Can eating grapefruit make you lose weight?
Continuing with our countdown to a credit-crunch Christmas, this week we are focusing on diets in a bid to help you win the battle of the bulge. Yesterday we had a look at the The South Beach Diet and today we're looking at a slightly controversial one- The Grapefruit Diet.
This was a popular 1980s diet that almost guaranteed weight loss, if you could stick to the extremely punishing diet of around 800 calories a day. The diet consists of eating lots of grapefruit to kick-start your metabolism, and then combining this will lots of black coffee, some boiled eggs and the odd bit of dry toast.
Grapefruit has long been considered as a fat-burning food, but experts at the time in the 80s dismissed it as nothing more than a fad diet, and any weight that was indeed lost at the time would be down to the dangerously low calorie intake each day.
Not forgetting that women are supposed to consume around 2000 calories a day, this diet would only allow under half of that and for men this would be doubly worse, considering they are recommended to eat around 2500 a day.
However, here we are in the diet obsessed 00s still giving this diet a go- only now it's possibly a lot better for us. Now we can add grapefruit to our diets and experience some fat-burning properties, without having to adhere to the harsh 80s diet.
Research into this diet also found some additional health benefits to consuming vast amounts of grapefruit, including lower levels of insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and fat metabolism, which in turn might help to reduce the risk of diabetes or stroke.
Although this research is ongoing and nothing has been confirmed, lets be honest introducing yet more fruit into our diet can't be a bad thing can it?
The harsh 80s version of this diet wouldn't really be possible in today's society, considering people are already quite wary of unsafe weight loss methods. One such example would be the extremely controversial maple syrup diet, as used by Beyonce to shed two stone for her role in Dreamgirls.
People clamoured to try the scarily low calorie diet in a bid to experience almost instant inch loss, but the health warnings far outweighed the weight loss, as such people gave it a go and very quickly realised its flaws.
The grapefruit diet may sound a bit similar, but is in fact a lot better for you and your sanity, as you search for a way to shift those extra pounds, before all the Christmas invites start pouring in. Eat a balanced diet, which includes lots of fresh fruit and vegetables each day, and you'll be on the right track in no time.
We predict a surge in grapefruit sales in the run-up to Christmas, as people start introducing it into their diet. We think it's an inexpensive way to boost your metabolism and hopefully squeeze into that party dress, just in time for the festivities.
FemaleFirst- Laura Terry