'17 Day Diet' Races Up Bestseller Lists

The 17 Day Diet is now a bestselling book as well. Dr. Michael Moreno, who launched the diet late last year, now joins the authors of the South Beach Diet, the 5 Day Miracle Diet, and the Atkins Diet, among countless others, at the top of USA Today's list of advice books. Like most other diet plans, the 17-Day Diet revolves around a specific meal plan and exercise regime, designed to allow you to lose the maximum amount of weight in the shortest amount of time.

The 17 Day Diet involves four food cycles that add up to, not surprisingly, 17 days of precise eating methods. These are meant to confuse the body into speeding up its metabolism, while at the same time not allowing it to get comfortable enough to stop dropping weight. In addition to the food plan, the diet also requires strict adherence to a daily 17-minute exercise regime.

The diet reportedly can allow you to lose as much as 10 to 15 pounds per day, beginning with its focus on water weight reduction. Moreno has taken his diet plan to Good Morning America, and Dr. Phil, among others, the latter of whom challenged his viewers to do the diet with him.

Like the Atkins Diet, the 17 Day Diet is broken into four phases. In the 17 Day Diet, these are the four A's-Accelerate, Activate, Achieve, and Arrive. The Arrive portion of the program is designed for weight maintenance after you have achieved your 17 Day goals.

The 17 Day Diet is an offshoot in many ways of the movement towards clean eating. Whereas the Atkins Diet was also broken into four parts-Induction, Ongoing Weight Loss, Pre-Maintenance, and Lifetime Maintenance, that allowed for a gradual re-introduction of carbs, the 17 Day Diet allows for them but maintains strict rules for the consumption of fruit and carbs both.

Like the Atkins Diet at its peak of popularity, the 17 Day Diet is not without critics. Several dietitians and nutritionists, including American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Keri Gans, have cautioned against believing all that the 17 Day Diet promises. Gans has cried foul on Dr. Moreno's concept of metabolic confusion, and maintains that there is in actual fact no such thing. Furthermore, nutritionists have blasted Moreno's near-exclusion of dairy and fruit, as most view them as being part of an overall healthy eating plan.