The Avocado Diet

The Avocado Diet is one that includes – as the name suggests – avocados as the central ingredient. It is a short-term diet, lasting only three days, but it claims to be able to help with the loss of between two and three pounds during that time. It is not recommended that the diet be taken once after the next because as nutritious as an avocado is, the diet does not contain all of the nutrients required to sustain a healthy body over a longer period of time. Furthermore, it is a diet that includes very little food and can slow the metabolism if used for longer than three days.

Though there are several interpretations of the avocado diet – some where only avocados are eaten and others where avocados are simply included as a primary ingredient in every meal – the overall concept remains the same. In the typical avocado diet, three meals are eaten for three days, and they consist of the same thing, without room for changes or snacks.

Breakfast will usually be half an avocado with the hole for the stone filled with either fat-free cottage cheese or fat-free plain yogurt. Lunch includes a salad made from the other half of that avocado, cut up into cubes, mixed with a sliced hard-boiled egg, sliced green onions, and a chopped small cucumber. Supper the same as breakfast, but with a 3 oz lightly fried beef patty to go with it. Only water can be consumed beyond these three meals.

Water is an important part of this diet because it helps to flush the system out, keeps the body hydrated, reduces water retention, and decreases sensations of hunger due to the limited portions.

Though studies have not been performed on the avocado diet as a whole, they have been held to review the efficacy of avocados in the attempt to lose weight in a healthy way. The fatty acids within avocados have been shown to help people to lose weight effectively while lowering their bad cholesterol and increasing their good cholesterol.

For this reason, the authors of many weight loss studies consider avocados to be not a central element to a weight loss diet, but should instead be a supplement to a healthy diet for losing weight. By adding avocado to salads and other meals when eating a healthy, balanced diet with reasonable portions, weight loss is encouraged and the body will run with greater efficiency.