Everyone is looking for a 'quick fix'
when it comes to their weight loss. When we're presented with reams of
information on diet, nutrition and exercise, most of us find our eyes glazing
over and our heart rates increasing. It's called 'information overload' or
'options paralysis' and it's a real concern. No one has time these days
to learn a complex diet or to work out how to fit it into their routine. What people want, or so it seems, is a clear,
simple and easy diet that they can follow precisely without having to think.
Even if it's extreme, as long as it's simple and it seems likely to get
results, then we're likely to follow it.
As you might imagine though, this is
not necessarily the healthiest approach to take when trying to lose weight or
improve your wellbeing generally. Unfortunately, nutrition and exercise are
complicated topics and in order for a new workout routine or diet to be
effective it also needs to be carefully tailored to your own lifestyle, habits
and body type. Diets that are incredibly
simple and/or extreme, are often likely to do more harm than good. And a
perfect example of this is the 'mono diet'.
So what exactly is the “mono diet? “
The word 'mono' means 'one'. Something
that is 'monochrome' is only one colour, while someone with a 'monotone' speaks
at only one pitch. Thus, the 'mono diet'
means the 'one diet'. And this is exactly what it sounds like: it's a diet in
which you eat only one type of food. Also called 'monomeals', this
'eating plan' is as simple as it gets. For 'N' number of weeks, you simply eat
just one type of food. This
worrying trend was propelled to fame via a YouTuber going by the handle 'Freelee the Bana Girl'.
As you can imagine, her version of the 'mono diet' involves eating just
bananas. Reportedly, Freelee will eat up to 51 bananas in one day and says she
once went for three weeks eating just bananas. She lost 23 kilos over seven years and she
looks pretty good. As you can imagine though, she's also very controversial…
The Dangers of Mono Diets
Nutritionists have taken no time in
advising people not to follow in Freelee's advice and not to use
mono diets and rightly so. Hopefully, you can already guess some of the
problems with eating just a single type of food, but just in case, let's go
over some of them here. Well for
starters, no single type of food is going to be able to provide you with the
wealth of nutrients that your body needs to function optimally. If you only
eat bananas, then you won't be getting the protein that your body needs in
order to build muscle and other tissues, to support healthy brain function or
to aid with the repair of tissues throughout your body. Likewise bananas contain only tiny amounts of
calcium (though they do aid with consumption), tiny amounts of sodium and no
B12 among other things. Fail to get enough selenium for instance and you can
suffer from mood disorders. Don't get enough vitamin C and you'll likely get a
lot of colds and other illnesses. Fail to get your calcium and you can suffer
osteoporosis.
Moreover, if you are only eating one
type of food, you can end up overdosing with other ingredients. Bananas
for example are very high in sugar and eating that much sugar regularly
can not only damage your nerves but also your teeth and actually isn't
very good for weight loss.
Spiking your blood sugar that much by
eating 51 bananas in a day could well increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. On the other hand if you were to eat too much
tuna, you could end up getting mercury poisoning. Live on just raw eggs and you
might get a biotin deficiency. Get too much vitamin B6 and you can end up
causing nerve damage. Ever heard the term 'everything in moderation'?
It's only fair to point out at this
stage that even those promoting mono-diets don't recommend you use them
indefinitely. Rather, these are diets intended to be used for a week to a month
at the start of another type of diet (Freelee recommends a raw-food diet).
While you might not think you can do that much damage in a month, you'd be
surprised what the effects of an iron deficiency or a lack of protein can be
even in the short-term.
The Impracticality of Mono Diets
Moreover, mono diets are incredibly
impractical and extreme to the point where you're likely to struggle to
maintain the diet and to live a normal lifestyle while you're on it. Tell your friends you plan to eat only bananas
and they'll (rightly) look at you as though you're crazy. Then, when they
invite you out for dinner, you'll have to turn them down because there are very
few restaurants that serve any meals consisting entirely of bananas…
Likewise, eating only one type of food
will very quickly get boring and you'll find yourself craving other things. When
we've eaten something sweet, we naturally tend to crave something savoury to
follow it up with. There is nothing savoury on a banana-only diet. Eating a mono-diet will also upset your body
clock as our bodies regulate themselves at least partly based on the timing of
our meals. When you eat a big meal in the evening, your body sees this as a
sign that it's coming up to bedtime. When you eat only bananas all day,
it struggles to know what it should be doing at all and your sleep can suffer
as a result. Not everyone on a mono-diet
has an unhealthy relationship with food or an eating disorder. That said, this
is certainly a psychologically unhealthy way to eat and it could very easily
lead to issues with body-image or to an eating disorder. +
Why Is Freelee so Slim?
We can bash mono-diets all we like but
the fact of the matter is that Freelee has a great body and flaunts it
regularly on YouTube. In the face of such evidence, it's no wonder that so many
people have switched to banana diets against their better judgement and common
sense.
So if banana diets are so bad for you,
why hasn't Freelee collapsed yet?
Well firstly, it's important to
recognize that 'skinny' doesn't necessarily mean 'healthy'. While Freelee might
not have much fat on her, she also has barely any muscle and if you look at her
boyfriend (who appears in some of her videos) it's abundantly clear that their
diet doesn't provide enough protein – particularly for a man. Freelee looks
good because she has no fat on her, but you'll also get that thin if you stop
eating entirely… and that doesn't mean that that's a healthy way to
live. Likewise, remember that Freelee
was only on the banana diet for one month and that she has since been
following the 'raw 'till four' diet (which is the topic for a whole different
article). Freelee's current body is not the result of a banana-only diet.
Conclusion
The moral of that story? Just because
something works for someone once, that doesn't mean that it will work for
everyone, every time and it certainly doesn't mean that you should necessarily
copy them. It's always crucial that you use your common sense and that
you avoid using extreme measures to try and lose weight. Just because Freelee
didn't have any negative effects from living on bananas for a month, that
doesn't mean you'll be so lucky.
Ultimately, there are countless
different diets and training routines available online to help you lose weight
in a healthy and safe way. Really then, there's no reason to use extreme
methods that will most likely do more harm than good. What would you rather do – follow a diet
that's a little more complicated and takes a little more time to understand… or
risk seriously damaging your health permanently by eating just one type of food
because it's simple?
As always, stay safe!
-Bird
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