Sacred Heart Diet?

Has anyone ever tried the sacred heart diet? You eat this vegetable soup everyday as much as you want along with vegetables or fruit..it varies each day. and you only do it for a week. but it can jump start your diet...

Anyone have any comments about this diet?

I was wanting to start it tomorow..

Yep, tried it - it didn't work.

There's a lot of other crash diets that I've tried that have had better results (Isogenics has a good one). I still make the soup quite often though because I like it. If you make the soup and eat it 2 or 3 times a day instead of meals or snacks you will loose weight because the soup only has about 150 calories for a 2 cup bowl.

sounds really really unhealthy to me. you need all food groups in your food plan. hope you won't start this diet. You will only get big problems and binges (because your body will yearn the right foods and will do anything to get them).

Jo

Have you figured out how many calories a day are you consuming on this diet? That is what worries me, and it's not nutritionally well-rounded.

The Sacred Heart Diet is a fad diet that has been circulating for many years.

The diet was supposedly thought to come from the cardiology department at Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital where it was used for overweight heart patients. However, like most of these diets - this is an urban myth and the hospital initially thought to be associated with it has denied the association and actually given a press release frowning upon the diet.

The Sacred Heart Diet has been called a number of different names (such as the Spokane Heart Diet, the Cleveland Clinic Diet, Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital Diet and the Miami Heart Institute Diet). The diet also bears a striking resemblance to the cabbage soup diet (which is also a unhealthy crash diet)

This diet is not recommended

• The Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal Canada (Hôpital Sacre Coeur) issued a press release in 2004 stating that "no nutritionist at the Hospital took part in the development of this diet" (ref - French).
• The American Heart Association have claimed that the diet is phony (ref).
• The Sacred Heart Medical Center also disclaim any association with the diet (read here).

The Sacred Heart Medical Center writes:

"One of our major concerns about this diet plan is it emphasizes the consumption of fruits and vegetables while excluding the consumption of meat or fish, cereal grains and milk products on most days. Any diet that focuses on only certain food groups will be low or deficient in essential nutrients and, therefore, lead to poor nutritional status long-term.

Our experience with any low calorie diets, like this one, is that they do not lead to permanent weight loss. Once individuals start eating in a more normal pattern, the weight is regained. ...."

The Sacred Heart diet is a soup-based diet, and claims that you will lose a lot of weight in the first week. This may be true, but most of the weight will tend to be water - and will be gained right back very soon after the diet ends and you go back to your normal eating habits.

This may lead to yo-yo dieting which can add to frustration, self-esteem issues and a life of constantly going up and down with your weight with no real progress.This diet is very clearly an unsustainable fad diet.

Most of these diets claim some magical fat-burning science is involved, or that there is something special about the combination of foods. This is simply untrue - it is nothing more complex than a reduction in calories!

Calorie Count is all abou sustainable weight loss, this can be done by using the Tools on this site to achieve a healthy reduction in calories leading to weightloss which can be maintained long-term without too much effort.

Hi,

You might be interested in my post to a question on this topic titled, “Is the Sacred Heart Hospital diet good to do?”

Mary

What the heck? Why are there like 4 separate threads on this diet all of a sudden?

I'm not quite sure why, but maryhartley bumped a bunch of them up, even though they were long dead. And her link states that it is a diet used for overweight heart patients - I'd say nycgirl's summary (that it's an urban myth, that no hospital has claimed responsibility for it or uses it, and that it will not work) was a lot more thorough and consistent.

christena911, did you try the diet?

We repeat: Is the Sacred Heart Hospital diet good to do?

Calorie Count's mission is to promote healthy and sustainable weight management. This diet is NOT recommended.

NYCGirl, Moderator