Can we Lose Weight eating a Diet of only Fruit?

Sure, but then what?

Humans can lose weight on almost any diet (aside from the see-food diet.) We’ve tried grapefruits, special berries, near starvation, broccoli and rice, and a can of tuna for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In every single case people have been able to lose weight and declare victory. The problem comes when you want to follow up with these people a year or more down the road. When you do, you find that they’ve switched back to what they used to eat before or have moved on to something new,

The problem with eating only broccoli/rice or grapefruit is that they are nutritionally incomplete. So after a couple of months you’d die of malnutrition if your body didn’t step in and take over by way of making you crave other food. Cravings so intense you can’t really fight them.

It’s your body’s way of slapping you upside the head and asking you what the hell you think you were doing. In those couple of months though, you can lose weight but it comes at a cost.

The first is to your health as explained above. The deprivation of needed nutrients puts a strain on the body and causes all sorts of problems. The other is that you go back to your old diet after trying these extreme ones, and so you’ve wasted lots of time and effort for nothing. Just to be right back where you started.

Once you do that your weight goes back to where it used to be to, and then you’re off to find the next fad.

Psychologically Appealing

I get it though. The idea of eating a diet that consists of only fruit is one that feels right in some ways. Fruit is healthy for you, and if that is all you are eating then you know that 100% of the food you take in is all good stuff.

The idea of taking in only good and nothing bad is one of purification which is an appealing notion for all of us, and not just with food. We want our bodies and minds to be the best they can be so why not make them perfect?

It’s also a very simple diet to follow. All you have to do is eat one type of food and that’s it. No guesswork of any kind while shopping at the grocery store, no having to count calories or cook in advance and prepare etc., just go to the fridge when you are hungry and eat.

And finally fruit tastes good. It’s easy to accept a diet that is always going to be delicious. Fruit is tasty because it’s sweet due to their sugar content, which are not the same as the sugars found in dessert foods.

They are identical on a molecular level, but what I mean is that eating sugar in fruit doesn’t have the same effect on your body that eating sugar in desserts does.

Fruit Diet

Fruit Diet or Not?

So it would seem that the answer is a big, “no.” And I would say that that answer is correct. You can lose weight in the short term eating only fruit but I wouldn’t recommend it as it would be harmful long term.

And even if you did lose weight short term you’d simply gain it back once you stop.

BUT …

… that doesn’t mean you can’t create a diet for yourself that is mainly or very high in fruit and lose weight.

Like I said fruit is very good for you. It has lots of water, fiber, nutrients and minerals and doesn’t raise your insulin all that much compared to most other carbs so it’s a good food group to include in your day.

[Stay away from grapes, cherries and dried fruit as they are very high in sugar.]

How you can make a high fruit diet work is by eating a good portion for breakfast and lunch. Just fruit for those meals and nothing else. Then at dinner time you’d have meat or chicken and some vegetables.

That’s a far superior diet to one where you eat only fruit. This way you’d be getting all the nutrients needed, a change in food over the course of the day so you don’t get bored and a low carb meal at night to keep your insulin low.

This diet can be maintained as long as you like and you can even have a cheat day every once in awhile. If you’re not enjoying your diet it won’t last. If you have to suffer through your diet it also won’t last.

You have to build it right, so that you look forward to it everyday or else you’ll again be wasting more time and more effort and going nowhere.

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