Fit-Tip: If the pudge won't budge, eat grapefruit

Photo grabbed from AnnaMaciel at stock.xchng

Maybe Mom was right. For the past six months or so, my mom has been on her own weight-loss get-fit mission--adding more walks into her weekly schedule even when it's cold, meeting with a personal trainer two or three times per week and tracking her daily steps with a pedometer. She also reads a lot of health and fitness advice, especially as it pertains to her diet. I recently called one of her facts a fake, but am now realizing she may have been right after all.

This time her advice comes in the form of citrus fruit. Over the holidays, my mom continued to praise grapefruit saying that she read about its benefits in aiding metabolism. Meanwhile I refuted her information by reciting readings about food myths and food truths and how the grapefruit diet was revealed as one of those diet tricks that just plain didn't work.

But now I'm having second thoughts both thanks to Mom and a recent RealAge Tip. RealAge reported that obese people who participated in a 12-week study where they ate half a grapefruit before each of three meals lost more weight than their counterparts. And while grapefruit juice and grapefruit capsules are powerful agents against weight gain, they're not as poweful as the whole fruit, which also contains fiber and its appetite-controlling benefits.

And now I'm thinking that it was merely the Grapefruit Diet that was receiving all the disapproving nods. Six-hundred calories consumed in one day? That's just asking for disaster from shrinking metabolism to not meeting the daily requirements of at least 1,200 calories consumed. Posted by Kate