Are you struggling to lose weight?

Do you want to lose weight in a healthy way?

Do you want a diet with no restrictions?

Then the Morning Banana diet is for you.

Contrary to the logical assumption that the morning banana diet revolves mostly around eating nothing but bananas, surprisingly that’s not the case.

Although bananas do feature in this diet, there’s plenty of other things you can eat as well. This diet was first designed by a Japanese couple who both work in healthcare roles.

It is an excellent way of losing 20lbs in 2 weeks in a healthy way

Husband Hamachi Watanabe and wife Sumiko designed the diet on a few core components:

1.Eat More Fruit

When we haven’t eaten fruit for a long time and instead eat junk food, we forget that fruit is actually very tasty when you find the best ones for your taste buds.

By swapping out our unhealthy snacks for fruit, we eliminate a good portion of the caloric overconsumption that occurs with unhealthy eating habits.

2.Mindful Eating.

Practising mindful eating has two separate but equally awesome benefits.

The first is that when we focus on chewing slowly and being in the moment as we eat our food, assessing and appreciating the flavours we’re experiencing, we enjoy it more. The second is that mindful eating actually aids weight loss. In 13 out of 19 studies, mindfulness interventions during dieting aided weight loss.

Eat Dinner before 8 pm

Although it’s still a subject of debate between old perspectives and new data, it’s considered a risk factor for weight gain to consume meals after 8 pm.

The reason for this is supposedly because the body isn’t able to digest the food as well at night as it can when you’re active in the day.

The primary idea with this diet is to eat a raw banana (no cooking or freezing) and wash it down with a glass of water that’s been left to sit for about 10-15 minutes. That’s your breakfast every day.

Breakfast Time

When you wake up in the morning, this is when your eating habits will be most affected by the diet.

The reason for this is because for breakfast you have a raw banana and a glass of room temp water. Although it might not seem like much of a breakfast, there’s a good reason why they suggest a single banana and not a single apple. Bananas are wonderfully filling, meaning you won’t have to worry about being hungry for long.

What if I’m still hungry?

An added benefit to this diet is that if you’re still hungry 30 minutes after eating the first banana, you can eat another one.

An added benefit to having room temp water and banana(s) for breakfast is how convenient it is. Unlike when making toast, porridge or any other type of breakfast that requires some prep, bananas need only be peeled before you can start chowing down.

Some good news for hypercholesteraemic people, eating a raw banana in the morning is actually shown to be good for you.

For diabetic people who tend to suffer more with hyperglycaemia on the fasting blood tests, eating raw bananas for 4 weeks showed a significant decrease in fasting blood sugar levels.

What about Lunch?

Surprisingly, when it comes to lunchtime there’s no need for massive changes to your eating habits.

The morning banana diet doesn’t put restrictions on what you eat for lunch or dinner, but if you want to see the best weight loss possible from this diet, then when it comes to deciding what to eat for lunch, go for fruits, veg, fish, chicken and other healthier options to reduce the amount of foods that cause obesity in your diet. If you indulge in a very unhealthy lunch and dinner meals, you could end up cancelling out the potential weight you could lose from following the breakfast portion of the morning banana diet.

Although the diet allows you to eat whatever foods you want for lunch and dinner, foods to avoid include things high in saturated fat and added sugar. This is why:

 

Sat-Fat makes you gain weight

When it comes to saturated fats, you’ll find them in a lot of your favourite junk foods as well as cheese, cream, cakes, pork products, fatty cuts of any animal, coconut milk, chocolate and milkshakes.

Sat-fat is highly obesogenic, meaning it poses a high risk for causing weight gain and obesity.

Added sugar (Sucrose) is bad in more ways than one

Sucrose is bad for you, especially when you consume more than the recommended daily amount.

Examples of sucrose consumption-related problems include weight gain, higher risk of heart disease and a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

How about dinner?

The last meal of the day is one that should be enjoyed mindfully for a couple of reasons.

The first is that after you’ve spent all day doing your best to be productive and putting as much effort in as you can muster, you deserve to take the time to eat slowly and truly enjoy your food. The second is that mindful eating has been shown to aid in weight loss, meaning a mindful eater is a slimmer eater.

When it comes to dinner, you’re allowed to eat what you usually would.

This means if you’re used to enjoying a big juicy steak every night you don’t have to give it up. That being said, you should keep in mind that what you decide to eat at any meal will have as big an impact on your weight loss journey as exercising.

Are there any restrictions on dinner?

The only stipulation for dinner in this diet specifically is that it needs to be consumed before 8 pm.

This is down to the fact that a lot of older research suggests that the later you eat, the less your body is able to metabolise, meaning you’re going to store more of the meal as fat deposits, increasing weight gain. Newer research and studies show that there’s little to no valid data to back up this old-school way of thinking.

To get the most out of this diet and increase your losses as much as possible, try adjusting your eating habits slowly.

By choosing healthier options at every meal as well as adhering to the recommended breakfast under this diet, you?ll start finding it easier and easier to hit your weight loss goals consistently with less efforts. The final way to get the most weight loss out of this diet at dinner time is portion control. If you’re picking the right foods, you’ll have absolutely no problem controlling your portion sizes.

Complex carbs will help you feel fuller for longer and then it’s all about adding in different foods to build a nutritionally well-rounded meal.

Other Considerations

There are a few things to consider with this diet, but for the most part you won’t need to worry about shopping for a wide array of things specifically for this diet.

giving it an edge over highly restrictive diets that usually have each and every meal planned out with foods that can sometimes be somewhat pricey.

When you go shopping for this diet, you need only pick up bananas.

The best advice if you love your bananas fresh is to drop into a shop once every few days and put your bananas into zip-lock bags to keep them fresh for as long as possible. You might also consider picking up some fruit and veg to add to any lunch or dinner you have in mind, but the best change you can make to a meal is whenever it has meat, make sure you get lean cuts instead of fattier ones and if you can, always go for chicken breast. It’s high in protein, very low in fat and tastes amazing when done right.

A great thing about this diet is that because it’s not even remotely restrictive, it’s vegetarian and vegan-friendly.

To add to the inclusiveness of this diet, no matter what your dietary restrictions are, you needn’t worry about starting this diet.

In Conclusion

The morning banana diet is something of an oddity because it’s not restrictive in the slightest, highly accessible and really cheap, plus it doesn’t stop you eating the foods you love.

It’s a little bit on the fad side of dieting because the only mechanism for weight loss in this diet is the consumption of bananas to make you feel fuller for longer.

Because it allows people to eat whatever they want for lunch and dinner, the morning banana diet isn’t necessarily the best diet for weight loss, because it largely depends on people’s eating habits prior to the start of the diet.

If your choices of food are healthy, but you eat them in unhealthy quantities, this diet could be great for you. If like most people, your problem is more to do with loving foods high in sucrose and saturated fats, this diet may not help you lose much weight. Unless you’re willing to take the slow and consistent changes to your eating habits that may eliminate the need for future dieting.