Overnight Diet Claims You Can Lose Weight While Sleeping

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - It's almost swimsuit season and now starts the rush to try and lose some weight.

There's a new diet in town that promises you could lose weight while you sleep and even more in the coming weeks.

Amanda Busch is a busy, working mom with a very active 3-year-old.

Between her pregnancy and several back surgeries, she put on about 60 pounds.

"My goal was to lose that weight and then some," Busch said.

So, when she heard about the Overnight Diet, a diet that says you can lose while you snooze, she thought it sounded like a dream.

Very simply, it consists of six days of a high protein diet and one day of a liquid diet.

The diet also requires sleep - an adequate amount, but at least six hours consecutive per night. In fact, the first night, the diet promises you could lose two pounds while you're fast asleep.

"I lost a pound the first night and I think six or seven pounds in the two weeks," Busch said.

But, critics say before you jump into bed with dreams of waking up slimmer, there a few things you should know.

Nutritionist Leslie Bonci said in order to lose two pounds of actual fat, you would have to burn 6,000 to 7,000 calories, which obviously you're not doing if you're sleeping. The author of the Overnight Diet recognizes those first two pounds are water weight, but said it serves as an incentive to keep with the diet.

Bonci said, though, there's really nothing new about the diet.

When you break it down, these are things people already know.

"If you find those ways to get adequate sleep, if you find those ways to balance your calories, and if you find those ways to move, you're going to be successful with weight loss," Bonci said.

Busch found the diet didn't fit her busy lifestyle.

"There's [going to] be women out there and men who will do great on this that have the time and energy to put into this," Busch said.

However, she did see results.

"I did have a good four to five people tell me that they could really tell that I lost weight in the last couple weeks. I had not told anyone I was doing this diet," she said.

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