 comments:

  1. Hi Tambe

    So, did you pick up kilos again? How soon?

    ReplyDelete
  2. i did this diet a year ago after my baby was born I lost around 5kg. the weight has been off since. after the diet you need to control your potions and again eat the right type of food. I was at a weight of 67kg and now I am at around 62Kg . I am starting the diet again in a hope that I will loose another 5kg at least.

    ReplyDelete



  3. Mahlako Lebotsa20 August 2015 at 05:32

    i did this diet a year ago after my baby was born I lost around 5kg. the weight has been off since. after the diet you need to control your potions and again eat the right type of food. I was at a weight of 67kg and now I am at around 62Kg . I am starting the diet again in a hope that I will loose another 5kg at least.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is there alternatives to ham?

    ReplyDelete

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  11. I'm doing a halal version of this with spiced beef in place of ham. I'm on day 8 and haven't felt tired or sick at all. Also, I have lost 5kg at the 8 day mark (with an original start of 20kg overweight). I am cheating and using tiny sprinkles of rough salt, freshly cracked pepper, smoked paprika and very small amounts of fine garlic. If you can handle fasting in Ramadhaan, this diet is a walk in the park. The only issue was me getting used to coffee and sugar in the morning.

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