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The 3 Week Diet
$47.00
Pros
- Relatively cheap
Cons
- Author does NOT exist
- Fake testimonials with stolen, stock photos
- Based on outdated, scientifically disproven information
- Recommends the use of dangerous drugs
- Threatened to take down Contra Health Scam over this review
Update 12.12.2016:
The scammer behind The 3 Week Diet is now threatening to sue Contra Health Scam for using screenshots from his website in this review, an action he calls ‘copyright infringement.’
Read my response to the threat here. For now, I have removed the ‘infringing’ images due to ongoing legal proceedings. They will be restored after two weeks.
Update 27.12.2016:
It’s exactly 15 days after filing my counter-response to the lawsuit threat, and as expected, the scammer hasn’t served me any legal papers. So I’ve restored the images … never to be taken down again.
‘The 3 Week Diet’ by the alleged Brian Flatt is nothing but a sophisticated scam designed to waste your time, deceive you and ultimately kill you! Read this honest review to the end to discover why I arrived at this conclusion and believe me when I say you will thank me later for this!
Flatt promises that his ‘manuals’ contain information about a ‘foolproof, science-based diet’ that is ‘100% guaranteed’ to help you lose as much as 23 pounds of body fat in just 21 days. But after going through the website, checking out the free preview book he provided and embarking on other fact-finding investigations, I have no doubt in my mind that this is yet another long running scam which has been given a lot of positive reviews online.
So lets begin. Why do I call The 3-Week Diet (link to website) a scam?
1. The Author is Unverifiable (Does NOT Exist!)
Go online to find information about this famous Flatt, and you’ll never find him on social media except on accounts promoting The 3 Week Diet. I found a couple of people named Brian Flatt on LinkedIn, but they are not even in the health and fitness field. At this day and age, it is expected that anyone who owns a website selling anything online should have at least one social media account. And considering that this website has been around since 2005 (according to the Who.is data), it baffles me that Brian Flatt still hasn’t heard of Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t be deceived by that voice in the video presentation claiming to be Brian Flatt. That is just a paid actor hired to read a script. If you don’t believe me, go to Fiverr.com and search for ‘voice actor.’
The closest I came to finding out Brian Flatt’s identity was when I tried to verify his claim that he is a graduate of San Diego University with a degree in Biology and a renowned fitness expert who owns REV Fitness in Southern California. I could not verify the San Diego University claim, but REV Fitness did exist in Los Angeles. However, from what I can infer from Google Street View, REV fitness opened in June 2014 and shut down operation in December of that same year.
Update:
More than a month after I published this review, the scammer behind The 3 Week Diet updated the website with a photo purported to be of Flatt. There is just one problem: The photo was bought from Shutterstock! Here is the link to the Shutterstock image.
This finding has just confirmed that Brian Flatt does NOT exist. Therefore, 3 Week diet is a scam!
2. How Did This Indian Doctor ‘Certify’ This Scam? (Identity Theft Alert)
Another weird thing I found about this scam is that it is being endorsed by an Indian-born, Boston-based general practitioner named Suneil Kumar. If Brian Flatt is really the owner of this website and product, then how did this doctor (who you can easily find on Elance and LinkedIn) get onto Flatt’s website and endorse it? More importantly, on what basis did the supposed ‘board of doctors’ at Doctor-Certified.com (the ‘consumer protection organization’ who did the assessment) give their seal of approval? If Kumar is really the owner of the product, then why didn’t he use his real name on the manuals instead of cooking up the fake Brian Flatt?
To answer these questions, I checked Kumar’s social profiles but couldn’t find anything suggesting that he knows about The 3-Week Diet. I’ve also emailed him for some answer, but no reply so far.
Update:
This site was taken down a few months after subsequent reviews by Contra Health Scam exposing it as a fraud prompted online retailers like Clickbank to investigate and finally instruct all their vendors to remove the badges from their websites.
3. The 3 Week Diet is Full of Outdated, Scientifically Disproven Information
Contrary to Flatt’s claim that his 3 Week Diet program is scientifically ‘foolproof,’ the opposite is actually the case! Dave at iFocusHealth.com covered this aspect in more details, but here I’m going to break down some of his claims as follows:
- Carbohydrates are NOT essential for the human body (Epic fail! Carbohydrates are the main sources of the energy the body uses for its metabolic activities and so they are essential. Even though fats provide a greater amount of energy when broken down, they are rarely used by the body for energy. It is true that carbohydrates can cause weight gain, but it is just one of the many, many factors.)
- He encourages you to fast from afternoon to afternoon for less than 24 hours – something no nutritional expert or doctor recommends.
- Having breakfast is NOT allowed (Another epic, dangerous fail. You actually need breakfast to lose and keep off lost weight. Without it, your body will never function properly and the chances of you regaining all lost weight increases tremendously.)
The only thing that makes sense in this 3-week diet plan is the workouts, but everyone knows that workouts are useless without proper diet. So judging from these fundamental failures above, you will not even have the strength to do the extremely stressful exercises he recommends in his manual.
4. Recommends the Use of Dangerous Drugs
The most disturbing thing about the 3 Week Diet is that drugs were recommended to help you lose weight in case the diet plan fails to work. But those ‘fat-burner’ drugs he recommended are extremely dangerous … and are not even officially used for weight-related issues.
Flatt says you can use Ephedrine – a drug used to treat bronchial asthma and other respiratory tract diseases – to help you lose weight. This particular drug is rarely used nowadays because it has a long list of serious side-effects, including heart problems, restlessness, insomnia, myocardial infarction, hypertension and even stroke. As an example, read this Daily Mail story about a woman who used the drug for weight loss and now has few years to live.
Psychostimulant Caffeine, the second drug Flatt recommended, is used mainly for physical alertness and performance. This drug widely abused, as it is found in almost every carbonated and energy drink in the market as well as being a natural constituent of coffee. Side effects are similar to Ephedrine.
Yohimbe, the third drug on Flatt’s list, is used to treat impotence in men and to improve libido. It has never been officially prescribed for weight loss even though research carried out on 20 obese women in 1991 proved that it can help shed a few grams of fat. But the side effects are also similar to the previous two drugs and so not worth it.
I hope that by now, you are convinced that the 3-Week Diet by the fictional Brian Flatt is a scam. Don’t get me wrong: You will definitely lose weight with this program, but of what use will that be if you lose your life?
5. Fake Testimonials.
It is so strange that a product with so many positive reviews online would have all fake testimonials on its website! Do a quick search online, and you’ll quickly discover that the featured people on the website testifying to the effectiveness of the 3 Week Diet are untraceable and basically non-existent. Also, the supposed ‘Our Recent Clients’ live widget is nothing but an unclickable, infinitely scrolling, HTML-coded image circulating a list of 72 names!
Update 18.03.2019:
The scammers behind this program has updated the testimonial section of their website with photos and shocker … they are stock photos!
- ‘Elisa G.’ is a stock photo you can buy from iStock;
- ‘Vanessa B.’ who supposedly list ‘1.5 kilos in her very first week’ is yet another stock photo from iStock.
So much for real testimonials.
Finally, when you attempt to leave the site, a pop-up prevents you from leaving and you are offered a $20 discount on a product that costs $47. Try again to leave, and yet another pop-up stops you and offers you the manuals for just $7. Then you are put under pressure to buy it.
Seriously, don’t waste your time on this product. It is complete crap as you can see here and the hawker knows it. That’s why he is offering you the product at a cut-throat price of $7 to lure you in, before recovering his money and more by offering you worthless upsells.
So that’s it, the complete, honest review of Brian Flatt’s 3-Week Diet. Final verdict: Scam. Please share this article to warn others.
Final Recommendation: DON’T BUY The 3 Week Diet. It is A SCAM!
Blacklisted Website: 3WeekDiet.com
Want to lose weight? Go to your doctor or a dietitian, who will examine you and recommend a diet plan and exercises for you. Then hit the gym, hire a personal trainer … and you’ll be on course to success!
If you have used the 3-Week Diet or are still using it, please share your progress with us in the comments section. Thank you!
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If you believe consuming carbohydrates is a medical necessity then you have no business reviewing this diet!!! All the latest research is to the contrary. How it is explained in the 3 week diet is absolutely correct. As for the supplements? The ephedrine caffeine stack is a well documented fat burner within the bodybuilding/fitness world. As to its safety!?! That seems to change regularly as far as the experts are concerned. Another point is almost all documented deaths or serious health problems from caffeine and ephedrine stack are related to abusive consumption!
Note. I am not endorsing this diet just pointing out that the reviewer is sadly misinformed regarding ultra low carb diets/ketogenic diets and the use of caffeine and ephedrine!