An Honest Review of the 2 Week Diet Plan – Too Little Time? 

The 2 Week Diet Plan is a diet/exercise program that makes a very bold claim right in its title: this is a program that promises to help you see significant weight loss and muscle gain, in just 2 weeks. That might sound a little too good to be true. But is it?

I don’t blame you for being skeptical. There are so many programs out there just like this one that really fail to deliver on their core promise – and many of those aren’t quite so ambitious in their aims to begin with! 

How can you really be expected to lose that much weight in so little time? And is this program anything like the other scams and empty promises?

Well, apologies for the spoiler, but I do believe that this one is a little different. And I feel comfortable – on the whole – in recommending it to most people. In this full, honest review of the 2 Week Diet Plan, you’ll see why and how it all works.

So, What is the 2 Week Diet?

The 2 Week Diet is a diet that claims you will see ‘noticeable benefits’ within just 2 weeks. That’s a short amount of time and a bold claim. But a piece of encouraging news early on, is that this is a diet from Brian Flatt, who previously gave us the 3 Week Diet. That diet enjoyed an awful lot of success and positive praise, seeing as it helped man y people to lose weight quickly and feel better.

The same principles are at play here, so we know there’s a good foundation for an effective program.

The diet has been broken down into different phases and stages, which each include different books/guides to walk you through them. These stages invariably draw on a wide range of different exciting developments from the world of fitness, nutrition and health. In many ways, this is an effective combination of many different training techniques to form a single program.

Those elements include:

• Weight training
• Fasting
• Calorie restriction
• Nutrition
• Mindset

Perhaps the best way to think about all this, is as some kind of ‘jump start’ – a powerful way to get your diet/training off to a running start.

Why the 2 Week Diet Stands Out

Everyone wants to lose weight, but it seems that only a very small fraction of people have the ability to do that in a satisfying and effective way. 

So many people start diets that they never see through that it would lead you to believe that no diet is really effective.

But of course this isn’t true. Of course there are ways you can diet and be effective but the key lies more with the mindset and the approach rather than the specifics of the diet.

In this post, we’ll look at what that means.

The Reason Diets Fail

The reason diets fail is because people approach them in the wrong way. They approach diets as short term solutions and quick fixes. The fact that people often describe themselves as being ‘on’ a diet, is really just a clue that at some point in the future, they expect to be off said diet.

Even when they start diets without this mindset, they often still end up quitting the diet before they get anywhere with it, simply because it isn’t properly designed to fit into their lifestyle. 

Let’s take something like intermittent fasting, or ketogenic diets. Both of these are great diets. Both of them can be effective and actually burn through fat quickly while providing other health benefits.

But at the same time, these diets will also leave you with zero ‘wiggle room’. What many of the people who recommend these diets don’t realize, is just how much of a role your social life has in your diet.

Because eating isn’t just something we do in order to fuel and sustain ourselves – it’s something we do in social settings. Most romantic dates involve food, most meetings with friends involve food. And most evenings, you will probably share meals with your family.

If you sit there sipping black tea, then it’s not exactly very social!

So, the solution is not to choose the diet that will help you lose weight the fastest, but the diet that you can actually stick to. And this is what makes the difference. 

In fact, it makes all the difference. All other considerations pale in comparison to the simple fact that you can’t expect to lose weight or build muscle if you don’t stick with the program.

This is what initially stood out to me about the 2 Week Diet. Whatever you think about it, the fact remains that sticking to something for two weeks is much easier than sticking to it indefinitely. And if you can see significant changes to your body in that short amount of time, then you become immediately much more likely to stick at any subsequent program and to continue making positive progress.

There are other reasons why you’re more likely to stick to the 2 Week Diet as well, which we’ll look at as we get into it further.

Checkout The 2 Week Diet Here!

So… How Does it Work?

When reviewing a weight loss program like this, the most important thing is to critically examine the way it works.

That’s all you can do. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to make claims online and to pretend to be an expert. You can’t trust that a review or testimonial is accurate or genuine, and you can’t be sure that your source of information isn’t compromised.

So, what you need to do, is to dig deep and find out how the program actually works. What are the fundamental theories and ideas that are being put to the test here? If those make logical sense to you, if they corroborate with other information you find online, and if you like the sounds of them… then that’s your best bet.

With that in mind, let’s take an in-depth look at how the 2 Week Diet actually works.

The Fundamental Basic

The first thing to recognize is the most fundamental idea behind the 2 Week Diet: that this is a diet that aims to place the focus on your metabolism. That means that it isn’t going to be preventing you from eating entire food groups, or forcing you to be incredibly strict in any other way.

Instead, you’re looking to increase the number of calories that your body can burn through when you are at rest.

This is key. Why? Because for so many of us, its our natural metabolism that holds us back from true weight loss.

Think about it: what is the difference between someone who is very thin that you know and someone who is very overweight? I don’t know about you, but a large proportion of the people I know who are overweight, actually don’t eat very much at all. They’re constantly dieting!

On the other hand, I know an awful lot of people who eat terribly (ALL the junk food, ALL the calories) and yet manage to maintain incredibly slim physiques. 

What is the difference between these people? 

It has to do with their hormones – which in turn control their metabolisms. 

Now, there are some groups of people who will tell you that weight loss has little to do with hormones and everything to do with your calories in vs calories out. There is some truth to this – that is a very mathematical and logical way to consider weight loss after all.

But what it misses is the fact that your calories out is controlled by your hormone balance and your metabolic rate. And we have no way to measure this accurately.

In other words, when you exercise, you will burn more calories based on your weight, based on your height, and based on your health and the strength of your heart. Some of this we can calculate. But likewise, the amount of stress hormones/testosterone you produce will also have an impact.

And these continue to have a big impact, even while you’re sleeping. 

Don’t believe me? Then consider the considerable difference that someone who uses steroids will see in their body composition. Now, I am in no way advocating or recommending that you start using anabolic steroids. Rather, I’m making the point that this is something that clearly affects weight loss, that won’t be measured by your AMR or BMR. It’s something other than measuring ‘calories in and calories out’ that will impact on your physique and health.

Then consider a woman who has polycystic ovaries, or hypothyroidism. Again: this isn’t something that can be measured in calories – but it has a huge difference on her weight loss or gain.

Recent studies show us that swapping gut flora (the bacteria in our stomachs) can even alter our weight loss or gain!

In other words: hormones play a massive role. And while you might not have any condition, or be using medications, you still have a very different balance of testosterone and cortisol as compared with your friends and family. We’re all different.

By focusing on the metabolism then, you can change the way you process foods and see huge changes in your physique in a short time. And these are changes that will last. 

So how does the 2 Week Diet do that?

The Diet

The diet side of things effectively combines a few different ideas into a single program – and that’s partly what makes it so effective and interesting as compared with many others.

One aspect of the diet plan for instance, is intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting (IF for short), is an approach to eating that involves restricting the periods when you’re allowed to consume calories – or massively reducing the total number of those calories during specific points.

The idea behind this is that you will then be able to deplete the glycogen stores in your liver and your muscles, as well as the glucose in your blood. In other words, you’re removing all of the back up energy that you have available. 

What does that mean?

Firstly, it means that when you exercise or engage in any other kind of activity (even sleeping or eating count here), your body will have no choice but to burn fat in order to fuel the movement.

At the same time, it means that when you eat later on in the day, the energy won’t be stored as fat: it will be used to replenish those depleted glycogen stores.

The best part about all this is that intermittent fasting will also offer a whole host of other health benefits – some of which can be absolutely transformative. 

For instance: the body responds to that low blood sugar/glycogen by increasing its production of growth hormone. This in turn will help to build more muscle tissue, while tripping away even more fat.

Then there’s the fact that your cells will begin a process called autophagy, which essentially means they’ll be renewing themselves – leading to some regeneration and huge health benefits. In other words, the body will turn to stores of protein and fat and begin breaking them down – thereby helping to rejuvenate much of the body when that food does come in. This is actually a highly effective tool for increasing your health and has even been shown to overturn some conditions. People who practice fasting describe amazing changes to their body – even seeing skin tags completely fall off! The common assumption is that protein = muscle. In truth, protein is stored in a myriad of different ways around the body and the ‘junk’ protein will be the first to go. It’s like giving your entire body a renovation!

Or how about the fact that your brain function can improve? Or that you raise energy by reducing the need to digest foods. 

The 2 Week Diet combines this fasting (primarily as a way to kickstart that energy), along with a host of recommended supplements, nutritional advice and more – all of which will put you in a fata burning state and help you to get into better shape even while at rest.

Checkout The 2 Week Diet Here!

The Training

Another key component of all this, is the training. You’ll be training hard on top of the dieting by using routines that involve the use of weights and bodyweight (calisthenics). This is contrary to what you find in many programs, but it is also very refreshing. 

That’s because extended cardio sessions haven’t been shown to be particularly effective when it comes to losing weight. You’ll be burning fat sure, but not that much more than simply resting during that time! (We often forget this when we look at our fitness trackers…)

On the other hand, when you incorporate resistance training into your routine by picking up a weight, you greatly increase the energy toll. That’s because you now need to not only move your limbs, but do so while generating enough strength to also move the heavy items at the end of them (or your own bodyweight).

There are many more reasons that weight training makes a ton of sense too – and it’s great to see that the 2 Week Diet is so forward thinking in so many regards. 

For instance: lifting weights is another way that you raise your metabolism. During the workouts, you’ll be producing anabolic hormones (testosterone, growth hormone and more), which will increase your fat burning and help you to build more muscle.

At the same time, simply having more muscle will also increase the amount of calories you burn when at rest. That’s because muscle is ‘metabolically active’ meaning that it burns calories simply for your body to maintain it. You’ll raise your AMR and be able to get slimmer, even with more calories!

Then there’s the fact that toning your muscle will make you look and feel fantastic. So many of us are missing strength and mobility, but beyond this, you’ll find that toning the muscles in the legs and the pecs and the abs all make a bigger difference than simply reducing the amount of fat that collects there.

Can you really make a significant difference to your muscle tone in just two weeks? That’s what the program sets out to achieve and it does so remarkably well.

Motivation: The Key to Everything

One thing that the 2 Week Diet includes that you won’t find in a lot of other programs, is an entire segment dedicated to motivation. In other words: a section that is dedicated to the ‘weight loss mindset’. 

This is crucial, seeing as our mindset is often what will hold us back from training. In particular, it will often negatively impact on ‘adherence’. This is the technical term for our likelihood of sticking with a particular training program or diet plan. You can have the best diet plan in the world, but if you don’t stick with it… no results for you!

A lot of us try and fail to get into shape on what seems to be a recurring basis. New Year comes around, we promise ourselves we’ll burn some fat and build some muscle. We write a massive plan. Maybe buy a gym membership and protein shake. And for a little bit, we stick to our plans and start to see progress.

Then we get busy/tired/ill and find that we have a bad week. The week after that we come back to it and give it another shot. But then it slides again. Two months later, we’ve forgotten our training program and are in worse shape than we were before!

Well, there’s always next year!

When this happens, most of us are inclined to blame ourselves to external factors. Perhaps we just don’t have what it takes to stick at a training program. Maybe our metabolism is working against us. Maybe we’ll never be in the great shape we would ideally like to be.

Or maybe we blame other factors. Perhaps the training program was bad? Maybe it was the gym? Maybe the gym was too far away, and the training program was too challenging. Perhaps we should have been using more protein shake? Or less? Or a different one?

Let me stop you there. 

In ninety percent of cases, the problem is not with your body, with your gym or with your program.

More often than not the issue is psychological. The problem is that we don’t know how to stick at training programs and as such, we end up giving up on them way before we should.

And getting into shape likely isn’t the only place where this is an issue either. Many of us have equal difficulty when it comes to giving up alcohol, or cake or cigarettes. If you’ve ever planned on starting your own business, then you might have struggled here too. 

This is the psychological element involved in attempting to reach any goal or change any behaviour. And actually – it’s generally the single most important factor in each.

And don’t feel bad if you’re not all that good at this just yet. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, or that you lack sticking power. This is a problem that almost everyone has but what most people don’t realize is that like everything else, adherence can be trained. Once you learn how to manipulate your mind to stick at your goals like glue, then anything will become possible. It’s why it’s so good that the 2 Week Diet includes this section: it’s something that is sorely missing from many other programs and it can make all the difference.

How the 2 Week Diet Handles Motivation

Hopefully you at least know that sticking at your program and evolving it is a better strategy than jumping from one strategy to another. But even then, you might find that you go long periods where you can’t muster the interest or the enthusiasm to workout.

This seems counter intuitive. After all, most of us really want to be in great shape and find it highly motivating to think of. So why do we keep cheating and giving up?

The answer lies partly in the way the brain works.

Without getting into two much technical detail, your brain contains something called the ‘salience network’ which includes multiple brain areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex. This network of brain areas is what’s responsible for telling us what’s important and what isn’t, directing our attention and helping us to stay motivated and to stick to our goals.

When you see a lion standing in front of you then, your salience network kicks into high gear, releasing adrenaline and norepinephrine while also causing your brains ‘executive control’ to focus on that one important thing.

And when you start a new training program and you’re all excited to workout, the very same thing happens. Your brain kicks into gear because you have convinced it that this is important. 

But then other more important things start to climb in – such as work pressures, family life, your untidy house. And you run out of energy too, which makes it harder to stay focused on working out and makes it easier to be distracted by other things.

Even your bodily functions and requirements – such as the simple need for your body to relax and recover will step in and seem more important. All this means you’re less likely to stick to your goals and you’re more likely to collapse on the couch at the end of the day.

Again, this isn’t to do with being lazy. After all, you’re still able to wake up at 7am every morning and drag yourself to work every day. And then cook. These things simply seem more salient and like a better use of that limited energy you have.

And it doesn’t help that the idea of getting into great shape now seems so far removed. Being in great shape is important to you yes, but right now going to the gym is less important. There’s no guarantee that going to the gym or eating right will even work (it hasn’t in the past) and even if it does, you won’t see results for months and months. 

That’s also a big issue because it means your brain never gets the reward it needs for good behavior. Going to the gym just makes you tired and eventually it seems like a bad idea. This all happens unconsciously, even if you know that working out and eating right is really what you want to do.

This is one of the best things about the 2 Week Diet’s short duration – it lets you see that progress and the weight loss as soon as possible. And by doing that, you’ll gain more motivation and more encouragement to keep going. 

The best thing about the 2 Week Diet is that it includes information on how to keep going with the diet too – and it’s something you can use repeatedly. This proves to be far more effective than an incredibly long program.

Painting the Picture of Your Bright Future – And Seeing Immediate Benefits

But it’s the motivation section of the program that will add that extra 5% that makes all the difference and helps you to stick with the program. 

So how does the 2 Week Diet fix your motivation? I don’t want to give all the secrets away here (that would hardly be fair, and I wouldn’t be doing it justice), but here are some examples of the kind of thing that can make a lot of difference…

One way you can help with all this then is to paint a picture of your bright future. That means really focusing on the results of your training and visualizing your idea body. Then you need to keep linking the idea of working out to the idea of getting those results.

So firstly, spend some time thinking about the future you want. That means focusing on your ideal body and on what that will look like. Don’t be unrealistic here – choose an image that you can really believe you’re capable of getting and that you’ll be able to achieve in a shorter time span.

A great way to do this is to find a picture of yourself at a point in your life where you were happier with your physique. This is a body you know is attainable for you – because you’ve already attained it in the past!

Alternatively, you can find a celebrity who isn’t too different from you but has made the most of a similar body type. 

Likewise, paint the picture of how this will affect your life. This is important because this is the ‘emotional’ part of your transformation and the part that your brain finds most motivating. So don’t just think about the slim waist you want, or the decent biceps – instead think about how the other sex will look at you differently. Think about how much better you’ll look in clothes and how much more confident you’ll feel. If your physique can help your career, then focus on that too – maybe your slimmer body will give you the confidence to present your own YouTube channel and earn more money.

Focus on those feelings of confidence, success and achievement and look at the image you’ve found. Do this regularly and then connect that future with the idea you need to work out. Now when you train, focus on how it’s bringing you closer to that goal and thus is worth all that effort. Suddenly it won’t seem so far off and working out will seem that much more important!

You learn many more hacks within the guide, which makes an excellent impact on your motivation and drive to keep training and keep fasting.

How the 2 Week Diet Sets You Up to Win

Meanwhile, there are also plenty of other things you can do to improve your chances of success.

We’ve already seen that our energy is limited and finite and that it can run out – so try to reduce the energy involved in working out. Training hard is important yes – but it shouldn’t be hard for you to get to the gym. Make sure you have a gym that’s nearby or better yet, invest in a home gym so you can put in 20 minutes before bed.

Those obstacles and reasons not to train aren’t going to go away but now your mind should be fixed clearly on the reasons why you’re training and you should be able to squeeze at least 20 minutes into your day if nothing else. Even five minutes is better than nothing – so make sure it’s easy to do that anywhere.

This is another great thing about the 2 Week Diet – the workout sessions are short and they’re modular enough that you can break them down into small parts and just do a little here and there if necessary.

Another good idea is to change the way you write goals. Many of us write goals like ‘lose 2 stone by next year’. Unfortunately, these goals often don’t work out because once again, they’re so removed from the steps we have to take to get there. 

Losing two stone is not entirely within your control. That is to say that you can work hard and find that you gain weight. And a year is so far away that you can easily find yourself making excuses not to train; after all, you’ve got a whole year to make up for it!

So instead, write short-term goals that are well within your control. A good example would be something like: ‘train for at least 30 minutes, four times a week’. Or ‘stop eating sweats, every day’. These are ‘pass/fail’ goals that you can assess yourself on every day. That means that you can get an immediate sense of reward and achievement each time you have a successful day and when you fail, you can just jump back on the horse.

Trying to lose weight in 2 weeks is a fantastic example of a short term goal – and it demonstrates how this entire program has been written with the human mind and motivational psychology in mind. Notice as well how Bryan doesn’t promise a specific amount of weight loss anywhere on the site. That’s not the point!

(Though his other program, the 3 Week Diet, does suggest that you might lose as much as 23lbs).

Who is Bryan Flatt? 

The man behind this program is Bryan Flatt. He is the renowned creator of the 3 Week Diet, which gained a lot of fans and helped countless people to get into shape quickly.

Bryan graduated from college with a degree in biology – knowledge that helped him to set up his own fitness studio and eventually launch these diet programs to help millions of people around the world. In order to come up with the ideas behind the 2 and 3 week diets, Bryan poured over 500 different studies and sought out the opionions of many experts. 

The first program – the 3 Week Diet – was incredibly popular and took the world by storm. As a result, he decided to try and refine the concept even more… giving us the 2 Week Diet!

Will You Lose Weight? 

So, will you lose weight?

The truth is that it’s never possible to know for sure if someone is going to lose weight on a diet. In fact, Bryan himself never makes any weight loss claims. This is about your personal body type.

The good news? There’s a very high chance that you will lose weight. Most people will see a significant change in their body composition from the fast alone as the body simply has no choice but to burn through the calories that are stored as fat and elsewhere.

Combine this with the exercise, with the ongoing dieting etc. and it is no surprise that so many people have gotten great results from the program. And did you know that most studies confirm it takes two weeks to see muscle gain? Sounds like more than a coincidence!

Moreover though, following this program is going to give you the skills and knowledge you need to continue. You’ll feel great and you’ll hopefully see the start of some body recomposition. Then you can just stick with what’s working and forget the rest.

Pros

Cons

• No videos to talk you through the exercises – though you do get instructions and diagram.
• Some equipment needed – just a pair of dumbbells.
• Not suitable for those with health conditions such as diabetes or heart problems.