Celebrity Fitness/Diet Guru Harley Pasternak Offers the 5-Factor Diet; Is it a Fad?

The 5-Factor Diet, created by Harley Pasternak, has the potential to be a fad diet, but I'm still not sure. It's interesting. On the one hand, Pasternak encourages healthy eating, telling his customers to eat five small, healthy meals a day and balancing it with exercise. On the other hand, the fact that Pasternak has one part of his website devoted to the celebrities he's "helped" over the years is off-putting.

So what's involved in the 5-Factor Diet?

Now offered online, the diet was born by request of the rich and famous. Pasternak was asked to create a regimen for actors that included brief workouts (for their short breaks on movie sets) and healthy meals that were easy and fast to create.

The online program is interactive and customized to suit members' needs. Starting off, the plan boasts that you will see obvious results in five weeks. As you will soon see, Pasternak has an obsession with the number five, which also makes me wince just a little and think, "Fad, fad fad," whether or not it's true.

Once on the diet, you will eat five meals a day by using the recipes provided to members. These meals are made up of five ingredients and take, you guessed it, five minutes to prepare.

Every day, members will partake in 25-minute workouts. These five minute phases have you work on cardio, upper-body strength, lower-body strength, the midsection and fat burning cardio.

The part that's not so typical of a diet? You get a cheat day. One day of the week, Pasternak encourages members to eat whatever they want. The only condition is that they come back the next day ready to eat the way he tells them to. The diet costs six dollars a week

The diet is better than many I've seen. Pasternak has a Masters of Science in Exercise Physiology and Nutritional Sciences, so he knows what he's talking about. He presents an interesting approach: no measuring, carb counting and no long hours at the gym. Eating healthy and working out works! But is this diet plan the right one for you?

My only qualms are two-fold:

I get uneasy with the celebrity name-dropping. Alicia Keys, John Mayer, Kanye West and Eva Mendes all apparently swear by Pasternak and he's not afraid to put it out there. I understand that this diet initially started out as a "celebrity only" club, but it does put me on my guard a little.

Secondly, what about the emotional eater? I have a problem with this as do millions of people. The cheat day sounds great, but I know that if I was on this diet I might have a problem pulling back from such a "day of plenty." But that's a self-control issue, not a problem with the program.

So I suppose people should do what they always do when looking into diets. Learn about it, test it out and find the perfect fit for you.

5-Factor Diet Official Website

Lindsey Unterberger, Halle Berry's 5-Factor Fitness, Your Total Health.ivillage.com