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BACKGROUND

Joel Marion, a fitness and diet expert created "The Cheat to Lose Diet" as a way to help you lose weight by putting your body's metabolism in a fat-burning zone. His system uses a combo of science and sensibility to help you lose some extra pounds while still delighting in your favorite foods.

You begin the diet by indulging in a "cheat day" where you get to eat all of your favorite, carbohydrate-filled foods. For the next six days, you follow Marion's system of low-fat diet foods and low-calorie eating. With each successive day, gradually more carbohydrates are added until you reach your "cheat day" on the seventh day.

The Cheat to Lose Diet plan is divided into three phases: Priming, Core and Maintenance. Each phase is outlined and equipped with eating and exercise guidelines.

PRO

• Online support is fairly comprehensive with recipes, printable food log sheets, a dining out guide, activity calculator and a message board to communicate with other cheaters
• The"cheat day" is a built-in reward for your six days of following The Cheat to Lose Diet plan
• The book contains 12 weeks of daily menu plans plus 75 recipes
• Uses the Glycemic Index for food selection

CON

• The "cheat day" has the potential to become a veritable gorge fest for those challenged by self-control
• 18-minute a day exercise requirement seems a bit paltry

DIET and NUTRITION

Both the book and online subscription of The Cheat to Lose Diet has a plethora of eating advice and guidelines. Recipes, food logs, and meal tips help to take much of the guesswork out of figuring out what you can or cannot eat during the six days of the week when you're following Marion's plan. On your "cheat day" there is no mention of counting calories, fat or carbohydrate grams. Your only stipulation is to eat whatever your deprived heart desires.

For the foods you can eat during those six days, you'll follow the Glycemic Index, which categorizes foods into high which digest easily and low, which take more time. You'll stick to high GI diet foods.

EXERCISE

Marion created his own "Cheat to Lose" exercise program which you are required to follow during most days of the week. The program consists of a mere 18-minutes of "fat-melting cardio workout" which he outlines for you in the book and online.

EXPENSE

The Cheat to Lose Online subscription costs $5 a week, which is billed to you every 13 weeks. At the time of registration, your credit card will be automatically charged $65 and every 13 weeks thereafter. You may cancel your subscription at any time but you will be charged a minimum 5-week charge of $25.

You can also buy the book in paperback for $13.95.

CONCLUSION

The Cheat to Lose Diet is not built on any revolutionary science. Rather, it is a practical approach to losing weight by eating a combination of low-fat, low-calorie foods and exercise six days out of the week. It avoids the inevitable diet pitfall of gorging yourself silly by allowing you the freedom to eat whatever you want one day out of each week. Marion's plan, which is backed by heaps and pages of scientific research, is nice but his message about being healthy 95% of the time and not-so-healthy 5% of the time is this plan's real gold star.

Common Misspellings

Cheet, loose, cheet to lose diet, cheating diet, cheat to loose diet, cheat to lose book

Cynthia
Aug 14th, 2008
10:04 am

Some knock this diet because of the cheating; but realistically, there is a high percentage of failure to anyone trying to stick to a solid health plan for life, in fact, I think it is down-right ridiculous for such an unrealistic expectation we place on ourselves (those of us who have trouble eliminating high fat/sugar foods) that causes a lot of unnecessary guilt. So the 'gorging' so to speak actually makes perfect sense, as not only does it speed up metabolism but many testimonies are those that people are not 'gorging' so much on the cheat day, as the logic is that knowing we have access to anything by the 'cheat' day, the natural inclination is not to go full-blown at all but ends up being rather moderate instead.

Christine
May 28th, 2008
8:55 am

This diet does work if you stick to the plan.
The online membership is somewhat helpful however is is lacking in some important aspects. First, there is not plan ahead menu or grocery list and I found that when I went in to look at a recipe that sometime when I came back to my home page my diet plan for the day had completely changed. In summary, the diet is GREAT, the website needs work.

sonia
Apr 4th, 2008
8:30 am

how does this work? So I cheat and lose weight? I am good at cheating!