This goofy diet that no one should be on asks you to fast continuously for the rest of your life with only 2 or 3 meals per week. Yes, you only eat 2 or 3 times per week and only eat one meal at each feeding, and you only have a 1 to 2-hour feeding window to do it in.
Sure, most assuredly you will, but at what cost to your physical health, mental health, and lifespan?
We will discuss the issues with this type of eating plan below. Make sure you at least scan all the headlines and read the ones that interest you the most. We are sure that you’ll find a few that you just have to read because they are so out there.
Of course, we have to give you a disclaimer, especially when talking about a diet that is this crazy. Yeah, it’s pretty nuts.
Disclaimer: The following is for educational purposes only. We are not advocating a change in dietary, health or exercise protocols. Please seek the advice or council of your nutritionally educated health care practitioner prior to engaging in any dietary or exercise changes.
What Is The History Of The Snake Diet?
It was developed by a self-proclaimed fasting coach named Cole Robinson, who has no credentials of any kind. That part doesn’t bother us. There are plenty of people who are geniuses who even dropped out of school.
What does concern us is that he’s selling a diet book and an electrolyte supplement that he makes with no clinical testing or trials of any kind, just a theory that he has?
So, he has thousands of people doing his diet that has no basis in science, no testing, and only goes off his hunch that he may be on to something since our ancestors ate during times of hardship.
You see, the thing he has to realize is that, if our ancestors had food, they ate it. It was only during the lean times when they would be forced to go without food for a few days at a time until they found more food.
This wasn’t their preferred diet; it was during hard times, not good times, not times of plenty, but times of near starvation.
The difference is that he wants you to eat like this all the time because that’s also how a snake eats.
What Is The Difference Between The Snake Diet And Keto?
The difference is huge, and we don’t recommend either one. The keto diet generally sees 85% of the participants regain all their weight and more within 4 years and more than 50% regain it and then some within 1 year of stopping the diet.
Why do they stop the diet you might ask?
Good question, because it is completely unsustainable for the long term. It can cause nutrient deficiencies, lowered immune systems, constipation, and, contrary to popular belief, it can raise the chances of adult-onset diabetes both while on the diet and after coming off of it.
One of the things that people and many scientists don’t take into account is that the keto diet or any truly low-carb diet alters the gut bacteria (the microbiome) that are so unbelievably important.
Most people don’t stop to think that you have around 30 trillion cells in your body and about 40 trillion bacteria and other entities. You are mostly aliens.
If you alter them, make them sick, starve them, feed them bad foods, they act up. Many of the times, people think they are sick, it is just their microbiome being sick, not themselves.
These strange diets alter the microbiome and then when you go back to a regular diet, it takes them time to rebuild or adjust.
You really should consider this before going off on some wild diet that your body and microbiome will freak out over. There is a much better way, which we will discuss at some point in the future.
What Is The Difference Between The Snake Diet And OMAD?
With OMAD (One Meal A Day), you do just as advertised, you consume one huge meal per day. You skyrocket your insulin, likely leading to insulin resistance and the possibility of adult-onset diabetes or at least hyperinsulinemia. In either case, it’s not good.
OMAD is a form of short-cycle intermittent fasting whereby you eat just once per day in a one-to-two-hour window, with the one-hour window being preferable.
With the snake diet, you’re only having one meal every 2 or 3 days. It’s still a form of intermittent fasting but with much longer fasting windows.
There are numerous problems with this type of eating regime that we will cover in the appropriate section below. Just suffice it to say that it may be the most destructive diet that we are aware of, and we know most, if not all, the popular ones in North America.
How Much Weight Can You Lose On The Snake Diet?
The weight loss can be considerable, but so can it be at the cost to your health.
What we’d like to say is, who cares how much weight you can lose on this diet? The health consequences are potentially too great.
That’s what we’d like to say. But we know that if we don’t give you a number, it will seem like we are skirting the question, which we never do.
It’s quite possible to lose a legitimate 3 to 4 pounds per week on it. The reason is that one pound of fat equals 3,500 calories.
Let’s say that you normally eat 2,500 calories per day, and you only have 3 meals for the week at 2,000 calories each. You would have a caloric deficit of 11,500 calories divided by 3,500 = 3.285 pounds lost just by diet alone.
Then, if you were exercising, you could potentially lose even more. However, you may find it incredibly difficult to exercise with any level of intensity when you are going without food for several days at a time.
Is The Snake Diet Healthy And Safe?
In our opinion, no, not even close.
With this diet, there are so many reasons why we could write a book on just that topic alone. Here are just a few.
A). There is virtually no way you’re going to get all the nutrients you need on this diet. Many nutrients have half-lives (the amount of time they stay in the body in an active state) shorter than the fasting duration.
This will just naturally set you up for chronic nutrient deficiencies.
B). The single meal every few days will spike both insulin and low-grade inflammation.
The insulin spike will lead to a blood sugar crash as the insulin removes all the sugar from the blood. Your insulin sensitivity will be unpredictable. Without testing, there is no way to know what will happen to it.
With this one huge meal, you’re going to overeat. There are no two ways about it. You will be eating copious amounts of meat and animal products that will cause a boat load of low-grade systemic inflammation, of which there is little doubt.
It is thought that low-grade systemic inflammation is responsible for somewhere between 90% and 95% of all chronic diseases.
Yes, you’ll have the fasting states where your body will clear out the inflammation. However, it wouldn’t have to clear it out if your diet hadn’t caused it in the first place.
C). And last but not least (we said we’d just list a few, we could go on, and on, but we’re sure you get it). You’re training yourself to be as fat as possible.
How is that, you might ask? Well, we’re glad you did.
When you have these huge meals, your insulin goes into hyperdrive and stores all those excess calories as fat.
Your body then commits this activity to memory so that it can be better at it next time.
Then, as you do this over and over and over, your body just keeps getting better (more efficient) at storing the extra energy for the upcoming famine (the fact that it knows is coming because of the pattern you’ve been setting).
You have just trained your body to be as efficient at storing fat as possible from any excess calories.
This means that possibly for years after you quit this diet, your body is still hyper-efficient at storing fat for fuel and every extra calorie you eat turns to fat.
It’s not your body’s fault at all. When you teach your body to respond a certain way over and over for a decent amount of time, it becomes good at it.
In this case, however, it became good at something you didn’t want and was already programmed to do.
You see, we are the product of selective continuance. That is to say that there are certain characteristics that made our ancestors the best at surviving.
We are not as good as our ancestors at surviving, simple as that.
One of the things all of our ancestors had to be good at was storing fat so they could survive famines, lean periods, and catastrophic occurrences.
They passed this through their genes to you. So, you are already genetically programmed to get fat fast.
As a matter of fact, you’re good at it. How do we know this? Because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here because your ancestors would never have survived.
One thing we can say about life a few hundred years ago, it was rough.
There were virtually no people on earth who didn’t have challenges they had to overcome. Natural disasters, wars, famines, plagues. You name it, they went through it.
And now you’re going to go on this little diet and hyper-reactivate this gene that allowed your ancestors to survive by being good at getting fat fast while at the same time thinking you’re on a weight loss diet.
See the point?
Is the diet safe or effective? By this time, you know our thoughts on it. What do you think?
Is The Snake Diet A Low Carbohydrate Diet?
Yes and no. It’s very low carbohydrate because you abstain from eating (fasting) for several days at a time. And no, because when you do eat, you are allowed to eat as much as you want.
Yes, because they advocate that you test your urine to ensure you’re in ketosis during your fasting states and because when you gorge yourself with food, your insulin spikes enough for a week’s worth of the stuff (insulin that is).
If you’re confused, don’t feel bad. We tend to think the diet creator may have been a little bit as well.
Is The Snake Diet Sustainable Long Term?
Hardly. Most people we have heard speaking of it on the forums said they couldn’t even last a week. You’re asked to go on unsupervised water fast for a few days at a time, over and over and over again.
If you’ve read any of our other articles, you know we are huge proponents of fasting. We even like water fasting, but we NEVER recommend unsupervised water fasting. You need to be supervised by trained, professional, and qualified medical personnel.
It’s downright foolish and can cause more harm than good. Don’t do it!
Is The Snake Diet Good For Bodybuilding?
No, just no, heck no. Read above. If you want to lose a ton of muscle mass and train your body to get fat, this is the one for you. Other than that, stay clear of it. Don’t even think about it.
Can You Drink Coffee On The Snake Diet?
Yes, black coffee is allowed during fasting times, and during feeding times, you can add cream and sugar if you like.
Please read the rest of this article if you only landed on this one question so that you get the real information you need to make an educated decision on whether this diet is right for you or not.
Sources
1. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/snake-diet#what-it-is
2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.13195
3. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/2/2092
4. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/5/962
5. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2737919