When I was a kid I remember my Mom going on the "Grapefruit Diet". It was claimed that eating a grapefruit a day would help you lose weight. I always thought this was silly until recently. Our local FFA sells fruit as a fund raiser each year. I alway buy oranges and grapefruit. When the fruit came in about two weeks ago I literaly pigged out. I was eating about two oranges a day and about 2 grapefruit daily. I just knew I would gain weight but instead my loss increased considerably. I don't know whether it was just time for me to start a downward trend or if the citrus fruit helped. Has anyone else heard of this?

I'm not sure about how the long term effects of the grapefruit diet.....I do know though that eating citrus fruit on a regular basis is recommended to people with high cholesterol levels.

Carol

Well if you are replacing fruit with higher caloric foods of course your weight will go down. Just think you shouldn't catch a cold anytime soon and you look good.

Grapefruit also has a very high amount of pectin which is a soluble fibre. Other soluble fibres are psyllium, glucomannan, oat bran. They all aid in weight loss.

Regarding the cholesterol lowering properties, in simplified form it works like this: Your liver pulls cholesterol from the blood and uses it to make bile. This is then sent to the gall bladder where it is concentrated. When you eat, the gall bladder squirts the bile into the digestive system where it acts like a dish detergent on the fats in the food, it breaks the fats down in order for them to be absorbed into the bloodstream. After this happens, the bile is usually broken down and the cholesterol is then recycled back into the bloodstream. If you have water soluble fibre in your digestive tract, however, it binds to the bile and passes through the digestive tract and is eliminated. So it stops this recycling of cholesterol.

Devana, that was such a great description of citrus and cholesterol....I've been trying to put it into layman terms for one of my weight loss group's members and I just keep confusing her but I think your description will work...thanks.

Carol

WOW Devana that was great. LOL Now explain to me why you shouldn't have grapefuit if you are on high blood pressure meds.

I was on a medical weight loss program called Lindora and they recommended 1/2 a grapefruit with each meal. Also, for a plateau buster, 1/2 grapefruit and an egg for breakfast, for lunch and dinner white fish, spinach, salad and 1/2 a grapefruit.

Audree