Grapefruit Diet

The grapefruit diet is a waste of time according to many health professionals. Details of this diet have been around as early as the 1930s. It is claimed that grapefruit contains some kind of mystery ingredient that promotes weight loss when combined with a low carbohydrate diet. It appears to be a precursor to the Atkins diet. The 12 day grapefruit diet is claimed to offer the opportunity for up to 10 pounds of weight loss. Whether the weight will stay off after the 12 day diet period is another matter. As with most fast weight loss diet plans when you come off the grapefruit diet the weight will more than likely come back. I am not an advocate of the grapefruit diet. However I do believe that eating plenty of citrus fruit as part of a healthy diet is a good way to improve our health. There are a variety of reasons to avoid the grapefruit diet.

What foods can I eat on the grapefruit diet?

The grapefruit diet is rather restrictive. Foods high in carbohydrates are to be avoided. This means no bread, rice or potatoes. Foods high in protein are okay as are many fatty foods. Right away this suggests to me this is not a good way to fuel the body. Is the grapefruit diet balanced? Certainly not. Below is a sample grapefruit diet meal plan.

Breakfast: bacon, eggs, glass of water, coffee, 1/2 grapefruit

Lunch: meat (unlimited), salad (dressing okay), 1/2 grapefruit

Dinner: salad or green vegetables, meat or fish (unlimited), 1/2 grapefruit

Drinking water throughout the day is important. It is suggested that consuming roughly 2 liters per day is required.

Scientific enquiry

Some versions of the grapefruit diet advocate eating 1/2 a grapefruit prior to each meal. Then when foods containing protein are consumed this allegedly sets of a fat burning process. Now, I am not a doctor or scientist but I call bullshit. I have searched the internet for scientific information that backs up the claims made of this diet and come up short. There was one study that provides some evidence for the grapefruit diet. This was led by Dr. Ken Fujioka. Over a 12 week period subjects who consumed half a grapefruit with each meal lost on average 3.6 pounds. The rest of their diet remained the same as they normally eat. They did however slightly increase the amount of exercise they undertook. Therefore it is hard to be sure that the grapefruit diet is responsible for weight loss.

Balancing the grapefruit diet

Consuming more grapefruit as well as other citrus fruits in the diet is a good thing. Forgetting about the magical ingredient that promotes weight loss, the more we eat, the closer we come to meeting our fruit and vegetable requirements for the day. Rather than going on a diet it might be is better to eat a more balanced diet continuously, grapefruit can certainly be part of that. Delicious, nutritious food as part of a balanced diet combined with a sensible exercise program is a much more sensible way to go about sustainably loosing weight than the 12 day grapefruit diet.