The Sirtfood diet: Detailed guide for beginners

A new diet is taking the scene by storm, and the Sirtfood diet is positioning itself as one of the newest.

Gaining popularity among celebrities in Europe, this diet is famous for its tolerance of red wine and chocolate.

The minds behind the diet insist it's not just a passing trend. They claim that “sirtfoods” are the key to unlocking weight loss and preventing various diseases.

However, health professionals warn of the diet's potential to fail to live up to its reputation or even be an unsavory option.

This article aims to provide an objective analysis of the Sirtfood diet and its possible health benefits.

The Sirtfood diet

What is the Sirtfood diet

The Sirtfood diet was developed by two renowned nutritionists working in a private fitness center in the United Kingdom.

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They promote this diet as an innovative approach to nutrition and a wellness plan that works by activating your "thin gene."

Based on studies of sirtuins (SIRTs), a set of seven proteins found in the body that have been associated with the regulation of various functions such as metabolism, inflammation and longevity.

Certain natural compounds found in plants can increase the levels of these proteins in the body, and foods rich in these compounds are referred to as “sirtfoods.”

The list of "20 Best Sirt Foods» provided by the Sirtfood diet includes:

• kale
• Red wine
• Strawberries
• Onions
• Soybean
• Persil
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Dark chocolate (85% cocoa)
• Matcha green tea
• Buckwheat
• Turmeric
• Nuts
• Arugula (arugula)
• Chili pepper
• love
• Medjool Dates
• Red chicory
• Blueberries
• capers
• coffee

Le diet Diet combines sirted foods and calorie restriction, two factors that can cause the body to produce higher levels of sirtuins.

The Sirtfood Diet book includes meal plans and recipes to follow, but many other Sirtfood Diet recipe books are available.

The creators of this diet claim that following the Sirtfood diet will lead to rapid weight loss, while maintaining muscle mass and protecting you from chronic diseases.

Once you have completed your diet, we encourage you to continue including the sirtfoods and green juice from your diet into your regular diet.

Summary: The Sirtfood diet is based on research into sirtuins, a group of proteins that regulate several functions in the body. Certain foods called sirtfoods can cause the body to produce more of these proteins.

Is it effective?

The authors of the Sirtfood diet make some bold claims, including that the diet can supercharge weight loss, activate your "skinny gene" and prevent disease.

The problem is that there isn't much evidence to support them.

So far, there is no convincing evidence that the Sirtfood diet has a more beneficial effect on weight loss than any other low-calorie diet.

And while many of these foods have health-promoting properties, no long-term human studies have been conducted to determine whether a diet rich in sirtfoods has any tangible health benefits.

However, the book Sirtfood Diet presents the results of a pilot study carried out by the authors and involving 39 participants from their fitness center. However, the results of this study do not appear to have been published anywhere else.

For a week, participants followed the diet and exercised daily. At the end of the week, participants lost an average of 7 pounds (3,2 kg) and maintained or even gained muscle mass.

However, these results are hardly surprising. Limiting your calorie intake to 1 calories and exercising at the same time will almost always result in weight loss.

Regardless, this type of rapid weight loss is neither genuine nor sustainable, and this study did not follow up with participants after the first week to see if they regained weight, which is usually the case.

When your body is deprived of energy, it uses its emergency energy stores, or glycogen, in addition to burning fat and muscle.

Each glycogen molecule requires the storage of 3 to 4 water molecules. When your body uses glycogen, it also gets rid of this water. This is called “water weight”.

During the first week of extreme calorie restriction, only about one-third of weight loss comes from fat, while the remaining two-thirds comes from water, muscle, and glycogen (3, 4).

As soon as your calorie intake increases, your body replenishes its glycogen stores and the weight comes back immediately.

Unfortunately, this type of calorie restriction can also cause your body to lower its metabolic rate, causing you to consume fewer calories per day for energy than before (3, 5).

It's likely that this diet will help you lose a few pounds at first, but it will likely come back as soon as the diet is over.

When it comes to disease prevention, three weeks probably isn't long enough to have a measurable long-term impact.

On the other hand, adding sirtfoods to your usual diet in the long term may very well be a good idea. But in this case, you can also skip the diet and start doing it now.

Summary: This diet can help you lose weight because it is low in calories, but the weight will likely come back after the diet ends. The diet is too short to have a long-term impact on your health.

How to follow the Sirtfood diet

The Sirtfood diet has two phases that last a total of three weeks. After that, you can continue to “sirtify” your diet by including as many sirtfoods as possible in your meals.

Specific recipes for these two phases can be found in The Sirtfood diet book, written by the creators of the diet. You will need to purchase it to follow the diet.

The meals are full of sirtfoods but include other ingredients besides the “top 20 sirtfoods.”

Most ingredients and sirtfoods are easy to find.

However, three of the essential ingredients required for these two phases – Matcha green tea powder, lovage and buckwheat – can be expensive or difficult to find.

Green juice is an important part of your diet. You will need to prepare yourself between one and three times a day. You'll need a juicer (a blender won't work) and a kitchen scale, as ingredients are listed by weight. The recipe is below:

Sirtfood Green Juice

• 75 grams (2,5 oz) kale
• 30 grams (1 oz) arugula (arugula)
• 5 grams of parsley
• 2 stalks of celery
• 1 cm (0,5 in) ginger
• half a green apple
• half a lemon
• half a teaspoon of matcha green tea

Juice all the ingredients except the green tea powder and lemon together, and pour them into a glass. Juice the lemon by hand, then mix the lemon juice and green tea powder into your juice.

First phase

The first phase lasts seven days and involves calorie restriction and lots of green juice. It is designed to jump-start your weight loss and claims to help you lose 7 pounds (3,2 kg) in seven days.

During the first three days of phase one, calorie intake is limited to 1 calories. You drink three green juices per day, plus one meal. Each day you can choose from recipes in the book, all of which involve sirtfoods as a main part of the meal.

Example meals include miso-glazed tofu, sirtfood omelette, or shrimp stir-fry with buckwheat noodles.

On days 4 to 7 of phase one, the calorie intake increases to 1. This includes two green juices per day and two other sirtfood-rich meals, which you can choose from the book.

Phase two

Phase two lasts two weeks. During this “maintenance” phase, you should continue to lose weight steadily.

There is no specific calorie limit for this phase. Instead, you eat three full meals of sirtfoods and one green juice per day. Again, meals are chosen from recipes provided in the book.

After the diet

You can repeat these two phases as often as you like for additional weight loss.

However, we encourage you to continue to “sirtify” your diet after completing these phases by regularly incorporating sirt foods into your meals.

There are a variety of Sirtfood diet books that are full of sirtfood-rich recipes. You can also include sirtfoods in your diet as a snack or in recipes you already use.

Additionally, we encourage you to continue drinking green juice every day.

In this way, the Sirtfood diet becomes more of a lifestyle change than a one-size-fits-all diet.

Summary: The Sirtfood diet consists of two phases. The first phase lasts seven days and combines calorie restriction and green juices. Phase two lasts two weeks and includes three meals and one juice.

Are Sirtfoods the new superfoods?

There's no denying that sirtfoods are good for you. They are often nutrient-rich and full of healthy plant compounds.

Additionally, studies have linked many of the foods recommended in the Sirtfood diet to health benefits.

For example, moderate consumption of dark chocolate with a high cocoa content may reduce the risk of heart disease and help fight inflammation (6, 7).

Drinking green tea may reduce the risk of stroke and diabetes and help reduce blood pressure (8).

And turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties that have beneficial effects on the body in general and may even protect against chronic diseases linked to inflammation (9).

In fact, the majority of sirtfoods have demonstrated health benefits in humans.

However, evidence of the health benefits of increasing sirtuin protein levels is preliminary. However, research on animals and cell lines has produced interesting results.

For example, researchers found that increasing levels of certain sirtuin proteins extended the lives of yeast, worms, and mice (10).

And during fasting or calorie restriction, sirtuin proteins cause the body to burn more fat for energy and improve insulin sensitivity. A study in mice found that increased sirtuin levels led to fat loss (11, 12).

Some evidence suggests that sirtuins may also play a role in reducing inflammation, inhibiting tumor development, and slowing the progression of heart disease and Alzheimer's disease (10).

Studies in mice and human cell lines have shown positive results, but no human studies have been done on the effects of increasing sirtuin levels (2, 10).

Therefore, it is unknown whether increasing sirtuin protein levels in the body will extend lifespan or reduce the risk of cancer in humans.

Research is underway to develop effective compounds to increase sirtuin levels in the body. In this way, human studies can begin to examine the effects of sirtuins on human health (10).

Until then, it is not possible to determine the effects of increasing sirtuin levels.

Summary: Sirt foods are generally healthy foods. However, very little is known about how these foods affect sirtuin levels and human health.

Is it healthy and sustainable?

Sirtfoods are almost all healthy choices and may even have health benefits due to their antioxidant or anti-inflammatory properties.

However, eating only a few particularly healthy foods cannot meet all of your body's nutritional needs.

The Sirtfood diet is unnecessarily restrictive and offers no clear, unique health benefits over any other type of diet.

Additionally, it is generally not recommended to eat just 1 calories without a doctor's supervision. Even eating 000 calories a day is excessively restrictive for many people.

The diet also calls for drinking up to three green juices per day. Although juices can be a good source of vitamins and minerals, they are also a source of sugar and contain almost no healthy fiber like whole fruits and vegetables (13).

Additionally, drinking fruit juice all day is bad for your blood sugar and teeth (14).

Additionally, because the diet is so limited in calories and food choices, it is most likely deficient in protein, vitamins, and minerals, especially during the first phase.

Due to the low calorie levels and restrictive food choices, it may be difficult to follow this diet for the entire three weeks.

Add to that the high upfront costs of purchasing a juicer, the book, and some rare and expensive ingredients, as well as the costs of preparing specific meals and juices, and this diet becomes impossible and unsustainable for many people.

Summary: The Sirtfood diet promotes healthy foods but limits calories and food choices. It also involves drinking a lot of juice, which is not a healthy recommendation.

Safety and side effects

Although the first phase of Sirtfood diet is very low in calories and nutritionally incomplete, there is no real safety concern for the average, healthy adult given the short duration of their diet.

However, in a person with diabetes, calorie restriction and a majority consumption of fruit juices during the first days of the diet can lead to dangerous changes in blood sugar (15).

However, even a healthy person may experience some side effects – primarily hunger.

Eating only 1 to 000 calories a day will leave almost everyone hungry, especially if you consume mostly juice, which is low in fiber, a nutrient that helps keep you full (1).

During the first phase, you may experience other side effects such as fatigue, dizziness, and irritability due to calorie restriction.

For an otherwise healthy adult, serious health consequences are unlikely if the diet is only followed for three weeks.

Summary: The Sirtfood diet is low in calories and the first phase is not nutritionally balanced. You may be hungry, but that's not dangerous for a healthy adult.

The final result

Le Sirtfood diet is full of healthy foods, but not healthy eating patterns.

Not to mention his theory and health claims are based on grand extrapolations from preliminary scientific evidence.

While adding sirtfoods to your diet isn't a bad idea and may even provide health benefits, the diet itself seems like just another fad.

Save money and make healthy, long-term dietary changes instead.