Dr. Siegel’s Cookie Diet is a meal-replacement plan. One eats six of his cookies throughout the day in addition to one meal at the end of the day. That meal should include approximately six ounces of lean white meat protein and one cup of vegetables. Also drink at least 8 to 10 glasses of a non-caloric beverage, such as water, each day.

Dr Seigal advises his patients to eat six cookies throughout the day whenever hungry. The cookies are the only foods eaten all day and then the patients are ‘rewarded’ with dinner.

Depending on one’s individual food choices, the diet is between 800 and 1200 calories a day. Each cookie contains 90 calories and each dinner meal should contain no more than 500 calories. In addition, one is to drink eight glasses of liquid a day (ideally water). Coffee and tea are allowed on this diet. There are five varieties of Dr. Siegal's cookies that you can choose from: chocolate, oatmeal raisin, coconut, banana, and blueberry. Each week’s box of cookies contains a bottle containing a 7 day supply of generic type multi-vitamin pills, which are to be taken daily.

The cookie’s ingredient label is full of things you'd recognize or be able to pronounce. The first ingredient is sugar, with 9 grams of sugar in each serving. The cookies have less than a gram of fiber per serving. Dr. Seigal states that the cookies contain a "particular mix of proteins" as being key to keeping users feeling full. The cookies are relatively low in sodium, with no more than 200 milligrams per serving. The ingredients appear to be nutritionally similar to most of the popular meal replacement shakes that provide a quantity-controlled diet product.

Dr. Siegal states that his cookies are scientifically designed to help to control appetite and reduce hunger. Each cookie contains 90 calories and contains ingredients such as whole wheat flour, bran and oats. However the main reason he says they work is due to a secret blend of amino acid proteins. 

 The cookies are edible but not the tastiest. Even Dr. Seigel’s website states that ‘we wouldn’t call them delicious’. They say delicious cookies make people fat and there certainly is some logic to this as dieters are less likely to overindulge in really good tasting cookies. Cookies are packed in boxes containing 42 cookies packed in 7 daily bags which will last for one week if the diet is followed according to the instructions above. The price is approximately $56 US plus shipping and handling. 

 As a part of my own dieting hobby, I personally experimented with this diet for a couple of weeks, and thereafter occasionally for a few days at a time. I enjoyed the novelty of the idea, and the cookies were acceptable to me, however, NOTE: that a Dr. Siegal’s cooke tastes better after sprinkling a packet of Splenda on top and placing it in the microwave for 10 seconds just before eating.

Since I was already normal weight and used to small portions when I did my experimentation, I didn’t find myself hungry on the diet, but the lack of food variety was a problem for me. Also, I kept comparing my own homemade recipes for portion-controlled foods to the purchased cookies … such as my microwave cookies made from protein powder which have more grams of protein and less calories. After comparison, I felt that if I really wanted to only eat cookies all day, I would be better served to eat 6 of my own homemade portion-controlled protein cookies. 

 I found “Dr Siegel’s Cookie Diet Book” (2009) to be rather an interesting book, and I’ve read it a few times. I enjoyed the chapters dedicated to weight loss history, and found Dr. Siegal’s attitude about weight-loss to be refreshing. In his opinion, speed of weight loss is a critical success factor because when people don't get results right away, they're more likely to get demotivated and quit.

Dr. Siegal's positon is that weight loss and weight maintenance should be recognized as two different tasks and two different skills, like fixing a car when it's broken and then taking ongoing care of your car so it doesn't break again.

I was especially interested in that part of the book in which Dr. Siegel refers to the scientific principle of 3500 calories equaling one fat pound as “The Great Calorie Theory and in his discussion as to why, although he accepts that principle as a working model, he considers it to be an unproven Theory. 

  I found Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet to be a reasonable diet for anyone who wants to eat pre-packaged meal-replacements during the daytime and other foods only at dinner-time, and who has a body with an average personal calorie burn which consistently falls within the number averages of the Harris Benedict and Mifflin formulas.

Since I am a short, normal-weight, older, sedentary, reduced-obese, female ... one of my own problems with the plan is that the daily cookie total was 540 calories. Adding another 500 calories for dinner brings the plan up to 1040 calories… which my 8 years of careful food records show is actually very close to my present daily calorie burn for maintenance of my current weight. At 1,200 calories, my body gains weight, so this plan was actually NOT calorie-restrictive ENOUGH to cause weight-loss for me personally, and I didn't enoy the plan enough to use it long-term for my ongoing maintenance.

Dr. Siegel’s official website is: www.cookiediet.com

Below are two videos about the Cookie Diet.

The FIRST video is an ABC news broadcast about the Cookie Diet. 
Click inside the video twice to see it on YouTube.
 

Yesterday, my article was about the

Difference between Correlation and Causation.

Below are two examples of media
handling the same recent health research study.

 

 

7 Daily Servings of Fruits, Veggies Best for Happiness,
Study Finds 'Strive for 5' might need an update. 
        Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) 

"People who eat seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day have the highest levels of happiness and mental health, according to a new study.

In a joint effort with Dartmouth University, researchers at the University of Warwick examined the eating habits of 80,000 people in England and found that mental well-being rose with the number of daily servings of fruits and vegetables, peaking at seven servings a day.

The study, which appears in the journal Social Indicators Research, defied a serving as about 80 grams (2.8 ounces).

"The statistical power of fruit and vegetables was a surprise. Diet has traditionally been ignored by well-being researchers," study co-author Sarah Stewart-Brown, a professor of public health, said in a university news release.

Further research is needed to learn more about the reasons behind the findings, she added.

"This study has shown surprising results, and I have decided it is prudent to eat more fruit and vegetables. I am keen to stay cheery," study co-author Andrew Oswald, a professor in the economics department, said in the news release.

Currently, many Western governments recommend that people eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day to protect against heart disease and cancer, the release noted.

While the study found an association between fruit and vegetable servings and well-being, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship."

 

 Here’s another take on the same Research.

Study: If You're 'Keen to Stay Cheery,'
7 Fruits and Vegetables a Day
        By Lindsay Abrams 
        Oct 14, 2012 (the Atlantic)

"On the psychological side of dietary recommendations

PROBLEM: We go on about eating for health, but we're usually talking about the physical side. The World Health Organization recommends five servings of fruits and vegetables a day for your body, but not much is known about how much is best for psychological well-being.

METHODOLOGY: Economists and public health researchers from the University of Warwick, in conjunction with Dartmouth College, used data from several randomized, cross-sectional surveys that accounted for the eating habits of about 80,000 people living in the U.K. The fruits and vegetables typically consumed by each person were compared with their life satisfaction, mental well-being, presence of mental disorders, self-reported health, happiness, nervousness, and how often they "feel low."

They factored in as many variables as they could think of, including other the rest of their diets, alcohol, and lots of demographic, social and economic factors.

RESULTS: A "remarkably robust" pattern was found, in which "happiness and mental health rise in an approximately dose-response way with the number of daily portions of fruit and vegetables." While in some cases it rounds out at the recommended five per day, well-being appears to peak at seven.

In many cases, the improvements associated with fruit and vegetable consumption were substantial. For example, the authors explain that "When comparing small and large levels of fruit and vegetable consumption per day, the effect corresponds to between 0.25 and 0.33 life-satisfaction points. To put that in perspective, the known (huge) effect of being unemployed corresponds to a loss of 0.90 of a life-satisfaction point."

CONCLUSION: The findings are "consistent with the need for high levels of fruit-and-vegetable consumption for mental health and not merely for physical health."

IMPLICATIONS: This isn't a definitive randomized trial, but it's an interesting correlation that warrants more research. Economist Andrew Oswald in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick seems pretty convinced, though. As he put it, "This study has shown surprising results and I have decided it is prudent to eat more fruit and vegetables. I am keen to stay cheery."

Aren't we all, Professor Oswald. Aren't we all.

The full study, "Is Psychological Well-being Linked to the Consumption of Fruit and Vegetables?" will be published in the journal Social Indicators Research. "

 At the end, both of these articles specifically admit that this study involves only a correlation, not causation.

However, do you join me in thinking that a typical reader of these articles will come away believing that new research says that they would probably be happier if they ate more fruits and veggies? And… that one of the reasons they now feel unhappy, could be because they don’t eat ENOUGH fruits and vegetables?

One of the most common errors in the press is the confusion between correlation and causation in scientific and health-related studies.

In theory, these are easy to distinguish … an action or occurrence can CAUSE another (such as smoking causes lung cancer), or it can CORRELATE with another (such as smoking is correlated with alcoholism). If one action causes another, then they are most certainly correlated.

But just because two things occur together does not mean that one caused the other, even if it seems to make sense.

In general, we should all be wary of our own bias. We like explanations. The media often concludes a causal relationship among correlated observances when causality was not even considered by a research study itself. Without clear and definite reasons to accept that one thing CAUSES another, the fact that a correlation exists is all we should accept. Again, two events occurring in close proximity does not imply that one caused the other, even if it seems to makes perfect sense.

Once upon a time, this type of error wasn’t too bad.
If one ate a berry and got sick, it was wise to see meaning in that data. (Better safe than sorry). The same goes for a red-hot coal. Only one touch will give all the correlations needed. Being bullied by a primitive world of nature, it's far worse to miss a link than it is to make one up. A false negative yields the greatest risk.

Now conditions are reversed.
People in modern civilization are bullies over nature. New claims about causation are often made so we can make large interventions in nature. A false positive today often means approving drugs that have no effect, or imposing regulations that make no difference, or wasting money in schemes to limit unemployment. Now, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation…. of making counterfeit relationships and bogus findings,… grow larger and larger. A false positive is now more burdensome than it's ever been. The only thing we have to fight this attitude is the catchphrase. “correlation is not causation”.

I suggest that we be very cautious in the way we allow media claims to influence us into making personal changes in our own behaviors, ... especially in relation to the way they tend to limit our personal choices of the foods we eat, and the way they tend to add to our personal expense and health risks through recommendions of unnecessary drugs. 

Mistaking correlation for causation finds a cause that simply isn't there.

   
Being Resilient is a very good thing.

What is Resilience?

“Resilience is an individual's tendency to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual "bouncing back" to a previous state of normal functioning, or simply not showing negative effects.”

“Resilience is that quality which allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever.”

“Resilience is a dynamic process whereby individuals exhibit positive behavioral adaptation when they encounter significant adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress.”

Today, for me, personal resilience means that after overeating yesterday, this morning, I have been able to encourage myself to put forth my best dieting efforts, yet again.

I enjoyed this video, although I am a “cat person” rather than a "dog person",  Perhaps you will too.

Achieving personal weight-loss and maintenance of that weight loss is a problem for many people, including me. I tend to work off the premise that a solution exists for most problems.

General problem solving skills apply here. When I can’t find any solution for a personal problem, then I try to more clearly identify the problem, or even re-define it. Sometimes I find that my best action plan for a solution to a problem is the simple Acceptance of the Reality that an ongoing problem is likely to remain in existence throughout my lifetime.

To come up with a new approach to an old problem, it often helps to look at the problem differently. If we do the same things, we will get the same results. In my experience, when a new solution is required, one of the best things I can do is to change my perspective on the problem.

Sometimes this means looking at different graphics, or reading about new diets, or asking myself new questions. When I explore new angles of a problem, I often see something new, which will give me an idea of a new way to approach it.

How does this mental process work?

When faced with a puzzle, we solve it by first running through all of our usual obvious solutions.

First we engage our left brain by recalling the obvious tried and true solutions. Sometimes these ideas work, sometimes they don’t. As soon as our left brain has exhausted all ideas that don’t work, we get frustrated and hit the wall. The wall is the inability of our left brain to create new connections from our old ideas. We are unable to connect the old ideas with fresh ones, to find different solutions with the same methods. The only way to get unstuck is to try to see the problem in a new way.

At the point of total frustration, our right brain engages. Our right brain solves problems with images. Once the left brain has gotten out of the way in total frustration, our right brain is able to freely associate in the language that it knows: pictures. Then, it hits — the connection is made, and all of a sudden, we have a glimmer of a new idea, our mind goes off in a different direction, and things start falling into place. What we have just done is literally created a new connection in our brain.

Sometimes we don’t get an answer to our problem because we aren’t asking the right question. If we ask the same question over and over, we will most likely get the same answer. So, we need to figure out how to rephrase the question or ask a new question. Sometimes changing the wording we use is helpful, sometimes it helps to look at a different graphic.

When working with data like weight or calorie numbers, I think about how I can display or visualize that data in a new way. Looking at the same data in different formats enables me to see new things. I see different things when I look at different charts and graphics even when they reflect the same basic numbers.

Looking at the big picture often leads to a new way of seeing the problem. Sometimes zooming out, helps me realize that I’m asking the wrong question.

DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Tools, contains links to some online sites which use different methods of graphing weight. I find a consistent use of these different visual aides helpful to motivate me, and these visuals often provide me with insight about my own behavior.

In my own case, one personal solution for the weight-loss and maintenance problem has become my choice to make Dieting into an ongoing, enjoyable hobby for myself. For more on this, see "Dieting Is My Hobby. Another part of the solution for me, is to ACCEPT certain personal Realities as Truth. For example:

• I will never achieve perfection in any aspect of my life;
  
• Eating the way my own body is naturally programmed to eat will cause me to be morbidly obese,
  
• At this point …and probably forever, maintaining my weight-loss requires constant, consistent monitoring of my own personal food intake;
  
• People are different, there is more than only One “Right Way”.