I’m worried about Beyoncé.

The singer, usually on the side of body-positivity, recently posted a video advertising her ‘22 Days Nutritional Meal Planner,’ a subscription nutrition service based on the ultra-restrictive plant-based regime she followed for 44 days leading up to her historic 2018 Coachella performance.

The promo is a combination of footage from the Coachella documentary Homecoming, and Beyoncé talking about how hungry she is.

VICE with more:

While the 22 Days marketing pushes “plant-based” foods, the diet Beyoncé used in the promo video famously did not allow alcohol, carbs, sugar, meat, or fish. Stories about the diet went extremely viral following the release of Homecoming.

…The 22 Days system, a.k.a. the “Coachella Diet,” is the creation of Beyoncé’s trainer, and longtime friend, Marco Borges, an exercise physiologist who supervised her following the regimen for 44 days total leading up to Coachella.

The 22 Days planner (so named because “it takes 21 days to make or break a habit”) is available to buy for $14 a month (which works out to $168 annually) or $99 for a year.

Check out the promo:

The sad music, black and white footage, and scenes where Beyoncé sad-eats her tomatoes aren’t exactly inspiring.

Moments after declaring her hunger in the doc, Beyoncé confessed, “I definitely pushed myself further than I knew I could, and I learned a very valuable lesson: I will never, ever push myself that far again.” And yet, here she is, inviting fans to follow in her dieting footsteps.

So many mixed messages.

Here’s the bottom line (and the problem with this diet):

The problem with crash diets, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), is that the weight lost is typically from lean muscle and water, as opposed to fat. Because of this, cleanses and fad diets produce results that are temporary.

While 22 Days is a brand-new product, connecting it to Beyoncé’s Coachella results and experience suggest it could be more like the downswing of a yo-yo diet cycle and less like the lifestyle changes that promote lasting health.

In other words, just because Beyoncé did it, doesn’t mean that you should, too.

[source:vice]