Welcome back to The Diet Oracle! Now that I’ve finished up my week-long crack at The Mediterranean Diet Weight Loss Solution: The 28 Day Kick-Start Plan for Lasting Weight Loss by Julene Stassou, MS, RD, it’s time to take a closer look at what this diet brings to the table and–perhaps most importantly–see whether it delivered on its promises and claims.

Now that I’ve got a week’s worth of food logs, let’s crunch some numbers and see where the numbers landed. Across the seven days I followed Stassou’s meal plan, I averaged 1308 calories per day with 47% from carbohydrate, 32% from fat, 21% from protein (or 69 grams per day), and 22 grams from fiber. Based on all typical calculations, that calorie level should have definitely produced some weight loss given my particular height, weight, age, gender and activity level. More specifically, I should have created an average daily deficit of 500-700 calories per day, or 3500-4900 calories for the week. Assuming that 1 pound of body weight has roughly 3500 calories, I should have lost 1-1.5 pounds this week. So how did I fare?

After a week of following The Mediterranean Diet Weight Loss Solution, I lost precisely 1.5 pounds, or a little over 1% of my starting weight.

Though 1.5 pounds might not seem like a lot–especially if you watch any of those crash diet shows on the boob tube–let’s put this into perspective. Based on my personal results, if I were to follow this diet for the suggested 28 days (or 4 weeks) recommended by Stassou, I would lose about 6 pounds in a month. If I kept at it for three months, I’d be close to hitting 20 pounds. Twenty. Pounds. Given that significant health benefits can be reaped by losing just 5-10% of one’s body weight (assuming there’s extra weight to lose), even a person weighing in at 400 pounds would benefit from a 20 pound weight loss!

Though this diet plan certainly has both its pro’s and con’s, I would say one of its biggest advantages is the fact that I rarely felt hungry between meals. I think only twice over the course of the entire week did I feel some hunger pangs and even then, I simply added an extra snack as Stassou recommends. My friends, this is kind of a big deal, since hunger is perhaps *the* number one reason dieters give up and call it quits. To create a meal plan that chalks up a daily 500-700 calorie deficit without undue suffering is really an accomplishment. After all, if you’re not constantly dealing with a growling stomach, you will be that much more likely to stick with your plan and get the results you’re after.

So did The Mediterranean Diet Weight Loss Solution deliver on its claims and promises? I think so. If you are willing to truly commit to this 28-day kick-start plan and follow Stassou’s recommendations, you will likely lose weight. Does that mean this is the right diet for you? Maybe. Over the next series of posts, I’ll continue to share with you my thoughts and insights to help you answer that very question and decide whether a little dietary trip to the Mediterranean might just be your weight loss solution! Thanks for reading!