Grapefruit Diet

Truth or Fad

Review of the grapefruit diet. I remember when I was growing up finding my mother eating grapefruit and drinking grapefruit juice at every meal. When I got older I asked her why she did it, and she told me that grapefruit was believed to increase the fat burning process and help you lose weight or prevent you from gaining it.

Since my mother was always a very trim woman, I figured there must be something in the grapefruit that helped her burn all the calories. She was not a big eater by any means, though she did occasionally indulge in a small mount of chocolate or ice cream.

As I got older and began to gain a little weight, I decided to try my mother’s trick and see if it worked for me. The thing I didn’t realize was that for it to work, I had to consume a minimal amount of calories, something I could do without eating grapefruit, a fruit I really didn’t find very appealing—especially not unsweetened.

Nonetheless I stayed with it for several weeks to lose the ten pounds I wanted to lose. Anything was worth a try, and since the Grapefruit Diet had kept my mother in shape, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try it.

Although I did lose ten pounds on the Grapefruit Diet, I have to admit that the minimal amount of foods I was allowed to eat and the limited calories did not make me a very happy person. I was even more upset when I gained most of the weight back as soon as I started eating normally again even though I continued to eat the grapefruit or drink the juice with every meal as I had when I was on the diet.

I wasn’t sure what to think about it, so I asked a friend of mine who was a dietician and nutritionist. It turns out there is no proof that this diet helps burn calories. Further, any diet that only allows between 800-1000 calories will cause you to lose weight.

I also learned that what I lost in weight was fluid weight, which is why it returned as soon as I went off the grapefruit diet. The success rate is undocumented, and many doctors do not endorse it because of the low calorie content.

In my own personal situation I continued drinking the juice because it was good for me nutritionally, but I found something that was healthier in order to lose the ten pounds I wanted to lose. Even my mother was appalled to learn that she had been doing it for years and not really obtaining results from the juice but from the fact that she was eating so little.

The key to real success is changes in your lifestyle, which is where I had failed. I had become too sedentary, which is why I gained weight. I had not begun to eat more, but I stopped exercising as much. Once I returned to my exercise routine and began eating healthier foods, the weight began to come off again.

I am no longer drinking the grapefruit juice, though I do occasionally have half a grapefruit for breakfast, and the weight has stayed off for three months now. For me the key was not in the fat burning but in getting back to exercising so that I could boost my body’s metabolism.

Review by Joan Foster