Who doesn't want to go on the diet where Adele has lost 45 kilos and lets you drink wine and eat chocolate on top of it? If it even looks like it has a scientific bra behind it. We say it seems, because, in reality, the Sirtfood diet is more like a super restrictive miracle diet with a few hook ingredients and a lot of marketing and celebrities behind it. But let's take a closer look at it …
What is the Sirtfood diet based on?
Its success stems from the glamor of following a diet that was born in one of the most elite private gyms in London where many celebrities attend and where two nutritionists, Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten, have created a diet that costs around € 2,000 a week follow. If famous like Adele or Pippa Middleton follow it and it costs so much money, it has to be good, right?
What is good is the claim but not necessarily the diet. By the way, regarding the price, although there are some expensive ingredients such as matcha tea for example, with the little that is eaten, we do not quite understand what can make the bill rise so much …
In addition, this diet claims to be based on research on some enzymes, sirtuins or SIRS (Silent Information Regulators), present in certain foods, and this does not hold. As they would have us believe, these enzymes would be the key to achieving fat loss and improved cardiovascular health. Come on, its creators even affirm that eating foods rich in sirtuins has the same benefits as doing sports or fasting.
What foods contain the famous sirtuin enzymes
The list given by the nutritionists of the Sirtfood diet is 20 foods and many are "superfoods" endorsed by science but, as we know, a food in itself does not make a diet, but the set of what is eaten:
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Red chicory
- Capers
- Lovage
- Blueberries
- Coffee
- Onions
- Kale cabbage
- Chile
- Dark chocolate (more than 85%)
- Medjool Date
- Strawberries
- Walnuts
- Parsley
- Arugula
- Soy (especially derivatives such as tofu)
- Matcha tea
- Buckwheat
- Red wine
What is the Sirtfood diet?
It combines the consumption of foods with sirtuin enzymes (the 20 on the list) with a strong caloric restriction in the first phase and a slightly more relaxed second and third phases. In total it's three weeks (so they say, but Adele didn't lose 45 kilos in three weeks…).
- First phase: They are followed for 3 days and only 1,000 kcal are taken per day. Take 3 times a day a green smoothie based on kale, arugula, parsley, celery, ginger, green apple, lemon juice and matcha tea. And you only make a meal with foods rich in sirtuin enzymes (the recipes are, of course, in the book that the two clever nutritionists have launched on the market).
- Second phase: Lasts between 4 and 7 days and already rises to 1,500 kcal per day. They continue to take shakes - now there are two - along with two meals based on foods with sirtuin enzymes.
- Third phase: Supposedly it is already the maintenance phase and lasts about two weeks. There is no talk of calorie limits and only includes one daily shake and three meals from the diet book.
Once the diet is finished, it only indicates that you should try to include as many foods rich in sirtuin enzymes as possible.
But remember that this diet is accompanied by a very intense and daily exercise program. On the diet's Instagram page you can see Adele or the current James Bond, Daniel Craig, doing sports at the famous gym.
Why can't we believe it
The problem with this so-called "scientific evidence" is that it is unproven and only serves as an argumentative basis for two well-connected nutritionists to have created a "revolutionary method" for losing weight. Their book is based on a study they did with gym clients, specifically 39 clients. Come on, that doesn't seem like a great investigative job. What's more, there is no scientific publication that has echoed this supposed finding.
Why they say it works
Because Adele and Pippa Middleton are a good claim. But it must be said that Adele's case is very specific, since not everyone has so much weight to lose (nor can they lose it in the three weeks that this diet lasts). Also, in the case of Pippa, she is a very very athletic person and we do not believe that she has followed such a restrictive diet for long.
What really causes you to lose weight at first
Yes, surely this diet makes you lose weight, but it is not by eating foods with miraculous enzymes, but by eating only 1,000 kcal a day and following an intense exercise program. I mean, hunger and company. Of course, if they told you that in the first phase you only take 1,000 kcal and your menus consist of three shakes a day with the ingredients heavy to the gram and little else, it would no longer sound as good as eating chocolate and drinking wine, would you? what not?
But deep down, the Sirtfood diet seems nothing more than another extreme hypocaloric diet combined with intense exercise (yes, this too), which causes you to lose a lot of water - not fat - at first, and then stagnate when you lose weight or leave it, because eating so few calories for a long time does not help you lose weight or make it easy to follow. And yes, in case you wonder, there are people who do it make them dizzy, feel bad …
Conclusion on the validity of the Sirtfood diet
Forget about her. If you want to lose weight in a healthy way without going hungry or putting your health in check, opt for the Mediterranean diet, which does have many scientific proofs of its validity and already includes foods with sirtuins such as olive oil, onion, walnuts or date, which are very typical of our food culture. And nothing is going to prevent you from having a glass of wine from time to time when making it, even an ounce of dark chocolate, even if you don't use it as a claim. It may not have so much glamor but it does have real studies behind it like the Predimed Study. Don't gamble with your health …
Cover photo: @adele
