You’ve heard rumors about a miraculous ingredient that can help you shed pounds happily and easily. The apple cider vinegar diet.

What is it?

How does it work?

Does it work?

That’s why we’re here. Let’s comb through the hype and come clean about whether this touted diet actually works.

Wait a Minute–
What Exactly IS the Apple Cider Vinegar Diet, Anyway?

Great question.

In truth, there is actually no “apple cider vinegar diet.” There’s no diet regimen that involves the sole or primary consumption of apple cider vinegar over all other foods that then leads to sustained and provable weight loss.

However, there are many people that point to ACV (as we’ll refer to apple cider vinegar from here on out) as a fantastic tonic and powerful slimming agent when you pair its consumption with other diet changes and lifestyle habits.

It’s amazing–if you look around the web even just a little, you’ll find all kinds of doctors and other medical experts decrying the emphasis placed on ACV.

And at the same time, you can read all about the amazing transformations people have enacted in their lives with apple cider vinegar serving a part.

Let’s spend a little time looking at apple cider vinegar so we can at least figure out why all this fuss gets made about a VINEGAR.

Living, Breathing Vinegar

When you hear about the health aspects of ACV, the people speaking in favor of it are always referring to the live, raw, unpasteurized version of apple cider vinegar that comes with the “mother” right there in the bottle.

If you’ve ever drunk kombucha, then you know about the mother–that floating slimy jellyfish-like substance.

Well, the “mother” is a living breathing culture of organisms that actively creates the vinegar as a byproduct of its natural life processes.

Since the mother is alive, and because its byproducts are chock-full of various vitamins, minerals and other active nutrients, apple cider vinegar is therefore supercharged from a nutritional standpoint.

I’m trying to present all sides of this whole discussion fairly here. So there are plenty of experts who scoff at the idea that apple cider vinegar has any sort of medicinal or healing properties. They disregard the mother and don’t grant it any health properties.

However, there are lots of people who have run the apple cider vinegar experiment on their own bodies and live to tell of the results.

Here is a short passage from The Apple Cider Vinegar Miracle Health System by Paul C Bragg and Patricia Bragg discussing the potential for ACV to help someone reduce their weight:

“Apple Cider Vinegar will not reduce a person who doesn’t control their food intake. But the ACV drink and a healthy diet of 1,200 calories daily, plus regular exercise will do miracles in reducing excess weight…Along with this healthy ACV drink, there must be a healthy reducing diet…This means that all refined, processed, sugared products and beverages and dairy products are eliminated from your diet…The diet should consist of a wide variety of fresh organic fruits & vegetables; raw salads and sprouts; raw nuts and seeds; raw, steamed, backed and stir-fried vegetables; brown rice; tofu; beans; and whole grain pastas.” (pg. 16)

That book–the Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar Miracle Health System–is probably the first and most famous modern book that praises apple cider vinegar as a powerful nutritional supplement.

No One Is Saying Apple Cider Vinegar Can Cause Weight Loss On Its Own

If you’re interested in whether or not apple cider vinegar can aid you in losing some weight, then hopefully that quoted paragraph returned you to earth: you won’t lose weight if you expect ACV to do all the work for you.

Any health supplement will work in tandem with all the other interrelated lifestyle and dietary changes you make right alongside it.

In the case of the role ACV can play in an overall weight loss program, you can read right there in the paragraph I just quoted that ACV can help you if you also follow a fairly radical diet plan. Give up all processed and refined foods. Up your consumption of veggies and fruits. Rely on lightly cooked or fully raw foods. And exercise regularly.

If you do all of those things and stick to that new program for a while, I guarantee you’ll lose weight (providing you don’t have a medical condition, thyroid disorder, etc.).

So what does apple cider vinegar have to do with weight loss?

Well, if you’re already following that healthy dietary regimen, so goes the prescription, then you can add in apple cider vinegar as a tonic. You can consume a tablespoon of the vinegar in a glass of water or fresh vegetable juice two to three times a day.

So goes the theory, that apple cider vinegar contains all sorts of helpful enzymes that will assist your body in its weight loss program.

“The Apple Cider Vinegar Diet”

As you can see, there’s more to the apple cider vinegar diet than you might have expected. In fact, the very name “Apple Cider Vinegar Diet” is pretty misleading.

In actual practice, the apple cider vinegar diet is a diet of healthy, natural, nourishing foods combined with regular vigorous exercise and then supplemented with a twice or thrice daily helping of apple cider vinegar in water or juice.

Is it the healthy eating? The reduction of calorie intake? The exercise? The apple cider vinegar?

Whatever it is, the only way you’re going to find out is if you actually take action and try this regimen in your own life.

What do you think? Is there such a thing as an apple cider vinegar diet? Have you tried it? And did you see solid pounds-shedding results?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!