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The Danish Diet

The Danish Diet is an extremely low-calorie (crash) diet that claims it can help people lose up to 20 pounds in 13 days. It is a short-term, extremely strict low-calorie diet that does not include an exercise component or nutrition education. It's designed to achieve rapid, but not necessarily sustainable, weight loss.

  1. The Plan

    • The diet maps out precisely what users should eat at each meal and no deviations are permitted. The menus vary widely in terms of calorie intake and types of food. Meals range from beef and salad to fish and yogurt, to some fruit and vegetables, to only coffee, tea or water. The rationale is that varying the amount you eat will increase your metabolism so that you'll burn more than the calories you've consumed, according to a review on Dietspotlight.com.

    Advantages

    • The diet is posted in its entirety on many websites at no cost, according to Dietspotlight.com. The diet also tells you exactly what and how much you can eat. This is helpful for those who want to follow a very specific plan rather than having to learn how to count calories, read labels or control how much they're eating at each meal.

    Disadvantages

    • The diet is so restrictive--on some days you are only allowed one food meal per day--many people will have trouble sticking to it. It's not geared for vegetarians, and you can't substitute one food for another. In fact, if you deviate in any respect from the menus, you're instructed to stop the diet and wait several months before adopting it again, according to a review on Sensational.com. Also, it's not a sustainable diet, and users are provided with no information about good nutrition or exercise that will help them keep from regaining the weight they've lost over the long term.

    Caveats

    • There's no indication of who created the diet or of any clinical research that may have been conducted to indicate its efficacy or safety, according to Dietspotlight.com. No official website for the diet seems to be available; the diet has been posted on many third-party websites but it's difficult, if not impossible, to walk back to a specific source, according to Sensational.com.

    Advice

    • This diet is extreme and people with health conditions should consult with their doctors before adopting it. It would be wise to research healthy eating habits and exercise options that you can adopt after halting the diet to make sure any weight you lose stays off. But, due to the severely low number of calories you'll be eating, it might be better to refrain from exercising or reduce your exercise intensity until several days to a week after you've started eating more normally.

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