Eating only fruit to lose weight: does it work? Is it healthy? If you have heard about fruitarians, and the case of the Banana Girl who lost a lot of weight eating 30 bananas a day, you will know that a fruit-only diet exists, and therefore nothing prevents us from trying it, perhaps for a limited period of time.

Not surprisingly, you will hear many times: “I only eat fruit to keep myself light” and some drastic diets are centered on certain fruits in particular, such as the lemon diet or the grape diet.
What are the contraindications that you need to know?

First of all, the problem of the glycemic load. Fruit hardly satisfies us, therefore we will tend to eat a lot of fruit to satiate ourselves, or very often. Maybe we get satisfied by eating two apples in a row (apple is one of the most filling fruits), but after an hour we will get hungry again.

The reason is simple: Even though most fruit has a medium glycemic index, eating 3-400 grams of fruit in one meal creates a medium to high glycemic load, more than a plate of pasta. The structure of sugars is also essential: we know that the complex carbohydrates of al dente pasta or wholemeal bread satiate longer, and cooking affects the satiety of carbohydrates. Also, while many foods that contain carbohydrates also contain proteins and fats, fruit essentially contains carbohydrates, aside from avocado, which is rich in monounsaturated fats. 

Put simply: we need about 400 grams of apples to make us satiate like a plate of pasta. But after two hours, we will be hungry again, and then we will eat more fruit. It turns out that the fruit diet, to be satiating, leads us to consume at least two kilos. And two pounds of fruit has a lot of sugar and very low protein content.
Results? We may even get fat or have a weird cheeseburger craving the next day. If we continue it for more than a couple of days, the fruit diet becomes poorly nutritious, and leads to a lack of protein at the expense of our lean mass.