You can have chocolate and wine on the Sirtfood Diet

A diet that seemed too good to be true – this diet promised that I could lose weight while still enjoying two of my favorite things: red wine and chocolate. Blinded by my admiration for these delectable treats, I decided to give it a try. Another selling point was that the creators claimed I could lose seven pounds in seven days.

First things first, I had to figure out what on earth a sirtfood was. Sirtfoods are foods that contain high levels of sirtuin proteins which help regulate the metabolism and burn fat. Common sirtfoods include green tea, 85 percent dark chocolate, coffee, olives/extra-virgin olive oil, parsley, onions, strawberries, blueberries, citrus, omega-3 fish oils, and of course red wine – more specifically pinot noir.

Days one through three were torture. The rules included drinking three green juices and one sirtfood enriched meal before 7pm. The catch is that you can only eat 1,000 calories a day, which made wine basically impossible to put on the menu. Another downside was that I couldn’t hit the gym because these calorie restrictive days left me a bit dizzy, queasy, and admittedly a bit mean. The entire week I relied on the Sirtfood Diet App for recipes and MyFitness Pal to track my calories.

The green juices, though vile, were easy enough to chug down.

Green Juice of Death recipe (kidding)

• 2 handfuls of Kale
• 1 handful of arugula a.k.a. rockets
• 5g parsley
• 2-3 stalks of celery including leaves
• 1/2 green apple
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 tsp of matcha/matcha green tea

Once I consumed more vegetables than I typically consume in a week, I struggled to remain full. I constantly had the urge to snack so I nibbled on a few sirtfoods: strawberries, blueberries, and kale chips. Thankfully, I’m a huge fan of all of these except kale, which I consumed an obscene amount of during this little experiment.

The only part I enjoyed about these three days were my dinners.

Monday/Tuesday

I ate the stirfry recipe that is listed on the sirtfood app but substituted the shrimp with chicken breasts.

Wednesday

In order to tolerate another low calorie day, I made a food I would normally eat, greek salad included several sirtfoodites: lemon, olive oil, arugula, and garlic. Despite how much I enjoyed the meal, at this point I was thinking, where’s the wine and chocolate?

Thursday

Thursday through Friday I was allowed 1,500 calories a day in the form of two green juices and two sirtfood dense meals. For breakfast I had two glasses of green juice and attempted to make a sirtfood omelet that turned into scrambled eggs

To stay within my calories, I ate a low calorie sirtfood packed dinner and indulged in a glass of red wine. At this point in my calorie restrictive diet one glass was enough to make me somewhat tipsy, so I wasn’t complaining.

Friday

Staying on plan proved impossible after spending the day with a friend in NYC. In an attempt to stay on the plan I ordered a $10 juice with most of the ingredients in the ‘green juice recipe’ and stuck to a salad for lunch.

For dinner I ordered a salmon and arugula salad from my gym.

Saturday

For breakfast I had a sirtfood smoothie and two green juices and for dinner I attempted to eat celery leaf and arugula salad with sautéed salmon. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand the taste of celery leaves and chose to consume the rest of my days calories in red wine and 85 percent dark chocolate.

Sunday

The final two cups of green juice. They tasted so much better in a grande Starbucks cup.

On this final day I enjoyed one last plate of sirtfood inspired foods and indulged in a glass of wine.

At the end of this week I was unsure if the diet was really worth it. I’ll admit I’m not usually one to stick to diets, and there were certainly times where I caved and took a few bites of foods here in there, as well as using some of my calories to drink iced coffee. However it made me more aware of what I was eating and helped me make healthier choices. In a week I lost about three and a half pounds which I found pretty impressive given the amount of snacking I did along the way. I think The Sirtfood Diet is pretty doable as long as you have access to a juicer or a blender to make sirtfood smoothies instead. I’m not sure if I should attribute my weight-loss to the specific ingredients, or the calorie restrictions.

After phase one, the initial seven days of The Sirtfood Diet, a 14-day maintenance period is encouraged. It includes one green juice a day and sirtfood packed meals. Unfortunately due to an allergic reaction to an unknown component of this diet, I was not able to continue.

I think it would be interesting to see if there was anymore weight-loss in the remaining 14 days.