Video | What is The Grapefruit Diet? | Original Diet: Sample Menu | The “Magic” of Grapefruit | Revised Diet: Sample Menu | Takeaway

The Grapefruit Diet. Remember that one? It has been around for decades, and most would simply write it off as just another Hollywood diet that, at its best, is a short-term fix and, at its worst, is a harmful approach to weight loss. 

But unlike similar diet fads that highlight a specific food in their name, the Grapefruit Diet allows you to eat more than just grapefruit.

In fact, despite an obvious flaw in its design, at its core, it is a low-carb, high-protein diet. 

In this blog post, I share what you could eat on the original grapefruit diet and show you how, with just two tweaks, this fad from the past can become a well-formulated diet. 

The Grapefruit Diet Revisited and Revised – IT WORKS…With These 2 Tweaks [Video]

In this video, you’ll learn…

• What you could eat on the original grapefruit diet.
• How grapefruit could prove to be an effective weight loss tool.
• A revised way to incorporate grapefruit into your diet.

What Is The Grapefruit Diet?

It might surprise you, but the grapefruit diet, also known as the Hollywood Diet and the 18-Day Diet, originated in the 1920s. 

According to an article published in the Motion Picture Magazine, “Hollywood has only one topic of conversation these days. It is not the latest scandal or the Equity situation or the talkies or the newcomers from Broadway. Obesity has taken the place of infidelity as a subject for gossip…” That article was published in 1929 (1).

What was the solution to fast weight loss nearly 100 years ago, and what was it about grapefruit that made it the star of the diet? I put together a sample menu and explored the “magic” of grapefruit below. 

The Original Grapefruit Diet

According to a report outlining the history of the grapefruit diet, there is no single source, like a book, that lays out the details (2).

Daily menus vary depending on the source. A few things that appeared in multiple sources were a calorie count that did not exceed 800 calories per day and the inclusion of Melba toast. Melba toast is thinly sliced bread that is dried and toasted to turn it into more of a cracker than a slice of bread. Apparently, it was really popular back in the heyday of this diet. 

The Original Grapefruit Diet: Sample Menu

To get a picture of what the original diet looked like, I combined meal planning ideas from different publications and added portion sizes to create this 800-calorie grapefruit diet sample menu. 

Sample Menu: 

Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs, 1 slice of bacon, four slices of Melba toast (16g), and half of a small grapefruit

Lunch: Salad (2 cups of greens, a small tomato, 2 oz. of chicken, 1 Tbsp. of oil and vinegar dressing) and a half of a small grapefruit

Dinner: 3 oz. of sirloin steak, a cup of green peppers sauteed in a half Tbsp. of butter, and half of a small grapefruit

Throughout the day, you could drink water, coffee, or tea; actually, in the original diet, you could drink eight ounces of grapefruit juice instead of eating the fruit. For our examples, I’m sticking with the whole fruit. 

That daily menu provides a macronutrient breakdown of 32% protein, 26% carbs, and 42% fat, which is a reasonable breakdown for a low-carb dieter. 

However, the low-calorie count is a problem. When you restrict calories to this level, weight loss happens, but it is too low to be sustainable and support a strong metabolism. 

Was the grapefruit diet successful for no other reason than it forced you to eat less food, or was there something magical about grapefruit? 

The “Magic” of Grapefruit?

When the diet first gained popularity, it was thought that grapefruit contained a unique fat-burning enzyme. The name of that enzyme was not clear at the time, but it may have been a compound called naringin. 

Naringin

Naringin is a natural substance found in grapefruit that has been studied for its potential fat-burning effects. While it does not directly burn fat, it may aid in the process in a couple of ways. First, it improves insulin sensitivity by reducing blood sugar spikes and lowering post-meal insulin levels (3).

Second, it stimulates AMPK, which is an enzyme that helps manage how the body uses and stores energy (4).

There is a compound in grapefruit that has weight loss benefits. But that’s not the only thing grapefruit has going for it.

Preloading

As it turns out, grapefruit is an effective preloading food (5).

I did a blog post on preloading a few months ago. Essentially, it is the practice of consuming something before a meal that changes your perception of fullness, so you feel more satisfied and effortlessly eat less at your meal. 

Because grapefruit has a high water content (about 91%), consuming it before a meal fills you up with a low-calorie, nutrient-rich food, taking the edge off of hunger.

When we take a broad view of the original grapefruit diet, we see that it was a very low-calorie diet that was high in protein and low in carbs, that may have gotten enhanced results from grapefruit. 

With that knowledge, we can transform this controversial fad into a healthy, low-carb diet, and we only have to tweak two things. Number one, make the grapefruit a pre-meal food. Number two, double the portion sizes except for the melba toast, which we’ll omit. 

I will add an optional tweak. If eating an entire grapefruit before a meal seems like too much, you can stick with a half. That is what I did for the revised sample menu. Let’s take a look.

The Revised Grapefruit Diet: Sample Menu

To get the full benefits of preloading, you want to consume the grapefruit 20 or 30 minutes before the meal. 

Sample Menu: 

Breakfast: half of a grapefruit, followed by 4 boiled eggs and 2 slices of bacon

Lunch: half of a grapefruit, followed by a salad (4 cups of greens, a large tomato, 4 oz. of chicken, 2 Tbsp. of oil and vinegar dressing)

Dinner: half of a grapefruit, followed by 6 oz. of sirloin steak, 2 cups of green peppers sauteed in a Tbsp. of butter

Drink water, coffee, or tea. 

That daily menu provides 1,351 calories and a macronutrient breakdown of 36% protein, 15% carbs, and 49% fat. That is a solid, high-protein, low-carb diet with a more realistic calorie count. You can adjust the calories to fit your lifestyle.

Takeaway

The grapefruit diet has been around since the 1920s. Despite the flaw of being too low in calories, the fad diet had some things going for it, namely being a high-protein, low-carb, whole-food diet. And then, of course, there is the featured food, grapefruit, eaten with each meal. 

While grapefruit may not be a magical fat-burning fruit, it does contain compounds that improve insulin sensitivity and help your body utilize fat as fuel by boosting the enzyme AMPK. Grapefruit is also low in calories and mostly water, helping you feel full. 

By doubling the original diet’s portion sizes and moving grapefruit to the start of meals, this fad diet is converted into an easy-to-follow, enjoyable, and effective low-carb diet. 

References:

(1) “Grapefruit Diet.” Wikipedia, 19 Sept. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit_diet.

(2) Soriano, Jose Miguel, and Inmaculada Zarzo. “The history of grapefruit diet: Four solved mysteries.” Nutrición Clínica y Dietética Hospitalaria 42.01 (2022).

(3) Fujioka, Ken, et al. “The effects of grapefruit on weight and insulin resistance: relationship to the metabolic syndrome.” Journal of medicinal food 9.1 (2006): 49-54.

(4) Zygmunt, Katarzyna, et al. “Naringenin, a citrus flavonoid, increases muscle cell glucose uptake via AMPK.” Biochemical and biophysical research communications 398.2 (2010): 178-183.

(5) Silver, Heidi J., Mary S. Dietrich, and Kevin D. Niswender. “Effects of grapefruit, grapefruit juice and water preloads on energy balance, weight loss, body composition, and cardiometabolic risk in free-living obese adults.” Nutrition & metabolism 8 (2011): 1-11.

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.