Ana Miranda WC: 961
ENGL21002
Prof. Anna Steegmann
November 6, 2019
Research Proposal
Obesity is a problem related to several health problems, including diabetes type 2. In the United States more than 30 million of the population suffers from diabetes and 90% to 95% have type 2. Up to date, health professionals tackled the issue with drugs and food restriction but that does not seem to be financially sustainable or of easy adherence to many. My study focuses on exploring the practices that help people create a natural lifestyle transition in order to reverse diabetes but that is also cheap. I intend to aim on a specific approach called The Snake Diet, which focuses on helping people lose weight and reverse chronic metabolic diseases. I will be analyzing people involved in the community and how the diet has impacted their health and lives regarding diabetes.
The Snake Diet is a fasting focused lifestyle that includes time-restricted eating and full fasting days as protocol. The former personal trainer and the Snake Diet creator Cole Robinson has been growing the community since 2017. It started as a closed group on Facebook and branched out to Instagram and YouTube. Robinson offers online coaching and support for free along with over 400 training videos and Q&A’s that are posted weekly on his channel. The efficacy of Robinson’s method transformed a few dedicated success stories into Snake Diet coaches themselves and the community keeps growing. Today his social media totals over 416 thousand followers and the success stories keep on reporting back with progress photos for proof and accountability that infuses the whole community with inspiration.
Despite its success stories the Snake Diet still suffers aggressive opinions from the medical community who claims the diet to be dangerous. Snake dieters are put in 3 to 7 days fast at a time depending on their starting point weight and health conditions. During the fast, the individual will only consume “snake juice”, a mix of a few raw minerals that are mixed to plain water. The person will break the fast with a high fat high protein meal and keep that protocol running as a lifestyle or until his/her goal is achieved. The “snake juice” itself is the lowest in cost compared to any other drug on the market that controls diabetes. The Snake Diet is devoid of any processed food and of sporadic consumption which compared to a classic diabetic food protocol is also the cheapest.
The study itself takes a closer look at how Robinson and his coaches deal with the growth of the community and the core values of the method as the future of diabetes reversal. Academic medical literature, statistics and experts’ current studies on the field of diabetes and fasting will be reviewed in order to determine whether or not the outcome of the current practices have been successful on tackling diabetes and if fasting could be the answer. Several other doctors and dieticians have been trying to come up with the most effective way to resolve the diabetes issue. Because there are similar fasting practices being performed by the medical community, I will add Dr. Sachin Panda’s fasting method and its results for a more comparative research.
The research will be conducted as an observer two to three diabetic people on weekends who practice the Snake Diet. The interactions they have with people that do not practice the lifestyle, what difficulties they encounter in a culture that has most of its social scenes around food. Overall, struggles they come across that may turn the diet hard to adhere to or even maintain will be recorded in order to gain a better understanding of the lifestyle. Interviews will be conducted with the diabetic individuals who adopted the Snake Diet as well as Cole Robinson as he coaches them throughout the diabetes reversal process. Robinson can also provide more vital information regarding patterns on adherence to the method, struggles people have, why they ended up trying this new approach and potential drawbacks on progress. Interviews will also be conducted with former Snake Dieters who have had success and who failed the method. What has worked for them, what has not and why.
I am a current psychology student, nutrition researcher and former athlete who understands first-hand the difficulties of healthy lifestyle changes in regard to our interactions with society. When I decided to become a bodybuilding competitor, I changed my lifestyle completely. From the number of hours, I spent at the gym, to the kind of foods I ate. That had a tremendous impact on how people interacted and judged me, as I entered a new community, I was lightly rejected by my former one. As I watched a few videos on Snake Dieter’s experiences on YouTube, I noticed many similarities that may possibly be what keeps some from trying the diet, to adhering to the lifestyle with success. It also may explain the quick growth of such a unique community. Because if they are not being supported by their current social circle, they will create a strong connection with the Snake Diet community.
This study will help me with more insight into what kind of impact the community and its creator Cole Robinson have on the overall success stories the Snake Dieters are experiencing, what is lacked for the ones who failed and how they navigate through their social lives on a fasting lifestyle. The study will also narrow down the most efficient, high adherence and cheapest way to go about the Snake Diet in order to fit into the diabetic people who are struggling with any of those issues. The study will also include an already known method done by a well-respected doctor with enough research to provide comparative and efficient results that can prove a superior approach to the diabetes problem.
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