I thought the Every Other Day Diet by Jon Benson gets it name from the fact that ‘every other day’ you get to eat a lunch of your choice, so you can eat pizza or burgers etc. On the other days you don’t have a lunch, well you do have an apple…

I don’t want to reveal too many specifics about the SNAPP system which is the main part of the diet, or I might get into trouble with the author, but basically you follow exactly the same kind of system every day where you have a healthy breakfast, then two snacks during the day (but no lunch) followed by a healthy dinner, and you can eat as many vegetables as you want for the rest of the night. On the ‘feed days’ then you follow the same system but you just eat the apple, which is one of your snacks, 30 minutes before lunch and then go have your treat of pizza or burgers etc which is pretty cool.

At 119 pages then it seems like a big guide, but in fact most of the diet is compressed into the space of about 10 pages, and the rest is a lot of build up, a lot of talking about how good the diet is for you and how it works etc, which is interesting but gets on your nerves a bit, then there is a chunk of about 40 pages of recipes.

The author makes a huge fuss throughout the guide about this not being a ‘diet’ but a ‘lifestyle plan’ which you can follow for the rest of your life, and how it is not as stressful as other diets which make you count calories etc, but I don’t really see how this diet fits into your normal life.

I mean there is no explanation about what to do if you go out with friends for a meal, what happens if you cheat on the diet while on a holiday or something, do you just jump back on? It is quite restrictive and so while it is simple then it is still a ‘diet’ as you are eating different food to your family no doubt, and you are skipping meals every other day (there are 5 different plans to follow so on some you are skipping 3 – 4 lunches in a row) which means you have to look and feel awkward at lunch with your friends at work.

Don’t get me wrong, it is one of the less intrusive diets I’ve seen, the meals are relatively simple and skipping lunch is easy to do, I just don’t think it is as easy to follow as the author makes it out to be.

You don’t count calories and you have simple measurements for some other things (like how many apples to eat per day) which are really easy to use. I am a little confused though by how to deal with the amount of protein you are supposed to eat per meal, that isn’t really covered as well as I’d like, but I can see how once you got used to the diet that it would be easy to figure out what you needed to eat.

Another confusing thing is that throughout the guide then breakfast is always a shake/smoothie, that is the whole point of the S in SNAPP! Yet when you get to the recipes section then there are pages and pages of non-shake breakfast recipes… where did they come from?

The bonuses are ok but not great, they are mainly free guides or interview transcripts from other fitness/diet people to promote their own work. One is a 14 page extract from a book, so it is useless unless you buy the rest, the hypnotic audio is ok and probably the best bonus of all. The Rapid Fat Loss Blueprint is an insane 21 day diet/exercise and supplementation program which claims to allow you to lose 21lbs in 21 days, bear in mind you will be exercising up to 3 times a day and popping supplements every hour though… not for the fainthearted.

The 30 days of email coaching sounds really good on the video, but you have to give them your credit card details so they can charge you if you don’t cancel after the 30 days, I didn’t bother with that because of the fact you have to give your details.

Exercise is not really covered in the guide (2 pages at the back) but throughout the guide then the author recommends one of his other products which is called 7 Minute Muscle. Now after you purchase EODD then you are taken to a special offer for that so we purchased it, then after buying that you are taken to another special offer for a big expensive audio series, we only wanted to review the diet so we stopped there and didn’t buy that!

The 7 Minute Muscle upgrade is actually a very interesting workout system, it is a 126 page guide and is basically all about working one set of muscles really hard for 7 minutes a day (I only skimmed this guide rather than reading every word like the EODD guide). He spends a lot of time explaining the science behind shorter workouts and gives studies to back up his theories. It is quite an intense workout so if you don’t like weight training then this isn’t some miracle way to only train lightly for 7 minutes a day and get results, but if you do want to get into weight training then this could be a great guide for you.

It seems a little bit like I’ve been ripping this diet apart, but that is only because I want to both review the diet by itself, and review it based on the expectations set by the website before you purchase and throughout the guide as you read it.

So it does seem like a relatively easy diet to follow, the diet support is good which goes along with it (not technical support though, see customer service section later on) so while some of it is confusing then you can get help to answer any queries you have which I like. The system is probably not going to be one you follow for life, although if you don’t have a family who demand different evening meals and have the freedom at work to eat the snacks you need to, then it is one you could stick to for the long term.

Some more information on how to fit it into real life would have been nice (like what to do at restaurants etc). All in all it is an ok system which you can learn and adapt as you go along to fit your particular lifestyle.

Oh boy, customer support, where do I begin? Well at first glance it looks good, the video on the main website promises 30 days of free email coaching, then you get a helpdesk to contact and a free forum too.

Let’s start with the forum, it is actually free which is great as some diets force you into a monthly commitment to use one, but this is totally free. There are coaches there who can and do answer any questions you have about the diet, all good so far.

Then we get to the coaching… which you have to give your credit card details for to get your ‘free’ 30 days, not good, yes it is free for 30 days but then they start to charge you for the service.

Which brings me onto the helpdesk, I submitted a ticket 16:15 GMT on Monday 25/01/2010, it is now 31/01/2010 and I haven’t heard a thing from them, even though I set it to a high priority in the system and claimed to have a download problem. So 2 days ago I posted on the forum to see what experiences other people had with the helpdesk, and found someone who had been trying for a month to get a response by phone (yes they give a phone number but apparently it just goes straight to voicemail and nobody ever phones back) and through the helpdesk to cancel their monthly coaching charges, but hadn’t heard anything back, and another person who had the same problem and in the end had to do a chargeback to stop the charges!

Not good.

Now one of the coaches on the forum stepped in and within 24 hours one of the people had heard back from customer service on the issue, but I certainly haven’t!

So they get a 0 out of 5 for technical customer service, if you have a download problem then forget about getting any help.

Yet the forum is really good for questions about the diet, and the coaches are polite and helpful and answer questions in a timely manner, so I’d give a 4 out of 5 to them…

So overall I think with a 0 and a 4 then I’ll give them a 2.

Please note refunds are handled by Clickbank.com who are the payment processors for the site and not in any way the owners of the product. They always respond very promptly and I have had refunds from them for other products and never had any problems with them, so don’t worry about getting a refund if you need one.

Update: Ok I have now had a response at 03:15 GMT on the 01/02/2010, as the company is in America that means they responded on a Sunday, I think my complaint on their forum means they brought somebody in for the weekend to answer tickets! So that is about 12 hours short of a full week to get some technical support, if I really did have a problem downloading it like the ticket I sent in then I would have had to wait that long before being able to get the product I had paid for. Also the reply I received did not really answer my problem.