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Because of its name, the 3-Hour Diet is now considered as one of the most inviting diet plans made available out there. Basically, it promotes Reese’s peanut butter cups and no “bad” foods, which in a way is distinct.

For the record, it was written by Jorge Cruise, a fitness journalist and author of The 3-Hour Diet: How Low-Carb Diets Make You Fat and Timing Makes You Thin. Jorge Cruise is a one of a kind weight conscious because of his unique beliefs about candy or other similar sweets being mediums for losing weight.

Trinity of Timing

Aside from portion control and unique recommendation of candy or other similar sweets, there is the trinity of timing by which Cruise also considered vital. By adhering to these stuff, your BMR (baseline metabolic rate — how fast your body burns calories) and energy will increase, therefore you will have lesser cravings for food.

Typically, the trinity of timing goes as follows:

• Eat breakfast within one hour of rising
• Eat every three hours thereafter
• Stop eating three hours before bedtime

Recommendations, Limitations and Restrictions

The 3-Hour Diet is not more on the kind of foods you eat but instead more on the amount you have per meal. Eventually, for the author to be sure you’ll just be having the right portions or amounts of foods, he has provided an imaginary plate that typically looks like a 9 inch plate with:

• A Rubik’s cube, depicting your carbohydrate portion for the three major meals – the breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• A deck of playing cards for your protein serving at every meal; which is at an approximate of 3 ounces with foods like chicken, cheese, eggs, fish or the like.
• A water bottle cap representing the fats which is a little more than one teaspoon and can be from olive oil, salad dressing, and butter.
• Visually stack three DVD cases for the amount of fruit or vegetables per meal.

On Visual Timing

One thing that most dieters will more or less love about the 3-Hour Diet is that there is no bad foods to be considered, instead just bad portions and Cruise’s so called “visual timing” method. In the “visual timing”, meals should be kept at around 400 calories each. This, in the long run can be a very big help according to Cruise.

The 3-Hour Diet Works

The 3-Hour Diet was effective for some dieters all because of its strong emphasis for proper timing on everything that deals with foods starting from the basic food preference up to the right timing for eating.

What’s unique is according to the plan, breakfast should be at 7 a.m. three hours later, at 10 a.m., there’s a 100-calorie snack like a Nabisco Snack Pack. Connsequently, after three hours after your snack, lunch should follow. After another three hours, there should be another 100-calorie snack, then three hours after is the dinner.

During or after dinner, there comes the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup minis. You should have these minis three hours before bed. After which, no foods should be taken.

Why Need Three Hours?

Maybe you are now wondering why three hours, well, according to Cruise it’s all because by eating every three hours you can lower your belly fats, burn 2 pounds a week, without muscle loss at all.

Added by him, when you make efforts to eat every three hours, you unknowingly reset your metabolism, therefore some of your fats are on their way for burning.

Insights of Some Experts

Some experts have almost the same opinions and feelings towards the 3-Hour Diet. For Vicki Sullivan, PhD, RD, LD, national lecturer and president of Balance, LLC, the 3-Hour Diet is not an assurance you will lose weight.

According to Sullivan, “the only thing that has been consistently shown to increase BMR is exercise. Similarly, for her, “I have clients who find that they gain weight when they eat more frequently, or some simply cannot eat every three hours due to job constraints.”

For Karen Collins, MS, RD, CDN, with the American Institute for Cancer Research, “other studies also show that eating frequency has no effect on a person’s overall metabolic rate.”

For Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, nutritionist and “Recipe Doctor” with the WebMD Weight Loss Clinic, “the truth is, the more times a day you sit down to eat a meal or snack, the more opportunities you have to overeat’”.

Why Try the 3-Hour Diet

To some extent, the 3-Hour Diet is a diet with sensible approaches to weight loss. However, according to some experts, it may not be something that will work for all types of dieters.

Not everyone can eat six times daily. And for Elisa Zied, RD, it is not as comprehensive as one might think. It failed on emphasizing physical activity just as the same as other component as timing or portion control.

Thus, before opting for the 3-Hour Diet, be sure to think it over a hundred times as much as possible or otherwise see a doctor to ensure everything will turn out fine.