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800 Calorie a Day Diet

Unprocessed Super Nutrition on 800 Calories a Day With 15 Minutes Prep Time

Yes, it can be done. I built this diet over months of experimentation with what worked for me. The primary goals were 1) keep the calories to a minimum, but eat enough to stay sane and be able to function 2) get as much possible nutrition from food, rather than my daily multivitamin 3) it had to be easy and fast to prepare - I'm a busy woman and none of the diets that required extensive cooking has ever worked for me.

Initially, I also wanted the diet to cost less than $10 a day, but after really living with it, I decided that if I could actually keep myself to 800 nutrition-packed calories a day, splurging on food quality was OK. If you want to cut costs, the raspberries for dessert are pretty expensive, as are the organic greens and the Faye yogurt. You could swap the organic greens for conventional greens (though they wont have as much nutrients), and you could swap the raspberries for a pear (but you'll be losing out on a lot of fiber, and Vitamin A). So change it around if you can't afford to spend $20 a day on food, but beyond the price point, this is as jam-packed as 800 little calories can get.

Of course, this is NOT a diet for long-term use. And if you didn't vary it, it'd probably get pretty boring after a few days. I tend to swap greens for sugar snap peas, or raw broccoli, or even spinach. But given how lean this is, if you went out to dinner and had a serving of salmon, you'd still come out of the day with under 1300 calories. If you must have something warm for dinner (or lunch) there are a couple brands of organic tomato soup that run barely 100 calories a cup.

Finally, do drink lots of water on this diet plan - you're going to be losing weight, and its important to keep your system flushing out all those toxins. And take a multi-vitamin just to round things out nutritionally. Weight loss is the goal here, but the final destination for weight loss is optimal health.

Here's how it breaks out:

Breakfast:
Arrowhead Mills Organic 4 Grain Plus Flax Hot Cereal 1/4 cup
140 calories, 9g fiber, 5g protein, 6% iron
Faye 0% greek yogurt 1 cup
120 calories, 20g protein, 250mg calcium

Lunch:
Greens 6 cups unpacked
90 calories, 12g fiber, 12g protein, 360mg calcium, Vitamin A 708% DV, Vitamin C 330%
2 hard boiled eggs - no yolks
32 calories, 6g protein, 140mg calcium

Snack
1 cup skim milk
86 calories, 300 mg calcium, 8g protein
or
1 cup soybean sprouts (or add them to your salad at lunch)
86 calories, 9g protein, 3% fiber, 17% vitC, 8% iron, 30% folate

Dinner:
Greens 6 cups unpacked
90 calories, 12g fiber, 12g protein, 360mg calcium, Vitamin A 708% DV, Vitamin C 330%
Faye 0% greek yogurt 1 cup
120 calories, 20g protein, 9g carbs, 250mg calcium
OR
1/2 cup soybeans (edamane) green, cooked, boiled, without salt
120 calories, 11g protein, 4g fiber, 10g carbs, 25% VitC, 12% iron, 13% calcium
3 hard boiled eggs - no yolks
51 calories, 9g protein, 210mg calcium

Dessert:
Raspberries 1 cup
64 calories, 1g protein, 54% vitamin c, 8g fiber

TOTAL CALORIES 793
TOTAL FIBER 41 grams
TOTAL PROTEIN 93 grams
TOTAL CALCIUM 1570 mg (157% DV)
WELL MORE THAN 100% DV VITAMIN A and VITAMIN C


Here's what it will cost:
Oatmeal: 50 cents
Yogurt $5.50
5 eggs $2
Skim milk $1.50 (from a deli)
Greens $7
Raspberries $4
Cost per day: $20.50


Prep Time:
Oatmeal: 7 mins
Boil eggs 15 mins (8 to boil water, 7 to cook)

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