The Body Reset Diet is a 15-day weight loss diet that proponents suggest is a healthy and easy way to lose weight and boost your metabolism. It has been popularized by several celebrities, although there is very little research to back the claims.
So, does the Body Reset Diet actually cause weight loss? Are there good Body Reset Diet reviews? Keep reading to find out!
In this article, we will look at:
- What is the Body Reset Diet?
- How Does the Reset Diet Work?
- What to Eat on the Body Reset Diet
- Benefits of the Body Reset Diet
Let’s jump in!
What is the Body Reset Diet?
The Body Reset Diet was created by Harley Pasternak. Pasternak is a celebrity trainer who has a background in exercise physiology and nutritional science.
His philosophy with the Body Reset Diet is that a weight loss diet that causes rapid weight loss right off the bat will help promote adherence as people will be motivated to continue dieting because they are seeing results.
There is some evidence to suggest that there may be some truth to this philosophy.
Accordingly, he created the Body Reset Diet to be a rapid weight loss diet that is intended to be healthier than many crash diets that cause similar quick weight loss results.
It is meant to jump-start weight loss by being a low-calorie diet. Plus, unlike many popular weight loss diets, the Body Reset Diet includes an exercise component as part of the diet to aid weight loss.
Pasternak lays out all of the details of the diet in his book The Body Reset Diet: Power Your Metabolism, Blast Fat, and Shed Pounds in Just 15 Days, and there is a companion, The Body Reset Diet Cookbook with simple recipes you are supposed to follow.
The recipes are designed to be simple and easy to follow to help improve adherence so that people will more easily stick to their weight loss goals.
The Body Reset Diet focuses on whole-food smoothies, high-fiber snacks, and very low-calorie meals to constitute your daily diet.
You must choose from specific recipes within the book, although you can pick and choose exactly which smoothies, snacks, and low-calorie meals you want to make.
Therefore, the exact number of calories you will be eating on the Body Reset Diet depends on the specific recipe that you choose.
In general, the smoothie recipes provide about 300 calories each, there are 150 to 200 calories per high-fiber snack, and the Body Reset Diet meals have about 350 to 360 calories each.
Thus, when you follow the Body Reset Diet meal plan, you will be eating about 1,200–1,400 calories per day.
In addition to the food portion of the diet, you are supposed to do light exercise while on the diet, including walking and short 5-minute bouts of weight training to burn calories without “increasing” your appetite (according to Pasternak).
How Does the Reset Diet Work?
The Body Reset Diet is laid out into three distinct 5-day phases that follow one another back to back for the 15-day diet plan.
Each of the phases of the Body Reset Diet has a different dietary pattern and exercise routine that you are supposed to follow. All of the phases include eating five times per day, but what you eat changes throughout the course of the diet.
The first five days are the most extreme, focusing primarily on smoothies in order to induce rapid weight loss for a metabolic “jump start.”
Here are the three phases of the Body Reset Diet in detail:
Phase 1
During the first five days of the diet, you are supposed to replace your breakfast, lunch, and dinner with one of the smoothies found in the cookbook or diet guide. You are allowed to eat two Body Reset Diet-approved high-fiber snacks per day.
The exercise component involves walking a minimum of 10,000 steps per day.
Phase 2
From day 5 to 10 of the diet, you can now eat one meal of solid food instead of a smoothie, but the other two meals must be smoothies.
You are given some latitude in terms of determining which meals you will consume as a smoothie versus whole foods.
Of course, the meals need to come from Body Reset Diet recipes, so they are still very low calorie. You can also have two snacks per day.
For the exercise component, not only are you supposed to continue walking 10,000 steps per day, but you also should complete five minutes of resistance training on three of the five days. This mini weight training routine involves four exercises.
Phase 3
In the final five days of the diet, you replace just one of your meals with a smoothie, and the other two meals can be Body Reset Diet recipes. You are still permitted to have two snacks per day.
The exercise component in phase 3 is the same as that for phase 2, except for the fact that you are supposed to do your resistance training workouts every day instead of three of the five days.
After the 15 days are over, and you have successfully completed all three phases, you are supposed to continue the diet as outlined in phase 3 as your maintenance diet.
However, you are allowed to have two “free meals“ per week, where you are permitted to eat and drink whatever you would like.
Much like “cheat meals“ on other weight loss diets, the free meals are meant to help increase adherence to the diet and make it more sustainable in the long term by decreasing the feeling of deprivation or like you can never have certain foods that you love again.
Additionally, if you go out to eat or have other social eating engagements, you can attend them while still sticking to the diet by using one of your two weekly “free meals“ and then following the phase 3 Body Reset Diet for the rest of the day.
Ultimately, there is no ending point for the diet after you have finished the 15 days. You are supposed to continue this pattern laid out in phase 3 in terms of food intake and exercise, with the allowance for two free meals per week for life.
What to Eat on the Body Reset Diet
The smoothies are a main component of the Body Reset Diet. They fall into three categories with variations of the following basic recipes:
Breakfast (White Smoothie)
One apple, pear, or peach
A banana
Milk
Greek yogurt
Spices of your choice
Lunch (Red Smoothie)
Berries
One half of an orange
One scoop of protein powder
One tablespoon of ground flaxseed for healthy fats and fiber
Dinner (Green Smoothie)
One pear
Greek yogurt
2 cups of greens (spinach, baby arugula, kale, or romaine lettuce)
Avocado
Lime juice
Snacks include foods like fruits, nuts, and seeds.
Benefits of the Body Reset Diet
To date, there are no scientific research studies that have been specifically carried out investigating the benefits of the Body Reset Diet.
With that said, the principles behind the diet have been studied extensively. As such, some of the potential benefits of the Body Reset Diet include the following:
#1: The Body Reset Diet Includes Nutritious Foods
The foods and recipes on the Body Reset Diet are nutrient dense. The diet focuses on foods like vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, protein, and low-fat dairy.
These foods provide a good balance of nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, protein, healthy fats, and fiber.
In particular, the Body Reset Diet is high in fiber, particularly compared to many popular weight loss diets.
Diets high in fiber have been shown to provide numerous health benefits, such as decreasing the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes and helping to support healthy body weight.
#2: The Body Reset Diet May Help You Lose Weight
Losing weight is primarily a matter of creating a caloric deficit, which means that you are burning more calories per day than you are consuming.
Because the Body Reset Diet is a low-calorie diet—typically providing about 1,200-1,400 calories per day—plus some amount of physical activity, it is almost always going to yield a net caloric deficit for most adults.
Furthermore, in a research study that followed a diet similar to the Body Reset Diet, which involved consuming 1,200–1,500-calorie diets through two meals and two meal replacement shakes per day, found that participants lost an average of 15 pounds (6.8 kg) over one year.
Keep in mind that your own personal weight loss results on the Body Reset Diet will depend on your body size, age, sex (and BMR), and total daily energy expenditure.
#3: The Body Reset Diet May Improve Adherence
Even the best weight loss diets with the soundest principles will only be effective if you are able to stick to the diet.
There are many reasons that we fall off of diets and lose motivation to continue.
However, two of the most common reasons that people abandon a weight loss diet are because they are not seeing the results that they would like to see quickly enough, and they feel too deprived for the diet to be sustainable, so they end up giving up.
The Body Reset Diet aims to address both of these issues. The initial diet is only 15 days long, which is meant to be short enough that people can see the end date without losing hope or feeling like they are on an endless road.
Moreover, the first phase of the diet is meant to cause rapid weight loss. There’s been some research to suggest that diets that do yield quick weight loss results right off the bat improve long-term success and adherence.
Then, on the other end of the diet, after you have completed the 15 days, there is the maintenance phase that you are supposed to follow for the remainder of your lifetime.
Many weight loss diets just end, and then you are likely to fall back on your old eating patterns and regain any weight you have lost.
Moreover, if you try to stick with a highly-restrictive diet over the long term, you might abandon the diet because it simply feels too restrictive, or you may be inclined to binge eat when your willpower runs out.
The Body Reset Diet maintenance phase is intended to overcome these hurdles by permitting the two free meals per week to reduce feelings of deprivation and make the diet more sustainable in real-life situations where you will be wanting to eat foods that fall outside of the Body Reset Diet meal plan.
For a variety of different weight-loss diet plans, check out our weight-loss guide database here!
