Mayo Clinic Diet

The Mayo Clinic Diet tells its readers that their program includes a plan to help them lose up to 6 to 10 pounds in two weeks. Dr. Donald Hensrud talks with Dr. Jennifer Ashton about how that claim is possible and practical.

The Mayo Clinic released a diet in late 2009 that legitimately earns the name “The Mayo Clinic Diet”.

Prior to this, use of that term was generally connected to fad diets which had no association with The Mayo Clinic.

The diet developed and endorsed by The Mayo Clinic is presented in the form of a book- The Mayo Clinic Diet and a logbook- The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal.

This diet begins with a two week period where five specific bad habits are replaced by five specific good habits. According to the authors this should result in a 6 to 10 pound loss during that 2 week period.

The remainder of the program is based in large part on a combination of portion control and exercise/activity.

This part of the program is designed to allow the safe loss of one to two pounds per week. This translates to a potential loss of 50 to 100 pounds over the course of a year.

The program uses a food pyramid that has vegetables and fruits as its base.

It puts carbohydrates, meat and dairy, fats, and sweets into progressively more limited daily allowances. The diet emphasizes setting realistic goals, replacing poor health habits with good ones, and conscious portion control.

The legitimate Mayo Clinic diet does not promote a high protein or “key food” approach. There have been diets falsely attributed to the Mayo clinic for decades.

Many or most web sites claiming to debunk the bogus version of the diet are actually promoting it or a similar fad diet.

The Mayo Clinic website appears to no longer acknowledge the existence of the false versions and prefers to promote their own researched diet.