The Claim
Taken straight from the Eat Stop Eat website, Brad Pilon (creator of the Eat Stop Eat intermittent fasting diet plan) says:

“Scientific Research Proves That Eat Stop Eat Will Help You Lose Weight, and Get Rid of Stubborn Body Fat – All While Preserving your Metabolism and Without Making You Lose Lean Muscle.”

The Truth
While most diet plans are nothing more than anecdotal mumbo jumbo or “old wives tales” about how to lose weight, this one is not.

As someone who spend a few years working in a research lab back in my college days, I’m always one of the first people to demand some proof to back up your claims.

And much to my surprise, the Eat Stop Eat program provides exactly that.   The creator, Brad Pilon did a research paper back in his college days called “The Metabolic Effects of Short Periods of Fasting in humans and its Potential Application in Weight Loss.”

And his Eat Stop Eat program presents those findings in an easy to read version of that research paper.  Trust me, if you’ve ever read a journal article before, you’ll very much appreciate the layman’s terms version.

Complete Overview

Presenting the typical first day of a new diet…

7 am on Day 1 of my new, last diet I’ll ever need! Wait! Where is my 326 page diet book I feel asleep while reading last night? There it is – under the bed! Okay, let me check to make sure I have everything I need. I bought a food scale to weigh my food; a journal to track my results; a 64 ounce water bottle to make sure I’m drinking enough, a calculator to figure out calories, carbs, and fat grams; a separate recipe book that is the companion to the diet book; ordered the special vitamins I’m supposed to take while on the diet; and I took the week one food list in the book to the store last night and bought everything on it (I had to buy 2 pounds of Swiss Chard and I hate Swiss Chard! How am I going to force myself to eat it?).

10 am. I’m starving. I’m still reading the introduction to the diet (wish I wouldn’t have fallen asleep before finishing it last night and maybe I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t so boring) so I haven’t had breakfast yet. I still have 50 pages to read before I actually get to the food part.

11:30 am. I’m finally ready to make my breakfast! It’s a smoothie. That should be pretty easy except I have to find my blender and wash and cut up my fruit. It’s okay. I can do this. Crap! I’m out of ice cubes and I need a cup of them for my smoothie. Oh well. I’ll just use water instead.

12:00 pm. My watery smoothie is gone. I’m still hungry. But, hey, it’s lunchtime!

1:00 pm. Who knew it could take so long to cut up vegetables and make salad dressing for a salad?

2:00 pm. I ate my salad and have the kitchen cleaned up. It’s a good thing I started this diet on a weekend. All I’ve done so far is make food. Oh crap! I forgot to write everything I ate in my journal.

2:30 pm. Consulted my checklist for the day. Does a salad count as 1 or 2 servings of vegetables? Let me see if my 326 page diet book tells me that.

3:30 pm. The salad was 2 servings of vegetables. Next item on my checklist: drink 8 glasses of water. Oh crap! I forgot to start drinking water.

4:00 pm. My stomach hurts. I shouldn’t have drank those 3 glasses of water so fast. I’m hungry too. My snack is 20 almonds. Maybe if I eat them really slow…….

4:02 pm. The almonds are gone. I think I’ll start dinner.

6:00 pm. I found all the dinner recipes in my diet cookbook and have my dinner ready! It looks okay except for the darn Swiss Chard I don’t like.

6:05 pm. Dinner stunk. Maybe I can eat my evening snack early. Oh goody. I get to have 6 stinking crackers and 1 ounce of cheese. Do I look like a mouse?

6:15 pm. I ate all my food for the day but I still have lots of water to drink. And I forgot to take my special vitamin this morning. I’ll take that now. Maybe it will fill me up.

6:30 pm. I want food! No, I’m going to do this. I’ll keep myself busy by trying to figure out how that food calculator I bought works.

7:00 pm. Did you know that a 3.52 ounce Toblerone chocolate bar has 510 calories, 30 grams of fat, and 60 grams of carbs? I’m going to check the bar I hid from myself (yes I remember where it is) to see if the calculator is correct.

7:10 pm. It is. Now I’m figuring out how many calories, fat, and carbs in 1 piece of it because I was really hungry and figured 1 piece would be okay.

7:15 pm. Just one more piece of the bar won’t hurt, right?

7:30 pm. Hey! I just realized I missed my mid-morning snack because I was so busy making breakfast and lunch.

7:35 pm. A small container of light yogurt! That’s all I got for my mid-morning snack? I’m eating it.

7:36 pm. My yogurt is gone. Now what should I do. I guess I could read some more of my diet book. I’m supposed to read another 40 pages before I start day 2 of my diet.

8:00 pm. Did you know that if you rip the pages of a diet book out one by one they work great to start a fire in the fireplace so that you can roast some marshmallows for s’mores?

Okay, you may think I went a little overboard with that description but I have literally spent entire days reading about food, prepping food, and cooking food while I was on a diet. And I have spent literally spent thousands of dollars on diet programs, diet tools, and diet books that just didn’t work.

Maybe losing weight doesn’t have to be so complicated or expensive.

That’s why Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat program caught my eye although after reading through the sales pages it started to sound too good to be true because Brad claims that using his program:

– You don’t have to worry about food all day (is that because I won’t be eating?)

– Your metabolism will not slow down and you will not go into starvation mode (even though I’ll be fasting????)

– You will save money (I’ve never been on a diet that saved me money)

– You will have great workouts (I never have good workouts if I don’t eat something a few hours before I go)

Then I did some further investigation and found that Brad’s claims of

-“ You don’t have to worry about food all day” didn’t mean I would be starving myself. It just meant a combination of intermittent fasting with normal eating which translates into 1 or 2 days a week of fasting and eating normally (not being a piggy who is eating 2 bags of Cheetos at one sitting) the other days of the week. There’s no counting calories or fat grams or carbs or the number of croutons you put on your salad.

– Your metabolism will not slow down and you will not go into starvation mode” because you only fast for 24 hours and experts say starvation mode doesn’t kick in until about 72 hours after calorie reduction.

– “You will save money” meant I would really would save money because his program doesn’t involve buying expensive supplements, calorie counting gadgets, special foods, or expensive diet literature. His program is $29.95 and that’s not per month. It’s a one time fee.

-“You will have great workouts” means (and I like this one the best) you don’t have to work out hours every day for his program to be successful. A couple of weight training/strength training sessions are enough.

The program really isn’t complicated or expensive. Plus, Brad has the credentials that most of us want to see to back up his claims. He’s a nutrition professional with an honors degree in nutrition. He worked in the mainstream weight loss industry for several years, and he’s a an athlete who wouldn’t promote something that doesn’t work and would cause people to lose muscle instead of fat.

Plus, if you buy the program (which I personally know is less than the one month cost for meetings and consultations at well known weight loss companies) and you decide it’s not worth the money Brad will give you a 100% refund.

There truly is nothing to lose except the time it takes to read Brad’s e-book, time that you may just find was very well spent.

As Brad says, with Eat Stop Eat you will “discover why the most effective tool for weight loss can never be put into a pill.”

Learn more about the Eat Stop Eat Program by clicking here.

The Bad Stuff
Like any dieting program, it’s not all sunshine and puppy dogs.  It can take a little time to get used to the fasting days.  While you never go a day without eating (you go dinner to dinner), it can be a little tough to get used to the first week or two… it does get easier though.

If you’re looking to lose weight fast, then this isn’t the diet program for you.  It’s not one of those lost 5-10 pounds a week programs – more like 1-2 lbs per week is what you can expect (maybe a little bit faster the first few weeks, but after that you’ll settle in).

It can be a little tricky to get enough veggies when you’re on one of your fasting days since they tend to fill you up so much faster than other foods like pizza or pasta.  Fortunately, you can get around by juicing some of your veggies – be sure to check out my green organic spinich pear mojito video on facebook… not my friend yet then friend me, Ingo Loge’.

The Good Stuff
You know how with some diets you’re severely restricted in what you can eat to the point of not feeling like you can go out to eat with your friends or family.  With Eat Stop Eat, that’s not the case.  You can go out to eat, and while I’d recommend making healthy choices when you do, you can do so guilt free and still lose weight.

The beauty of this diet plan is the simplicity.  It’s not super complicated like systems like Weight Watchers where you are tracking every last bite of food you eat during the day and calculating points to make sure you don’t go over. The intermittent fasting method is easier to follow and still gets just as good or better results than those other complicated dieting plans.

Final Verdict
In the end, would I recommend Eat Stop Eat as a program for losing weight?

Quite simply, yes I would.   In fact, I give it my highest rating – 5 Stars.

If you don’t know your Food Finger Print yet.. get it today free at www.myfoodfingerprint.com

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