The "3 Day Diet" dates back to 1985 and today can be found all over the Internet and on book store shelves. The three day diet and its variants promise quick weight loss, a cleansing of the system, lower cholesterol and increased energy all through a "specific metabolic reaction" that no version of the diet has ever explained

. The diet goes on for three days and then off for four or five with lots of specific and cryptic steps so that when it fails the dieter can be pinned for doing something wrong.

First day breakfast includes coffee (no sugar), one half a grapefruit, and a piece of toast with 1 Tbsp peanut butter. For lunch, you are allowed a can of tuna, a piece of toast, and black coffee. Dinner consists of 3 ounces of chicken or lean meat, a cup of green beans, one cup of carrots, one apple, and one cup of regular vanilla ice cream. The following two days of the diet are pretty similar in meal quantity, though the specifics change, for example Day 2 recommends two beef franks for dinner in place of three ounces of lean meat. The diet claims that weight loss of 10 pounds is achievable over the 3 days that the diet lasts.

Hogwash is the answer. The question is what is a specific reaction to that claim? There is no evidence for the so-called "specific metabolic reaction." The only reason this diet would work to help a person lose weight is because of the lack of calories in the diet. In fact, because the diet is so low in carbohydrates a person could drop ten pound in three days.

Of course most of that would be water weight because carbohydrates encourage the body to retain water. By the way, losing that much weight from not retaining water is dangerous as the body needs water to survive.

Because of binge eating after such starvation and because most of the weight lost is from water, the weight will quickly return after the three days.

Deprive the body of water in three day cycles enough times and a person could develop kidney damage, dehydration, or a host of other dangerous conditions.

If something sounds too good to be true it is. The 3 day diet sounds too good to be true.