Broccoli Belly

You will soon discover with my daily posts that I have some very weird and wacky friends.

Over the weekend I met a friend who was trying to drastically lose weight she had gained over the holiday festivities. When I say drastically, I mean really, really, super fast. Her method of dropping the pounds, which I do not advocate whatsoever, was by way of a ‘Broccoli Diet’.

I don’t want to offend anyone out there that does this but I do not agree with this for a lot of reasons but I will just cover the most important today. Please do not take this post and start a ‘Broccoli Diet’ as it is very detrimental to your health and is not recommended or advisable as a method to lose weight.

Her daily food intake consisted of the following:

Breakfast – Coffee

Lunch – Broccoli

Afternoon Snack – Piece of fruit (either apple, banana or orange)

Dinner  – Broccoli

I was so stunned when she finished telling me this. I didn’t actually know what to say or even how to say it. I just looked at her waiting for her to laugh and say it was a joke. But she was serious and she had lost 4 kilos already from it in under two weeks.

My reasons for disagreeing with the Broccoli Diet are as follows:

1. Trying to lose weight suddenly by limiting your calorie intake so low is a bad idea because you will just regain the weight just as fast (or even faster). My approach to losing weight is more about leading a healthy life and trying to reduce your waistline by incorporating healthy eating into your everyday lifestyle. It shouldn’t be by restricting your calorie intake so drastically low that you cannot function or conduct your daily activities because you do not have the energy reserves. At the end of the day you are only harming yourself, your long term health and your family because your body cant cope, you will be tired and grumpy. This type of dieting is not sustainable.

2. To maintain a healthy lifestyle aswell as lose weight, you need to incorporate ‘maintenance calories’ and a variety of food. The Broccoli Diet is going to reduce your waistline but are you going to be more healthy from it? No – your body needs a healthy balance of carbohydrates, fats and proteins to survive and function properly. Your health will deteriorate as you need this important balance to live a long happy life.

Anyway, wacky post today, hope you like the variety.

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Be back blogging tomorrow 🙂