The Military Diet: What 25 Studies Say About Losing 10 Pounds in 7 Days

Aside from the basic military diet meal plan and eating schedule (which we’ll go over in a moment), there’s no official military diet and the recommendations and rules vary based on who you ask.

Furthermore, there’s no fitness guru claiming credit for the military diet.

There’s no diet book promoting its eating principles.

There’s no official website on the diet and the main argument thrown around in its favor is the rumor that Khloe Kardashian used it to lose weight . . . at some point . . . maybe.

Despite this dubious track record, it’s still wildly popular, as evidenced by the 150,000 people who search for it every month online.

Some of the appeal is understandable, too.

Like many weight loss diets it has an attractive schtick:

1. You only have to follow the military diet meal plan 3 days per week.
2. You can still enjoy some normal foods while following the diet.
3. You don’t have to follow the diet forever to lose weight.
4. You can lose “up to 10 pounds per week.”
5. You don’t have to exercise.

What are the downsides, then?

For starters, the meal plan you’re supposed to follow looks like the diet of a famished racoon rooting through a restaurant dumpster.

There’s no rhyme or reason to any of the food choices, and it’s almost as if someone threw them together purely to troll people who don’t know any better.

For example, dinner on the third day of the diet is 1 cup of tuna, ½ a banana, and 1 cup of vanilla ice cream.

The meals are also designed to provide no more than 1,000 calories per day for the first 3 days of the diet, and the other 4 days of the week you’re allowed no more than 1,500 calories.

If you aren’t familiar with what 1,500 calories looks like, that’s very little food—about half as much as most people eat.

That being what it is, there’s a groundswell of dieters eager to learn more about the military diet and plenty of vloggers, influencers, and other bush-league diet gurus happy to spread the gospel.

You probably know enough about dieting, though, to be skeptical. In fact, I’ll wager a hotdog and half cup of vanilla ice cream that you have a lot of questions about the military diet, such as . . .

• Why is it called the military diet?
• What are you supposed to eat on the military diet?
• Will the military diet actually help me lose 10 pounds of fat in a week?
• And more.

You’ll learn the answers to all of t