How Dr. Sanford Siegal Cookie Diet Began

In 1957, a humble physician named Dr. Sanford Siegal began his medical practice in Miami, seeing many patients with a variety of medical conditions. After three years, he realized that most of his patients were overweight and that their health problems originated from being obese. This realization prompted the doctor to think of finding a solution and helping these people overcome their weight problems and subsequent medical conditions. After three years of general medical practice, Dr. Siegal specifically treated patients with obesity and weight problems, and he was doing it full time.

During the following decade, Dr. Siegal divided his time between seeing patients and developing weight treatment solutions that proved to be effective in helping his patients achieve weight loss. He used several approaches in treating obesity, while applying his knowledge about low-calorie diets and the role that exercise and appetite suppression play on weight loss. The results of his study on high fiber diets were later published in his book “Dr. Siegal’s Natural Fiber Permanent Weight Loss Diet”. But even after his patients showed considerable weight loss, Dr. Siegal was still not satisfied by the results. He realized that hunger was playing a major role in the success of his weight loss programs, and that it has, in fact, a negative role that he must find a solution to. No matter how effective a weight loss scheme he recommends to his patients, they still go hungry and feel deprived, and their cravings increase as soon as they go on a diet. As their cravings increase, the risk for back-sliding also increases, making a diet program ineffective and useless. It was this fact that prompted him to address the issue of hunger and its negative impact in low-calorie diets.

Developing the Dr. Sanford Siegal’s Cookie Diet

Through his vast experience in treating patients with weight problems, Dr. Siegal know that certain foods either control or actually stimulate hunger and its subsequent effect to a person, which is appetite. Using his extensive background in chemistry and an inherent passion for cooking, Dr. Siegal tried to create different mixes of natural substances and food products that can provide maximum suppression of hunger per calorie. He studied different food components like carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals, and the combination of these components and their effects in hunger suppression.

While doing research and studying his new food mixes, Dr. Siegal used himself, his family, and friends to test his new products and to specify the best food mixes that will effectively control hunger. Finally, Dr. Siegal was able to come up with a new formula that contains amino acid proteins. What he developed also proved to be a better technique in controlling hunger. And so the Siegal’s Cookie Diet began to take shape. Dr. Siegal chose the cookie as a medium in putting his unique amino acid blend into because it is portable, stable, and easy to store.

In 1975, Dr. Siegal used a small group of his patients to test his new wonder cookie. Each patient was instructed to eat exactly six cookies during the day, not at fixed hours, but only as needed, or when they begin to feel hungry. By dinner, they can eat a reasonable meal, with chicken or fish and vegetables. While the cookies contained approximately 540 calories, dinner would have 300, an amount disputed by many of Dr. Siegal’s critics. He then came up with soups and shakes that can be eaten with the cookies in the diet, but with the same restricted amount of calorie intake. The Cookie Diet is simply set to just 800 calories a day, with 500 coming from the high-protein cookies. The protein found in the cookies act as the hunger suppressants. Some of the ingredients in the cookies are whole-wheat flour, oats, and rice. Dinner is recommended to consist of lean protein, like chicken or turkey, to complement the day’s high-protein cookies.