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I want opinons of Sacred Heart Diet, ONLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE TRIED IT!!!

I'm on my second day would love opinions this is what i found on the web

How to lose 10-17lbs Reporter tries Sacred Heart Diet #87

by Donna1978

Like millions of others, I am trying to lose weight. Many claim I am not overweight, but I know my body. I recently went from a size 10 to a size 12. Whether people think I need to lose weight or not, this jump in size means I've gained weight.

My weight has fluctuated for years. In college I gained some weight: I went from a size 8 to a 14. (I was on the anti-diet: pizza and beer.) Then over time I went down to a 10 and maintained that for years. Over one summer, I did my own version of the Atkin's diet and lost 20 pounds, going back to a size 8. I felt hot for once! As mentioned before, I am now at a 12 and not happy with my figure.

I've got some flab here and there and also have a problem fitting into jeans-due to my womanly hips and thighs. I've faced the reality that I can no longer do the junior department. After doing an article on diet trends, I realized that diet pills and fad diets are not the way to go. Healthy eating and getting some exercise is-burning more calories that you take in is key. (See my related article on the BodyBugg.)

My fiancé and I have made some changes to what we eat and have not gained any weight, however, I wanted to get down to an ideal weight and maintain it. So, I asked my doctor if he recommended a diet. He left the exam room and returned with a copy of the Sacred Heart Diet.

In this two-part series, I will show readers how I prepared for the diet and then share my diet results in a second article.

Diet Overview

The Sacred Heart Diet, according to a diet website, was created by doctors at the hospital as a quick diet (just seven days) to help heart patients lose a significant amount of weight prior to surgery.

In addition to losing weight, those on the Sacred Heart Diet report having more energy, no craving for sweets and just feeling better. The diet also removes impurities from the body.

Those on Sacred Heart Diet can lose from ten to 17 pounds in one week by eating a special fat-burning soup every day, and then following a plan of what can accompany the diet each day. The recipe will be shown at the end of this article, but the soup contains stewed tomatoes, green beans, celery, green peppers, green onions, carrots, chicken broth, soup mix and seasonings.

Over the seven days, in addition to as much soup as you want, there is a different diet for each day:
Day One- Soup and fruit. (no bananas)
Day Two- Soup and vegetables (no dry beans, peas or corn), and then a baked potato with butter at dinnertime
Day Three- Soup, fruit and veggies (no potato!) By today, up to seven pounds could be shed!
Day Four- Bananas (at least three) and skim milk- on this day, the body will need calcium and potassium.
Day Five- Soup, 10-20 ounces of beef and tomatoes (one can or six fresh)
Day Six- Soup and as much beef and veggies you want
Day Seven- Soup, brown rice, veggies, unsweetened fruit juice

Approved drinks- water, black coffee, tea, cranberry juice or unsweetened fruit juice. It is very important not to have alcohol or carbonated beverages- even diet.

Preparation

I brought my printout of the diet with me to the grocery store. We bought all the necessary ingredients for the soup, as well our accompaniments: two cantaloupes, some grapes, some plums, baby carrots, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, a big cucumber and snap peas. We also bought a few bottles of cranberry-grape juice and a large bottle of unsweetened apple juice.

As my fiancé and I were preparing the soup, I made the comment that, "Geez, no wonder you lose so much weight on the diet! I'm burning a zillion calories getting it ready!" We had to peel two bags of carrots and chop up a ton of veggies. As I put everything in the pots (I do not have a stew pot, so I used two large pots) I couldn't help but think of how healthy it looked.

I am not a fan of celery, but this soup has a whole bunch. I then recalled reading once that takes more calories to burn than to eat. I looked it up online and according to the Urban Legends Reference Pages, it sure is true. Celery is a negative-calorie food. The site says that an eight-inch stalk of celery takes six calories to eat and six to burn. But yet, it can still fill you up, which makes it great to eat to fight cravings. Realizing this leads me to see how this soup diet can really work.

We also chopped the fruit and veggies that we'd be eating throughout the week. I decided to use the large Ziploc bags I had and made bags for each of us for the week. This way, we could take our fruits and veggies with us to work.

Aside from being tedious in chopping and slicing, the soup was easy to make.

Taste-Test

The pot has been simmering for about a half hour. Gosh, carrots take a while to get soft. The broth was fine-I had already added a ton of salt and pepper to my liking. The vegetables were all tender. The soups tasted okay-I admit it will take a while to get used to. But, with eating fruit and veggies on the side, I am sure I can manage.

Will it Work?

Check out my related article as of March 4, 2007 to see my results. As I am on the diet, I will keep a diary of my progress.

Recipe

Ingredients:
2 cans of stewed tomatoes
3 large green onions (I just bought a bag)
1 large can of chicken broth (or beef broth)
1 package of fat-free soup mix (I used Lipton Onion Mushroom)
1 bunch celery
2 can green beans
2-3 green bell peppers
2 lbs. carrots

(Optional additions: fresh mushrooms, zucchini, squash, yellow onions, chopped garlic, chili flakes or cabbage.)

Directions:

Chop veggies into small pieces and place in pot
Add water to cover
Season with salt, pepper as desired
Add canned veggies
Bring to rapid boil
Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are tender

Day Seven of the Sacred Heart Weight Loss Plan:
I made it! Today is a light day. Soup, brown rice and veggies. I started off with soup for breakfast. For lunch, we had rice and soup and the same for dinner. I drank apple juice all day.

RESULTS
So, there is good news and bad news. The diet did not live up to the 10-17 pounds it promised. However, I did lose some weight so I am not complaining. My weight seemed to fluctuate each day. I knew that would drive me crazy and that's why I hate having a scale.

MY LOSS? (Drumroll, please!)
Eight pounds. Not bad. My pants feel a little looser and that is really what I wanted. The key here is keeping that off.

OTHER GOOD POINTS
--Increased energy- By day three my energy level went up and I felt more mentally aware.
--Will power- most importantly, I learned that I can go a week without fast-food or without visiting the vending machine at work.
--Cravings- I didn't have those salt and sugar cravings
--More H20- I kept up with drinking 6-8 glasses of water on the days I was at work. At home, I didn't drink as much water. But, at work I felt great!
--More veggies and fruit- in my normal diet I don't have a lot of fresh veggies and fruit

BAD POINTS
--On days that I did not bring enough fruit or veggies snacks, or forgot my lunch soup at home, I was starving. On the diet, you can have as much said food as you want, but only if you remember to bring it!
--The soup is good, but by Sunday, I was thankful to have something else!

TAKE-AWAYS
I would recommend this diet to someone as an eating plan before starting to eat better, not as a quick diet. I think that doing this for one week- without cheating- taught me a lot about my own will-power (that I do have it) and how much better I can feel by eating better and having more water, which of course the soup helped with. I plan to make this soup every few weeks and do a slimmed down version of the eating plan. As I mentioned, this is something good to do to clean out the system, lose some initial pounds and get the body ready for a healthier lifestyle.

Because I did not cheat, not once, I was disappointed at first that I did not lose 17 pounds. (I only exercised two of the seven days, which could say something, too.)

But you know what? I can live with losing eight because I gained a lot more.

Also I'm drinking lots of grapefruit juice with no sugar.... this does wonders for the hunger pans

undertherainbow,

You are obnoxious...this is NOT a starvation diet. Go do something a little more useful with all the time you apparently have on your hands.

As stated above, this diet is recommended by physicians. I personally dont believe a physician would ever recommend starving yourself.

Original Post by nunyihareed:

undertherainbow,

You are obnoxious...this is NOT a starvation diet. Go do something a little more useful with all the time you apparently have on your hands.

As stated above, this diet is recommended by physicians. I personally dont believe a physician would ever recommend starving yourself.

That's the thing, its NOT!!! Its a scam fad diet that has been around forever.  Any diet that has you eating basically the same thing every day is doomed to fail, because the first time you eat a normal meal, all your weight will come right back on!

Original Post by nunyihareed:

undertherainbow,

You are obnoxious...this is NOT a starvation diet. Go do something a little more useful with all the time you apparently have on your hands.

As stated above, this diet is recommended by physicians. I personally dont believe a physician would ever recommend starving yourself.

I must say, you have a lot of nerve registering on a health-related website for the specific purpose of berating a volunteer moderator who is simply re-iterating the official position of this site on fad dieting.

I do not know of any physicians who would recommend this diet.  Indeed, as was mentioned upthread, the medical center for which it was named disavows it completely and released this message, which includes the following:

This diet did not originate at Sacred Heart and it is not endorsed by the Dietitians or the staff of our Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.

We would appreciate your assistance in helping others, like yourself, who have been misled by this diet to let them know it is not a Sacred Heart Medical Center program and is not considered healthy or safe.

Actually, this diet does work!

I started it to only lose some pounds; not even permanently.

When I began, I was 136 lbs. Without the diet, I wanted to get back down to 120 lb. I worked out for an hour everyday and lost a few pounds just doing that (and eating right of course). This diet is not a starvation diet...you EAT ALL DAY LONG!!! If you drink the recommended amount of water (6-8 glasses), you shouldn't feel starved on that alone.

Anyways, after 7 days of fully committing to this diet, I weighed 125 lbs. That's an 11 lb. loss. Also, you MUST MUST MUST workout at least 30 minutes everyday with this diet. If you sit around...it will just sit there.

I used this diet once every month. After this "jump start", if you will, I was able to eat extremely healthy and got used to drinking plenty of water afterwards. I still kept off the weight!! Yeah, sure, on the weekends I gained a couple lbs. back, but who doesn't??! COMMIT, WORKOUT, and STAY HEALTHY!!

This diet is all about commitment. If you don't like the soup, this diet isn't for you. So, don't force yourself. The soup is great! I love vegetables and fruits anyways, so that was no problem. You still get to eat meat towards the end and even a baked potato on day 2. So, again, you're not starving yourself.

For those of you who have extremely busy days...you NEED, and I stress that word, NEED to take the time to prepare portions the night or day before. That way, when you go to work...you'll have it ready to take with you in the morning when you leave. Also, this diet allows for you to eat however much you want, so with that in mind, think about your day at work and how hungry you may get...then take how much you think you will need to satisfy your hunger. Also, make sure during work hours you DRINK TONS OF WATER. So what if you have to go to the bathroom a ton? Whatever, you're losing weight to look great. If you're too tired to workout when you come home from work...make sure you do things at work that will pay off. Take stairs, park far away in the parking lot to where you will have to walk more than what you're used to. Or, what I do is I come home from work and go on a walk around my neighborhood with my dogs. They get the needed exercise they're supposed to be getting, too.

This diet truely does work. After reading that people are pissy about it saying they quit after day 3 or day 2...well duh..you're either not committed or you just don't like the diet. I hope you can lose weight on another diet that satisfies you then.

So, I hope I have provided enough information to sway you the right way.

Whether it's not recommended by Doctors or not...so what? You're eating a lot of healthy food that you need in your daily diet that you should be eating everyday anyways and you still drink water, tea, coffee, juice, whatever. It's safe, people.

Remember three key things to this diet *and any diet*:

Commitment, Exercise, and a Positive attitude!

Oh, by the way, you do tend to get constipated on this diet. So, what I did was bought Benefiber Tablets. They come in different fruity flavors and taste pretty good. I took up to 2 of those everyday. It will allow you to pooh, hehe.

:)

Calorie Count does not think this diet is healthy and does not support this FAD diet for weight loss in otherwise healthy individuals.

Calorie Count's mission is to promote healthy and sustainable weight management.

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!

And if you don't believe me, here is an answer from our in-house resident nutritionist Mary Hartley from the ASK MARY section of Calorie Count:

Is the Sacred Heart Hospital diet good to do?

The Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital diet is used for overweight heart patients in order to lose weight rapidly prior to surgery. It is a fad diet, which contains very few foods. It will not meet your long-term nutrient requirements and it is not advised.

Calorie Count is all about 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.

Also everyone should check out Lalabanana's new thread in the Health & Support forum, it's great for the New Year:

• An Unofficial Calorie Count Guide to a Fad-Free 2009

I was very frustrated with this diet at first because I did not see much of a change the first 3-4 days but I am on day 5 and i just weighed myself and I have lost 6 lbs. I have to admitt I have cheated a little bit, I have had a few beers and mixed drinks and some yogurt on some days. I also had a poptart for a late night snack, which probably completely threw me off, but I think losing 6 lbs in 5 days WITH cheating shows this diet really works. I cant imagine how much I would lose if I was 100% true to this diet. The soup has officially grossed me out. I have found that the next time I do this diet, I will be using some replacements. The celery will have to go, and be replaced with something less crunchy. Also, Its a good idea to chop your veggies up pretty small, its easier to go down and a little more tasty all together. My veggies were semi-hard still, so I would advise making sure the carrots and cabbage are soft. This diet has shown me MAJOR self-control that I did not know that i had. I am going to California a day after this diet is finished and I can fit into the jeans shorts I was wanting to wear. I know I wont follow this diet everyday after my diet, but I can definitely say I learned that I can eat much less and stay full. Water water water is the key. after day 3 I craved water every hour of the day. Overall Im satisfied with this diet.

Hi there.  This is probably a little late but I just found your comment regarding the Sacred Heart Diet.   I have been on this for 8 days now.  I had lost 8 lbs. in the first 6 days.  If you want anymore feedback let me know

Oh, come on, please let this thread DIE.