WHAT IS THE THRIVE DIET?

Adhering to raw food and vegan principles, The Thrive Diet is designed to reduce stress and boost weight loss. Brendan Brazier, a former Iron Man athlete, invented this diet in 2007. Brendan hopes people walk away from his diet with improved mental clarity and enhanced athletic performance. You can find more information about the philosophy of the diet in Brazier’s book, The Thrive Diet.

While intended for just twelve weeks of use, the diet strongly advises all its users to adopt a permanent vegan lifestyle. If a food is featured on the acceptable food list, there’s no daily caloric limit. While little public information is available, we did manage to confirm that:

• The Thrive Diet bans processed foods
• Users must eat a smoothie, a large green salad, and raw energy bar daily.
• Dieters are asked to keep their pantry stocked with chickpeas, seaweed, hemp, and green beans.
• Meals usually consist of quality fats, fiber, and high levels of protein.
• You must eat must eat all foods at room temperature.
• Recommended foods include pesto salad, yam pancakes filled with wild rice, flaxseed burgers, smoothies, zucchini chips, and a wide variety of other organic, whole foods.
• Foods specifically banned by the Thrive Diet are eggs, meat, dairy, seafood, and anything with a lot of carbs.
• The Thrive Diet recommends adherents regulate their blood sugar by eating more meals a day.

BENEFITS OF THE THRIVE DIET

In addition to the benefits this diet offers the environment, this diet has positive aspects including:

• This diet adds plenty of fresh, wholesome food into the typical diet.
• A lack of complicated recipes makes it easy to plan meals.

DRAWBACKS OF THE THRIVE DIET

While this diet offers some benefits, it also possesses several disadvantages:

• Veganism can be restrictive to the uninitiated. In addition, according to one study: ““Pure vegetarian diets might cause cobalamin (B12) deficiency due to lack of dietary intake.” If such a deficiency is present, fatigue, anemia, and nervous system damage may result. University of Giessen also discovered that vegans face an increased risk for heart disease.
• Raw food lifestyles have not only proved ineffective but, potentially harmful over the long term. In fact, many foods become more nutritious after cooking; heat helps your body to absorb beta carotene for example. Live Science concluded that raw foods are no safer than cooked foods.
• Many of the diet’s ingredients are expensive.

BUSINESS OF THE THRIVE DIET

While an expert on the Iron Man, the diet’s founder (Brendan Blazier) has no background in health or nutrition. In addition to The Thrive Diet, he has gone on to author a variety of raw food cookbooks.

WHAT CUSTOMERS THINK OF THE THRIVE DIET

Here’s what some former users had to say:

• “I went from 150 lbs to 185 of pure muscle after reading this.”
• ”I think this is fantastic. His principals make sense and the food is different and very delicious.”
• ”This book has such depth of information, rarely have any books blown my socks off and Thrive just happens to do that! I love what he states in his book.”
• “Good inspiration for me, and those interested in a vegan diet to prevent inflammation, improve performance, etc. As a 69 y/o runner, I have learned the practical benefits of a plant-based, low inflammation diet.”
• ”I love this book. It’s easy to understand, and since I’ve begun implementing the Thrive diet into my own, I’ve noticed huge differences. I”

While many people reported increased energy, this will happen anytime someone switches to a diet high in vegetable content. Many reviewers failed to mention pounds lost or muscle gained; this seems to indicate that weight loss results were limited. A few users also complained about the difficult to find ingredients, fatigue, and constant hunger pangs.

CONCLUSION – DOES THE THRIVE DIET HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT?

The Thrive Diet is portrayed as a method to support muscle growth, increase energy levels, reduce stress, and increase weight loss. While you can lose weight on a vegan, raw food diet, it’s known to be an unhealthy strategy. Many scientific studies have concluded that vegans must supplement their diets with vitamins and minerals to achieve wellness. In addition, this weight-loss plan is expensive and difficult to support over the long-term.