Grapefruits for Weight Loss

While the grapefruit diet has often been disparaged and discredited by health practitioners and nutritionists, there is nevertheless evidence that eating grapefruits or drinking grapefruit juice regularly can help increase weight loss results.

The grapefruit diet as such has been around since about the 1930s.  The diet is quite restrictive as it greatly limits your food choices.  The diet includes many grapefruits but advises against many other fruits, vegetables and carbs.  As such, it isn’t really considered to be a healthy choice.

The original grapefruit diet limits the amount of all other fruits and vegetables as well as carbohydrates, making it by default a pure protein diet.  High fat, high cholesterol foods are eaten as much as you like, but alongside them dieters must eat a half a grapefruit.

Most of the time the diet involves a ten days on followed by to days off.  During the 1980s, the diet was referred to as a diet that could take ten pounds off in a mere ten days.

While eating only protein, fat and grapefruits will not give your body all the vitamins and minerals it needs for proper health, adding grapefruits to a healthier menu does in fact speed up weight loss results.  According to some studies, weight loss levels are higher among groups that eat grapefruits or drink grapefruit juice every day.

In one study conducted by the Florida Citrus Department those individuals who ate half a grapefruit or drank grapefruit juice with every meal as well as exercising regularly, lost about 3-4 pounds in 12 weeks.  Some participants actually lost as much as ten pounds.

Researches hypothesize that the grapefruit works to limit insulin levels.  This in turn is thought to encourage the loss of fat in the body.  Grapefruits are theorized to aid in weight loss because they have natural nutrients that rev up the body’s natural fat burning mechanism.

Though results depend as much on the amount of exercise a person gets and the overall diet, there is evidence to suggest that adding a grapefruit or half a grapefruit to each meal can have many weight loss benefits.  The mighty grapefruit contains a good dose of vitamins and nutrients and so long as you aren’t taking any prescription medications that may interact with the bioflavanoids in grapefruits, you can safely add these to your regular diet for added weight loss results.