Grapefruit Diet Review

I was walking back to my desk yesterday and passed by my co-worker’s cubicle that is a couple doors down from mine. I looked into her office briefly and said hello. As we were exchanging stories about our weekend adventures I happened to glance into her waste paper basket and was startled to see that it had become a grapefruit graveyard. I mean there must have been 10 empty grapefruit rinds in there. I asked her if she really loved grapefruit because she must eat a lot of it. She laughed and told me she was trying the Grapefruit Diet, which has her eating one-and-a-half grapefruits a day. I asked her if the diet worked and she just shrugged and said “I’m not sure yet. But I’m really getting sick of grapefruit.” We both had a good chuckle about that.

The Grapefruit Diet is a popular fad diet that is extremely low-calorie and is not suitable for long-term weight loss.

I really love grapefruit and eat it a few times a week. I know that there have been some studies that support that eating grapefruit helps with weight loss (I wrote a post about it here: Eating Grapefruit Helps Weight Loss), but I didn’t realize that there was an actual Grapefruit Diet.

As it turn out, the Grapefruit Diet appears to be quite well known in the weight loss world and is one of the most popular ways to drop a few pounds quickly. The Grapefruit Diet has been around for many years. In the 1930’s it became a wildly popular fad diet that was very similar to the Atkins diet, but had you eating half a grapefruit with every high-protein meal.

Dieters who use this plan lose weight quickly, however they are not able to stay on the diet for too long because of the lack of caloric intake. While many dieters link the amount of weight lost to the grapefruit, it is more likely due to the drastic amount of calories restricted from a daily eating schedule. While on the Grapefruit Diet, calories consumed hover around 800, almost 400 less than any nutritionist would suggest for long periods of time.

Despite the name of the diet, grapefruit is not the only thing eaten on this diet program. A typical diet plan includes incorporating the grapefruit into meals such as two pieces of bacon, two eggs and a grapefruit for breakfast, unlimited protein, half a grapefruit and salad for lunch, and additional protein, red or green vegetables, salad and half a grapefruit for dinner. After dinner, 8 ounces of fat free or skim milk is also suggested.

Despite there being no scientific reason for grapefruit to have the ability to burn fat, dieters still use it as a source to lose weight. The weight being lost, however, is mostly water weight that returns as soon as the individual begins to eat regular foods again. The low-calorie, high-protein diet typically lasts for twelve days, with a promised weight loss of 10 pound loss after the diet has been completed. Of course, this diet cannot promise anything of the sort, but an extreme low-calorie diet such as this will definitely have you losing weight.

The pros of the grapefruit diet are that grapefruits are a nutritious and low-calorie food, as well as being a major source for fiber and vitamin C, both which are beneficial for weight loss. Aside from the fact that it does not actually burn fat, grapefruit is beneficial in that it may lower levels of insulin in the body, and helps bring a feeling of satisfaction and fullness to the individual on the diet.

Cons of the grapefruit diet are mostly the fact that there is not much nutritional value in the program as a whole, and a high-protein diet can become unhealthy for long-term dieters. The lack of calories also makes the diet impossible to sustain for longer periods, especially longer than the twelve recommended days. In fact, the calorie intake of the grapefruit diet is so low that you are also at risk of drastically slowing your metabolism. If this happens, when you begin to eat normally again, you will gain weight quickly.

The cost of the Grapefruit Diet is affordable, since you only needs to incorporate the fresh fruit into your diet. Therefore, the cost of grapefruits is the only expense an individual needs to shell out while on the Grapefruit Diet. Overall however, I think the Grapefruit Diet is not good for anything other than short-term weight loss. Perhaps if you only have a few pounds to lose it would be good to try. But for people like myself who have much more weight to lose, the Grapefruit Diet would not be a realistic or healthy option.