Pros And Cons Of The 3 Day Military Diet

If you're desperate to lose weight quick, you might want to try out the military diet.

The 3 day Military Diet, contrary to its name, has nothing to do with military men or their diets. It’s popular instead, for its fast results. The diet is fixed, contrary to what I thought would just be a mere calorie count daily. It consists of weirdly specific food like hotdogs and vanilla ice cream. For those who haven’t seen the meal plans:

Day 1 – Breakfast
1/2 Grapefruit
1 Slice of Toast
2 Tbsp of Peanut Butter
1 Cup of Caffeinated Coffee or Tea

Day 1 – Lunch
1/2 Cup of Tuna (can be substituted with 1/2 an avocado + 2 Tbsp of Hummus)
1 Slice of Toast
1 Cup of Caffeinated Coffee or Tea

Day 1 – Dinner
4 Ounces of any meat (or protein substitute that is about 300 calories)
1 Cup of Green Beans
1/2 Banana
1 Small Apple
1 Cup of Vanilla Ice Cream

To help you decide if this diet is truly worthwhile trying or not, here are the pros and cons.

1. Simple Ingredients

You can easily get the things you need in one trip to the supermarket. Even if you wanted to start on it immediately, you’d probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry. The ingredients aren’t expensive either, and there is quite a variety between the meals, catering to the picky eaters. Vegans and vegetarians aren’t excluded from this diet too, with easy substitutes.

2. Easy To Follow

Relatively simple measurements – who wants to be weighing every single food item that goes into their body right? You don’t need to count calories since it’s a fixed diet, providing you with the essentials of carbohydrates, protein and healthy fat for optimal fat burning.

3. Great For Impatient People

You’re tired of being told to lose fat the typical way of doing cardio, I get it. It takes a while for the results to show as well and requires strict discipline coupled with immense mental strength to push yourself to go the extra distance. The military diet limits your body to a calorie deficit so you’re bound to shed a few kilograms. Besides, it’s so much easier to tell yourself, “just three days” than “just 1km more”, right?

But as with all things, there’s always a downside.

1. Not Nutritional

Hotdogs, canned tuna, saltine crackers, cheese. These foods are all processed foods with high amounts of salt. In addition to the high sodium levels, processed meat also contains high levels of saturated fat. Maybe this is the whole point of the diet, so that you find yourself reaching for your water bottle a bit more often than you used to and chugging water makes you feel fuller, so you eat lesser. I’m not sure about you, but I bloat easily after one dinner of instant noodles so I wouldn’t like walking around with a puffy face and swollen feet.

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2. Unsustainable

That’s not the only nutritional values I’m concerned about. Your fibre, vitamins and minerals intake suffers too, unless you take some over the counter supplements for that. Even then, that’s a controversial issue in itself because I know a couple of people who are advocates for all things natural, or simply that our body doesn’t need as much as those tablets provide.

Suddenly cutting your diet down by a few hundred calories can also make you feel tired easily, coupled with the lack of nutrition. If you’re one to exercise or have an active lifestyle, you might find yourself feeling weaker than normal and struggling in between your sets.

After the three days, it might be hard to be as disciplined and count your calories after having put yourself through a diet limited in choice that you might end up gaining everything back as well.

I think that it would be way easier to go on a calorie deficit diet on your own, so that you would be able to control what you put into your body, ensuring the quality of your food that hopefully would make you feel better than this diet’s options would. But if you’re really desperate and just struggling to fit into a dress for an important occasion, I’d say it’s worth a shot. It’s so strict that your self-discipline can stick to it, and it only takes three days.