People seeking quick solutions for weight loss may be drawn to the Snake Diet. It advocates prolonged fasts interspersed with a single meal. Like many fad diets, it promises rapid and drastic results. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the Snake Diet, including its safety and effectiveness for weight loss.
Diet Review Scorecard
- Overall score: 0.79
- Weight loss: 1
- Healthy eating: 1
- Sustainability: 1
- Whole body health: 0.25
- Nutrition quality: 1.5
- Evidence based: 1
BOTTOM LINE: While it promotes rapid weight loss, the Snake Diet is based on a starvation model and has many adverse effects, including severe nutrient deficiencies. It cannot be sustained without posing a significant risk to your health.
What is the Snake Diet?
The Snake Diet promotes itself not as a restrictive diet but rather a lifestyle centered around prolonged fasting. Founded on the belief that humans historically endured periods of famine, it argues that the human body can sustain itself on just one meal a few times a week. It was invented by Cole Robinson, who calls himself a fasting coach but has no qualifications or background in medicine, biology, or nutrition.
The diet involves an initial fast of 48 hours - or as long as possible - supplemented with Snake Juice, an electrolyte beverage. After this period, there’s a feeding window of 1-2 hours before the next fast begins.
Robinson claims that once you reach your goal weight, you can keep cycling in and out of fasts, surviving on one meal every 24-48 hours.
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Keep in mind that many of these claims have not been tested and are scientifically suspect.
In essence, the Snake Diet is an extreme fasting-based diet that encourages long periods of restricted food intake followed by short eating windows.
Understanding the Fasting Protocol
The diet typically follows three phases:
- Initial 48-hour fast
- Flexible fasting windows (24-96 hours)
- Maintenance phase with shorter fasting periods
During fasting periods, practitioners are only allowed to consume Snake Juice, which is meant to provide essential electrolytes and prevent dehydration.
Snake Juice: The Elixir of the Snake Diet
During fasting days, you drink Snake Juice, an electrolyte blend sold online by the diet’s creator, Cole Robinson.
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Snake Juice Composition
Snake Juice is a homemade electrolyte drink containing:
- 8 cups (2 liters) of water
- 1/2 teaspoon (2 g) of Himalayan pink salt
- 1 teaspoon (5 g) of salt-free potassium chloride
- 1/2 teaspoon (2 g) of food-grade Epsom salts
Dosage guidelines don’t exist for the homemade version, but you’re limited to three packets of powdered electrolyte mix per day for the commercial product.
While these ingredients aim to maintain electrolyte balance, the mixture isn't scientifically validated for safety or effectiveness during extended fasting. The primary concern with such an extreme dietary plan is the very high risk of nutrient deficiencies.
The Three Phases of the Snake Diet
The diet is divided into three phases, meant to drastically lower your weight and acclimate your body to a continuous cycle of long-term - and potentially dangerous - fasts.
Phase 1: Initial Fasting and Ketosis
Phase 1 is the initial fast for newcomers to the diet. In this phase, you’re meant to reach and maintain ketosis. The initial fast should last at least 48 hours and is supplemented with unspecified amounts of an apple cider vinegar drink, as well as Snake Juice.
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Then, you’re allowed to eat for 1-2 hours - though variety is deemed unimportant and there are no guidelines for what to eat or avoid - before jumping into a longer, 72-hour fast, followed by a second feeding window. The goal here is to “detoxify your liver.” Yet, Robinson doesn’t say which toxins are targeted. What’s more, your liver and kidneys naturally rid your body of harmful compounds, which are expelled in urine, sweat, and feces (6, 7). Furthermore, there is scant evidence that detox diets purge any contaminants from your body (8).
Phase 2: Extended Fasting Cycles
During the second phase, you cycle through long fasts of 48-96 hours, broken up by single meals. You’re encouraged to fast until you can no longer tolerate it - which may pose several health risks.
You’re meant to stay on this phase until you reach your desired weight.
Phase 3: Maintenance
Phase 3 is a maintenance phase involving 24-48-hour fast cycles interspersed by single meals. You’re told to listen to your body’s natural hunger cues during this phase.
As the diet focuses primarily on ignoring hunger cues, this shift in attention may be difficult to achieve and seems contradictory to the diet’s message.
Further, leptin and ghrelin, two hormones responsible for hunger and fullness, may be altered by prolonged fasting (9).
Weight Loss on the Snake Diet: How it Works
Fasting and restricting calories lead to weight loss because your body is forced to rely on its energy stores. Usually, your body burns both fat and lean muscle mass to keep your major organs nourished so that you survive. Because the Snake Diet does not replenish these losses with food, it results in rapid, dangerous weight loss (10, 11).
On a fast, you generally lose about 2 pounds (0.9 kg) per day for the first week, then 0.7 pounds (0.3 kg) per day by the third week (10). For reference, a safe weight loss range is about 1-2 pounds (0.5-0.9 kg) per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Robinson also makes sweeping calorie recommendations, claiming that a newcomer to the diet needs no more than 3,500 calories per week. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends 1,600-2,400 daily calories for women and 2,000-3,000 for men - roughly 11,200-16,800 and 14,000-21,000 calories per week, respectively (3).
That’s significantly more than Robinson suggests, meaning that people on the Snake Diet run the risk of severe calorie deprivation.
Once you reach your goal weight, Robinson recommends 8,500 calories per week (distributed across 5 meals) for active women and 20,000 calories per week (across 3 total eating days) for active men.
Claims and Reality: What the Snake Diet Promises
Robinson asserts that the Snake Diet cures type 2 diabetes, herpes, and inflammation. However, these claims are baseless.
While general weight loss is associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in people with obesity or excess weight, it’s an overstatement to claim that the Snake Diet cures diabetes (15, 16).
Moreover, research on prolonged fasting is mixed regarding inflammation and diabetes (17, 18, 19). That said, fasts of longer than 4 days are not frequently studied.
Though one recent study in 1,422 adults did note improved mood, better blood sugar regulation, and reduced blood pressure in prolonged fasts lasting 4-21 days, participants were allowed to eat 250 calories daily and were under constant medical supervision (19).
Potential Dangers and Side Effects
The Snake Diet is associated with numerous downsides and poses extreme health risks, as it fails to meet your nutritional needs, may promote disordered eating, and is predicated on starvation. Following this starvation-based diet leads to many risks, such as extreme nutrient deficiencies, dehydration, and disordered eating.
Physical Health Impacts
Extended fasting periods can lead to several serious health complications:
- Severe electrolyte imbalances
- Dangerous blood sugar fluctuations
- Muscle loss and weakness
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Dehydration
- Metabolic disruption
Electrolyte imbalance is another side effect due to the consumption of “Snake Juice” as the primary source of hydration during extended fasts.
Mental Health Considerations
The extreme nature of this diet can have significant psychological impacts:
- Development of disordered eating patterns
- Increased anxiety around food
- Obsessive behaviors related to fasting
- Social isolation due to restricted eating patterns
This kind of mental approach to food, coupled with a diet this extreme, can be profoundly damaging to your psychological well-being, and can ruin your relationship with food.
Promotes an Unhealthy Relationship with Food
Robinson employs problematic and stigmatizing language, promoting an unhealthy relationship with food and body image.
His videos endorse fasting “until you feel like death” - which could be extremely dangerous, especially for people with disordered eating or conditions that affect blood sugar control, such as insulin resistance or diabetes.
Very Restrictive and Unsustainable
Your body needs many kinds of nutrients to survive, even if you’re sedentary. The Snake Diet devalues dietary variety and provides few food guidelines, even though variety helps ensure that you’re getting the nutrients you need.
Like many restrictive diets, the Snake Diet is unsustainable. Instead of encouraging healthy lifestyle changes, it demands prolonged food restriction that isn’t backed by scientific research. Ultimately, your body cannot survive on a diet built around starvation.
Risk of Dehydration
In his YouTube videos, Robinson promotes occasional dry fasts, which completely restrict food and liquids, including water. It’s unclear at what point or for how long this method should be used. Since the Snake Diet requires eating very little and irregularly, any limits on water intake raise your risk of dehydration and are extremely dangerous (21, 22).
Nutritional Deficiencies
While Robinson claims that Snake Juice meets all of your micronutrient needs, each 5-gram packet provides only 27% and 29% of the Daily Values (DVs) for sodium and potassium, respectively.
Notably, your body needs around 30 different vitamins and minerals from food. Long-term fasting can lead to electrolyte imbalances and nutritional deficiencies (23, 24).
Metabolic Slowdown
The drastic reduction in calorie intake that is associated with the Snake Diet may also cause metabolic slowdowns. While short-term fasting may increase metabolic rates, long-term fasting can have the opposite effect, which can lead to decreased basal metabolic rates (5).
Medical Contraindications
The Snake Diet is particularly dangerous for individuals with:
- Diabetes or blood sugar regulation issues
- Heart conditions
- Kidney problems
- History of eating disorders
- Pregnancy or nursing
- Underlying medical conditions
Anyone with underlying health conditions should avoid this diet and consult their healthcare provider for safe weight management options.
Long-term Impact and Sustainability
Research indicates that extreme fasting protocols like the Snake Diet can lead to:
- Metabolic damage
- Hormonal imbalances
- Increased risk of eating disorders
- Yo-yo weight cycling
- Compromised immune function
Alternatives to the Snake Diet for Healthy Weight Loss
Because it relies primarily on prolonged starvation, the Snake Diet does little to promote healthy eating or to curb unhealthy behaviors that may have led to unwanted weight gain.
Plus, your body needs regular food intake to meet its nutrient and energy needs. Essential nutrients, such as vitamins, protein, and fat, must come from food, as your body cannot produce them. As such, long-term fasting may endanger your health and increase your risk for a range of diseases (14).
Though the Snake Diet promotes weight loss, many other weight loss methods don’t involve starving yourself.
If you want to lose weight or improve your health, you’re far better off eating a sensible keto diet. Instead, why not try a ketogenic diet?
Making long-term lifestyle changes rather than relying on quick-fix diets or fads, e.g. BetterMe app will kick you out of the mental funk, shake off your extra weight, rid you off your energy-zapping habits, and help you sculpt the body of your dreams.