In a world filled with diets that claim to help you lose weight, the reason why most of them never work is because they are either too rigid (when it comes to what you should) or very difficult to follow especially if you have a busy lifestyle.

While most people will agree that it is all about ‘making the time’ to take care of your health, one of the simpler ones (known as 3-hour diet here) focuses more on when you should eat rather than what you eat (within acceptable limits, of course). The principle behind this diet is that one achieves weight loss when they eat in lesser quantities every three hours.

According to Jorge Cruise, who devised this diet routine, eating food in small quantities every three hours can result in maintaining high levels of the body’s basal metabolic rate (BMR), which results in the body burning more calories. And this in turn, leads to weight loss in the long-run. So, in other words, one should eat three meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) while also adding a couple of snacks in between as well.

And so, here are three basic rules of the three hour diet:

Rule #1: Eat your breakfast within one hour after you wake up

Rule #2: Continue to eat keeping portion control in mind every three hours

Rule #3: Have your last meals three hours before going to bed

Rule #4: Drink ten glasses of water everyday

Rule #5: Avoid alcohol at all costs

Rule #6: The meal plan suggested is a balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat, and perhaps is a more realistic one as compared to many other diets.

While there seems to be very few risks associated with this diet, the basis of this diet also revolves around the fact that when one skips meals, the body goes into starvation protection mode which involves conserving calories for energy rather than burning them off.