An increasing number of brides-to-be are going on an extreme weight loss regime, called the K-E diet, which requires women to wear nose tubes that deliver 800 calories of food a day, according to various media reports.

Doctors claim that the feeding tube diet will shed patients about 10 to 20 pounds in just ten days. The K-E diet involves inserting a small feeding tube into the nose and down the esophagus that delivers protein and fat mixed with water and no carbohydrates, according to The New York Times.

The treatment costs $1,500, and works by a process called ketosis that makes the body burn fat instead of sugar, and leaves the muscles intact, Dr. Oliver Di Pietro, who administers the diet in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., told ABC News.

Dr. Pietro said that the diet does not involve hospitalization or doctor supervision, and patients are simply given a bag filled with food solution and a nasogastric tube.

"It is a hunger-free, effective way of dieting," Dr. Di Pietro told ABC. "Within a few hours and your hunger and appetite go away completely, so patients are actually not hungry at all for the whole 10 days. That's what is so amazing about this diet."

The tubes are removable for one hour a day, and patients can drink water, tea or coffee throughout the day.

According to Dr. Di Pietro, the diet has no significant side effects, and main side effects are just bad breath and some constipation because there is no fiber in the food solution. However, he adds that patients with kidney disorders should not try the KE-Diet.

The revolutionary diet has been gaining popularity in Italy and Spain, where it is called the KEN Diet and in the United Kingdom in the past year, according to the Daily Mail.

"This could be the most shocking, controversial diet ever to reach Britain," Leah Hardy of The Daily Mail wrote in last month. "It is a regime so extreme, so drastic, it makes LighterLife's shakes-only system look like a daily five-course banquet. The KEN, or Ketogenic Enteral Nutrition diet, involves eating absolutely nothing at all."

The recent U.S. launch of the K-E Diet has gained much popularity with women looking to lose weight, especially among brides-to-be.

"I don't have all of the time on the planet just to focus an hour and a half a day to exercise so I came to the doctor, I saw the diet, and I said, 'You know what? Why not? Let me try it," 41-year-old bride-to-be Jessica Schnaider told ABC News. "It was emotionally difficult, the 10 days of not eating."

Schnaider was only on the diet for eight days, and lost 10 pounds.

Dr. Di Pietro said that he was initially hesitant to offer the diet to people anyone looking to lose a few pounds, but he has now expanded his client base since began providing the K-E diet.

“At first I decided not to do it for people who just want to lose a few pounds. But then I thought, why should I say five or ten pounds are not enough? People want to be perfect,” he told the Times.

Gianfranco Cappello of the La Sapienza Hospital at the University of Rome, who invented the diet, has successfully treated over 40,000 patients who have lost drastic weight in just a matter of days.

"If you lose the weight too quickly your mind is not going to be able to catch up with a newer, skinnier you," psychoanalyst Bethany Marshall of Beverly Hills, Calif. told ABC News.

Other dieticians are doctors say that the diet is not so unique.

Dr. Scott Shikora, the director of the Center for Metabolic Health and Bariatric Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said any regime that restricts calories will lead to weight loss. “The novelty is, they shove a tube in your nose,” he told the Times.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s through a tube, a straw, a meal plan,” he said. “They all work, if someone goes from 3,000 calories a day to 800.”

RELATED STORIES