What is a rice diet? Does rice make you fat or slim? Wholegrain or refined rice? Find out below which rice diets exist and whether they are really effective.
Rice is the oldest cereal on the planet that has been grown for full 5,000 years.
In addition, most of the world’s population “lives on rice” as basic food. If you have ever visited an Asian country, you have seen that there is not a single meal that does not contain rice.
When you think of the Japanese, you first think of rice, and they are one of the healthiest and longest-lived nations.
In our country, rice is not so valued and we mostly skillfully camouflage it in complicated dishes such as sarma.
The most important piece of advice for every diet, not only rice diet, is that you should not start any diet without consulting a doctor first.
Let’s see if rice can help you lose weight?
Kempner’s Rice Diet
If you think that the rice diet is another in a series of modern inventions, you are mistaken.
It was first developed at Duke University back in 1939. Its creator was Walter Kempner who successfully used it to treat obesity.
His idea was based on the observation that people in different parts of the world, for whom rice is a basic food, suffer less from obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
The rice diet became popular around the world when the world bestseller The Rice Diet appeared as a solution by Kitty and Robert Rosati. Kitty was a dietitian and Robert a professor at Duke University.
A rice weight loss plan is a diet that you can easily follow at home.
Here’s what it looks like:
The basis of rice diets are healthy carbohydrates. Fruits, vegetables and cereals with a high fiber content are the skeleton of the system. When it is time for a detox day, only fruits and cereals are eaten. This diet is low in salt and fat.
Do you know that boiled rice is an addition to almost every bodybuilder’s meal and they don’t have even a shred of fat under their skin.
This rice diet will supply your body with only 800 calories a day, which is by half less than the normal intake that nutritionists advise. Very little. Therefore, if you stick to the diet plan and do not cheat, you will surely lose weight.
After the detox phase, you will get as many as 1000 calories a day, what a feast. And so on until you reach the desired weight.
In the final phase of the rice diet, the goal of which is to keep you on desired weight and prevent gaining weight again, the number of calories increases a little but is still very low, you take in very little fat and salt but eat a lot of fruits, vegetables and cereals.
The menu of rice diet is divided into starches, fruits, vegetables and dairy products. A portion of starch can be: a slice of bread or 1/3 cup of rice or half a cup of pasta.
Fruit: one whole fruit.
Vegetables: one cup of raw or half a cup of cooked vegetables.
Dairy products: a cup of milk or yoghurt or half a cup of cottage cheese.
These are foods that you can consume in the protein restriction phase. Lean meats and fish can be added later.
- Breakfast: Optional starch, low-fat dairy product and one fruit.
- Lunch: three foods from the starch group, three vegetables and one fruit.
- Dinner: Same as lunch
Pros and Cons for Kempner’s Rice Diet
Pros
A fiber-rich diet such as the rice diet has its advantages. Fibers will benefit you in many ways: they lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.
Fibers are important for the health of the digestive system and the proper functioning of the intestines.
Foods rich in fiber are bulky and provide a long-lasting feeling of satiety.
When you are on a diet, this type of food helps you lose weight.
The rice diet in this form is not only current fashion. It was designed by experts and is based on proven results at Duke University.
Nutritionists agree that a diet based on low content of salt and fat and rich in fiber can help normalize blood pressure, diabetes and improve heart condition.
Kempner’s rice diet includes exercise and education on proper nutrition. This is necessary to keep you slim.
Cons
The bad thing about this diet is that it does not contain enough calories that you need if you are an active person.
You will probably be hungry for a good part of the day.
Proteins are reduced to 16-20 gr a day, which cannot be compared to the usual diets which include 46-56 gr of proteins.
You will surely lose weight so hungry, who wouldn’t, but you can also lose muscle.
In the short run, the rice diet can be beneficial because you will significantly reduce your intake of salt and processed foods, which is great. You will get most of your calories from carbohydrates which is good in the short run.
However, in the long run, the rice diet does not provide enough calories for a normal person to function.
So, if you want to lose weight fast, this can be a good choice for a couple of days, and the long-term results will depend on how much you learned during the Kempner rice diet program. In fact, how much of what you learned you have incorporated into your new lifestyle.
I know, I know, you don’t have to be a glutton to complain about this diet.
Fortunately, this is not the only rice diet.
There must be some easier way.

Does Rice Make You Fat?
You may have heard of the lemon diet, or tried the meat diet, but what about the rice diet? Rice is certainly the food that is most common in nutrition.
It may not seem true to you, because it’s not very popular here. In Asia and India, rice is the basis of every meal.
White rice is a refined food, very rich in carbohydrates from which most of the fiber has been removed.
High intake of refined carbohydrates leads to obesity and chronic diseases.
However, in countries where refined rice is eaten a lot, residents are less likely to suffer from these problems.
What is the truth then?
Does rice make you fat or make you lose weight?
How Many Calories Does Rice Have?
You probably know that there are two basic types of rice: white or refined and brown or wholegrain.
Almost all the fibers were extracted from the white rice. The grain of wholegrain rice is intact, as nature made it.
I am always for a natural variant.
White rice is consumed more, but lately, as we turn to healthy food, brown (wholegrain) rice is becoming more and more popular.
Unlike white rice, which is always white, wholegrain rice can be light brown, brown, black, reddish and even purple.
Rice consists of carbohydrates, small amounts of protein and practically does not contain fat.
In 100 grams of cooked rice there are:
Nutrient | White rice | Brown rice |
Carbohydrates | 29 g | 24 g |
Fibers | 0 g | 2 g |
Proteins | 2 g | 2 g |
Fats | 0 g | 1 g |
100 gr of white rice has 130 calories. Brown rice has 110 calories. 100 gr of white bread has 264 calories.
Now you can tell if rice makes you fat and why those who consume it instead of bread suffer less from obesity.
Besides, brown rice is rich in minerals, but since they are found in germs and pods, white rice is poor in minerals.
White rice was refined, glazed and the germ and the pod were removed. This is done to improve the taste, to make it easier to cook and to have a longer shelf life. Unfortunately, processing makes rice lose its nutritional value.
Always choose wholegrain rice because it contains several vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Rice Diet for 9 Days – the Queen’s Diet
Nine-day rice diet rules:
- For the first three days, you eat only cooked rice – a daily amount of 200 gr of raw rice
- For the other three days, only boiled vegetables – 300 gr of fresh and half a kilo of boiled vegetables a day
- Last three days cooked meat (chicken, fish, beef) – the allowed amount is 1 kilo a day.
During this rice diet all spices are expelled from the diet, especially salt, sugar and vegetable oils.
No spices (including salt), no additives, no soft and alcoholic drinks, only mineral water, tea and coffee without sugar are allowed.
You can subject yourself to this diet only once because this way of eating is unhealthy, but they say that you lose 5-10 kg.
Next three days are reserved for the consumption of vegetables. Avoid those that are sour and salty. What is very noteworthy is that the last meal must not be after 7 p.m.
The last 3 days you only eat chicken.
Have you heard of the Brazilian diet?

Wholegrain Rice Diet
Many ladies have tried the American diet, but how does rice work? The property of wholegrain rice to cleanse the body and free it from toxins has been known for centuries.
Wholegrain rice acts as a sponge in our digestive tract that absorbs all the toxins that have accumulated there over the years.
Why the wholegrain rice diet is so popular:
- It contains few calories
- It is very effective
- Provides a feeling of satiety
- It cleanses the whole organism
- It is very tasty
This might be the best variation of the rice diet. It is based on the view that a strict, restrictive diet is stressful for the whole organism because it deprives it of important nutrients.
Wholegrain rice itself is healthy and tasty. You can combine it with boiled vegetables and meat. So, there is no precise table that you will blindly stick to.
Get rid of processed foods and unhealthy drinks, drink at least 2 liters of water a day, exercise and be active.
The wholegrain rice diet is actually a suggestion on how to eat healthily, only you will eat a little more wholegrain rice instead of potatoes, pasta, bread and there are no deep fried, fried and spicy dishes, only boiled, blanched red, green, yellow food.
You already know all this but you cannot make yourself do it. If you had been eating like this, after all, you wouldn’t even be reading about the rice diet now because you wouldn’t have even needed it.
Rice Diet for 40 Days
The principle of a forty-day rice diet is as follows:
Breakfast and dinner are always the same and consist of one cup of boiled rice.
Lunch is much richer: boiled vegetables and meat.
During this diet all processed foods are eliminated from the diet. It is advisable to eat as much fruit and fiber-rich food as possible.
Ladies who have tried it claim to have lost as much as 10kg in 40 days.
Diet of Japanese Monks or How to Lose 10 kg in 10 Days.
I’m already beginning to wonder if the Japanese are constantly hungry and if they are so hardworking because they work so much in order not to think about hunger.
Hungry or not, Japanese monks are among the healthiest people on the planet. They are vital and slender in their later years and I could definitely sign that they don’t have stomachs and loops on their loins.
If you are 10 kg overweight, and there are two weeks left until your godmother’s wedding, then it’s the right time to become Japanese. It’s better to be a Japanese monk than to throw away your best dress that has magically shrunk.
Now get ready:
You can practice this rice diet only once in 6 months.
You will not spend too much on food during that period. You’ll just need
- 5 kg of rice
- 10 pickles and
- fresh garlic
Boil ½ kg of rice every day. Finely chopped pickles are added to the cooled boiled rice. You mix everything nicely and eat whenever you feel hungry.
The trick is to chew each bite as long as possible, at least 20 times.
You should add a clove of garlic to your rich meal. You have to eat at least two cloves a day.
This is your whole day food, and tomorrow will be no better. So schedule as you think you will endure most easily. Whether you will eat a third of rice three times a day or a little bit every hour is up to you to try.
The rice diet of Japanese monks includes daily consumption of seasonal vegetables salads. Season the salad with olive oil, lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. And very, very little salt. Enjoy your meal!
If you survive, you will surely be very slender unless you weighed 120 kg before the diet – and I know you didn’t.
Read how the Gi diet works!
Raw Rice Diet
If there are 200 days left until the godmother’s wedding, try this trick with the rice diet.
For this rice diet you need exactly 10100 grains of rice. Luckily you won’t have to count them all at once.
The diet looks like this:
- the first day you swallow in the morning on an empty stomach an uncooked grain of rice, with a glass of water,
- the second day you swallow 2 grains,
- the third day you swallow 3 grains and so on until 100 grains.
- On the 101th day you reduce the number of grains by one, so every next day you swallow 99, 98, 97 grains until … 1 grain.
During this diet, you eat normally. There are women who swear that they have lost an incredible 25 kg.
If you embark on a diet like this, it will definitely benefit your brain because you need to remember every day how many grains there were yesterday. After the twentieth day, you will be fairly counted. At the end, it will be a whole cup of rice. It will not be easy to drink all those grains with water.
The idea by which the proponents of this diet substantiate its usefulness is that uncooked rice in the stomach picks up stomach acid and slows down digestion. Because it swells, it creates a feeling of satiety, so your need for food is less.
If you want to try, you can always cancel at any number if it gets stuck.
However, before you go on this “lower math” diet, consider whether it is healthy when rice picks up stomach acid, which should digest what you eat during the day. Keep in mind the bacteria that you can gather from uncooked rice and even pesticides with which it is treated during cultivation.
Experiences With the Rice Diet
I know you know this but you often forget. Each organism is unique and none functions the same as any other. There are certainly basic principles that apply in general, but each of us reacts a little differently to some stimulus.
For me, for example, three days of being nervous are enough to lose excess weight, and most women gain weight in stressful situations.
The point is, you can’t take any diet for granted. Maybe the rice diet helped your friend because it matched up well with her. You may be better off with some other diet. Maybe e.g. toast diet.
That is why this stands instead of the experiences of others.
As you have seen, almost all variants of the rice diet involve starving, although there are some that are essentially a postulate of a healthy diet. You change bread with rice and you’ve already done a lot.
Stories are circulating on the forums that rice diets are effective and they can help you lose 10, 15 and even more kilograms.
If you put a sign of equality between dieting and starving, you can lose as much weight as you want. Only, at what price?
In order to dare to starve for 3, 9, X days, your body must be in perfect condition, you should always keep that in mind. So if you choose a rice diet, choose wisely. You have 6 ways.