Banana lover here/ want to start a "banana diet"
 

I woke up this morning craving one of my favorite foods: banana with peanuts. The craving is so strong, I started elaborating recipe ideas of ground banana with peanut.

I love bananas so much that I can have them (and only them) for days...won't get tired of them and would have more anytime :)

Then the thought of eating only food that I LOVE and still lose weight crossed my mind and I absent-mindedly googled "banana diet" and woah!!! It does exist and (apart from the fact that it's a mono food and therefore fad diet)seems to work wonders!

Basically, it requires eating 30 bananas a day and just that. Truth is ... I was easily doing half of that on my own, only stopping because I knew bananas are too sugary. Most of the time, I stopped just because of the gilt.

I live in a tropical country and bananas here are so tasty, with such a nice flavor! In addition, they are cheap and easy to get.

I want to try it out. Actually I'm more than interested about it. I'm quite excited about it and want to check if someone's tried this (or another mono fruit diet) and how it worked.

P.S: I have researched the ups and downs of this diet, with all the negatives that go with it, so I wish to say that I'd preferably not get advice dwelling on the dangers of it.

:crossed:Thx! I'm salivating...just thinking about it!

I've not done this, but as part of a larger vegan community I've heard/read about it and only saw mostly negative things. Sorry I don't have anything positive to share, I wish you luck on your journey. :)

I am not sure it would be very nutritionally balanced so would avoid it.

I love a banana as much as the next guy, ideally before a run, but 30 a day? Nope. Not even 15.

The reason is protein and fats, not to mention other vitamins and minerals. You might not be getting enough.

It's not so much a danger issue. You would just start looking and feeling like sh!t.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperkalemia

I'm not sure how much potassium bananas actually have in them, but there is a point where you can have too much of just about any mineral or vitamin. Your body has to process things, some with more difficulty than others.

Keep eating bananas, for sure. You love them and they're healthy. But, I think it's a good idea to balance them out with some other foods ^_~

Edit: I somehow skimmed over your request for advice that doesn't dwell on the dangers. The thing is, this whole forum is about making healthy choices and supporting each other in doing what's right for our bodies. So I don't think you get to say "please just tell me all the good stuff and join in with me!" because that's not how this works. We're supportive of everything, as long as you're doing something good for yourself. I'm not sure you are, in this case.

Yes, it will work.

If you eat less than 20 bananas a day (about 2000 calories) then you should be able to lose weight.

You will lose fat and muscle (you will be eating less than half your daily required protein). So you will look very bad aka gaunt. But, hey, if that's the look you're going for, go for it.

I'm well aware of this diet. I'm well aware that it isn't really eating 30 bananas a day. I'm also aware that the leader of this has a severe eating disorder and to counteract her binging on fruit, she exercises excessively. I've known people who have done it and gained weight. I know people who have done it and became ill. But weight loss is about calories and if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight.

Yes, I have tried many, many of these types of single-food diets, including several variations of banana diets... most of them thirty plus years ago hen I was young and very foolish. Even then, I was warned about the dangers, and really only wanted to hear from people who had success with such diets and from people would encourage me (which definitely is the tome in your original post).

I was warned and I tried them anyway, and I had rapid and immediate successes, followed swiftly by catastrophic failure.

For years after I learned better, I couldn't even look at a banana (or cabbage, or hot dog)... without gagging.

These one-food and other severe-limitation diets are largely the reason I got to nearly 400 lbs - because such diets only reinforce the restriction/binge cycle, loss/gain and I learned the hard way that the BINGE/GAIN is ALWAYS much, much MUCH longer, and larger than the DIET/LOSS.

I am now in very, very poor health, and my early years of unwise dieting is to blame as much as the weight itself. Trying to lose weight by way of one ridiculous diet after another, destroyed my confidence, my self-esteem, my immune system, my joints, my pain receptors, my brain/nerve function, my muscular system, my endocrine system, my reproductive system....

I'm not just guessing at the causes of my health collapse. I've read extensively on the damages I've done to myself in the pursuit of rapid, easy weight loss - which only resulted in more-rapid weight gain.

I suspect you will try your banana diet anyway, because I didn't listen when I was warned, and neither did many of my friends and family (none of which had any better success than I did with these diets). The luckiest of us all, learned earliest that these diets are a road to misery, and stopped trying them.

I wish I had never tried this type of diet, or at least had learned after the first or second, or even tenth or fiftieth attempt.

These diets have terrible and long-lasting effects. They don't feel dangerous, only because you don't feel the damage and pain immediately. It can take ten or twenty years later to see the impact, and even then, you'll blame the weight before you blame your lack of nutrition.

I hope you're smarter ad less stubborn than those of us who ignored the warnings and had to learn for ourselves the hard way.

I learnt about mono diets from an eating disorder forum I used to be a member of. Tried mono diets before. Very bad for health, that's all I can say.

If you want to, try it for a couple of days to get rid of the cravings. Won't do you any good in the long run. It's simply not sustainable.

So, you are, according to what you say, 5'1".

30 bananas a day, is around 3000 calories. You will gain!

Banana's are a healthy food, but like any food, too much or to little can have a negative impact on your health.

Our bodies need a balanced diet!

Muscle mass, needs lean protein, we need the fiber from whole grains, we need the vitamins, from a good mix of green leafy veg and vitamin C from fruit. And we need minerals! And we need the Omega fatty acids, from fish.

Years ago, there was the boiled egg, hot dog, orange, diet. That's all you were supposed to eat! *faints*

It worked, until you got tired of boiled eggs, and hot dogs.

On another note, if you choose to eat only bananas, how long before you end up with all kinds of health issues. The levels of potassium will affect your heart. The lack of protein, will affect muscle mass. The lack of vitamin C, you'll end up with scurvy. Possibly you could end up with Rickets!

Well, scurvy at least wouldn't be a problem as seven bananas provide as much Vitamin C as a small orange (which provides more than 100%RDA vitamin C); therefore, 29 bananas would provide about 500% of the RDA for Vitamin C, so no scurvy, no rickets.

I don't mean to knitpick, except to make and illustrate the point that knowledge of nutrition, and applying that knowledge isn't as easy or as natural as it might sometimes seem.

Nutrition is a sadly neglected science. It's not a required subject in grade schools or high schools, which is bad enough; but it's not even a required subject in medical scools.

Single food diets, are indeed very dangerous, because poor nutrition can have so many deleterious effects, some that won't manifest until years later.

Knowledge of nutrition isn't instinctive, it's something we have to learn, especially in the modern world where he have so many choices, and have the nfortunate luxury of being able to eat only the foods we like.

I was really tired last night, I had a point, but did not make it in the spirit that was intended! :hug:

Thank you for catching me, and Merry Christmas!:hug::hug::D