Have You tried the Grapefruit Diet?

Published by weightlossguru | Filed under Diet Plans, Diet Tips, Grapefruit Diet, Healthy Diet, Weight Loss Guide, Weight Loss Tips

The Grapefruit Diet also known as the Hollywood Diet is one of the fad diets that were really popular back in the 1980s although it has been in one form or another since 1930. This old ‘miracle’ grapefruit diet has been dismissed as a fad. But eating grapefruit as part of a healthy, balanced diet can give your weight loss a boost. Most of the time, the grapefruit diet has been discounted by experts as dangerously unbalanced or simply unable to deliver on its promises.

It was generally thought that consuming vast quantities of grapefruit cannot influence weight loss in any way, which relegated this diet to the status of yet another fad, one of those things people go crazy about without any real reason. However, time has passed and new discoveries are about to rock the traditional view. At the time, nutrition experts dismissed it as another fad diet, explaining that the ‘fat-burning’ properties of grapefruit were, in fact, a myth and any weight loss that occurred was due to the extremely low and potentially dangerous calorie intake.

The basic idea behind this diet is to eat grapefruit whenever you can, drink a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice with every meal, add grapefruit to cocktails and also to salads. Grapefruit is supposed to go well with the lean meat from crab and chicken and with vegetables, such as red onions, spinach and celery. The biggest advantage is, of course, the fact that grapefruit is virtually fat-free and has few calories. An entire grapefruit has about 70 calories, which means that you can eat about as much as you can stomach and still lose weight.

The best thing about the Grapefruit Diet is a recent study carried out by a team of scientists led by Doctor Ken Fujioka, from the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center of the Scripps Clinic in San Diego. The study has found that, contrary to the opinions voiced by experts in the 1980s, adding grapefruit and grapefruit juice to your diet can actually help you lose weight. And what’s really great about it: you don’t have to change your eating habits at all. Dr.  Fujioka found that grapefruit diet appears to reduce insulin levels and thus, affects blood sugar regulation. Bear in mind that the pancreas secretes insulin in response to the amount of carbohydrate ingested (also affected by the glycemic index and glycemic load of a food or meal) and that grapefruit by itself is considered by some to be low glycemic. Naturally, eating less fat and sweets and doing some exercises is a very good way of speeding up the weight loss process, but you don’t have to go out of your way with this diet.

According to the study, eating half a grapefruit before each meal and exercising a bit every day helped a group of obese people drop an average 3.6 pounds in 12 weeks without any change in their eating habits whatsoever. A second group had to drink a glass of grapefruit juice before every meal and lost 3.3 pounds in the same 12 weeks. While it’s true that losing 1 pound per month gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “slow diet”, you have to appreciate a diet that lets you eat whatever you like and still shed a pound per month. If weight loss is not a stringent affair, then you can stick to this diet for a long time and reap the benefits.

This diet may have some risk, as regular eating of grapefruit may increase risk of breast cancer in women, according to a 2007 study.

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