The first thing you have to know is there is only one true Cookie Diet.
The secret formula to suppress hunger was developed by Dr. Sanford Siegel of Miami, and he and his wife still are the only ones to know the recipe.
And the cookies come in five flavors — oatmeal raisin, chocolate, banana, coconut and blueberry, but oatmeal raisin is the favorite.
Josie Rapier made the cover of People magazine when she lost 120 pounds — half her body weight — in eight months on this diet. Eating cookies.
"I go for faster weight loss," Siegel told me. "I have been treating obesity since the late 1950s. In more than 500,000 patients, none have had any problems with rapid weight loss. Actually, it enhances the motivation. It gets them to stick to the diet."
Siegel developed his Cookie Diet in 1975 when he was writing a book about hunger-suppressing foods. He baked them for his patients and shared them with some other physicians, but he says he did not commercialize the cookies until two years ago when his son, Matthew, "convinced me otherwise."
Now his cookies are available online (cookiediet.com) and at a store in Beverly Hills. The cost: about $60 a week for 42 cookies. And he is writing a book, "Dr. Siegel's Cookie Diet," due to be published in March.
Q. This whole idea sounds gimmicky: six cookies totaling 500 calories a day. What's the secret?
A. The diet calls for eating six hunger-suppressing cookies a day and eating the cookies when you are hungry. You have to get that idea across — not when it's time to eat but when you are hungry, because that is what hunger really is for. Telling people when it's time to eat.
Then at the end of the day you get to eat a real dinner. We tell you what you can have. Lots of protein. Very little carbohydrate and no fat. About a 300-calorie dinner is what we recommend, but the diet will work with a higher-calorie dinner.
The secret is the way the cookies suppress appetite. To my knowledge, no other diet food does this. The cookies are truly hunger-suppressing, and that's what's missing in all the other weight-loss plans.
Q. Can anybody just jump-start into this diet?
A. Any low-calorie diet should be under the care of a physician. You have to be examined and found to be in good physical condition. We know from experience that people who go to a doctor are more successful on a diet that those who don't. It's part of the psychology. An authority figure enhances the whole process.
Q. You have kept the cookie formula a secret?
A. Yes, and there's good reason for that. I'm so afraid of imitators. But imitators do not know our formula and their cookies do not suppress hunger. Still, they give the product a bad reputation.
Q. OK. Let's say I stick to this diet and lose lots of weight. How do I keep it off?
A. This is something I'm asked all the time. There is absolutely no relationship between losing weight on a diet and maintaining the weight loss.
You are faced with the same problems after you lose the weight. Your body doesn't remember you went to see Dr. Siegel or went on Weight Watchers. If you revert to your old habits you will gain the weight back.
Maintenance does let you eat somewhat more calories, but it's all a question of getting into a regimen and maintaining the weight loss. It's a combination of exercise and sensible eating.
No other doctor in any other field faces this problem. After your broken leg is healed, you don't go back to the orthopedist for tips on how to keep it from breaking again. Many people continue to use the cookies to maintain weight. And there's exercise.
Q. Exercise? How much?
A. You need to do quite a bit of exercise to maintain your weight loss.
Our Web site is designed to help. It can answer a bunch of questions that trouble people on a diet and also features calculators you can feed information into. ... The calculator will help you determine the maintenance level of calories.
Q. Can I have alcohol on the diet?
A. No.
Q. You are the right weight for your body. How much do you exercise?
A. I'm 80 years old, but I still play tennis and ski.
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(Jane Glenn Haas writes for The Orange County (Calif.) Register. E-mail her at jghaascox.net)