Freelee the Banana Girl eats 50 bananas a day—that's it. But experts warn fad diets, like feasting only on fruit to lose weight, can do serious damage.
By Rachael Schultz, Shape
Sure, you may say you could survive on just pizza—or, in healthier
moments, swear you could get by on your favorite fruit. But what if that
was all you could eat for every meal, every day? That’s the idea behind
the mono diet. And we’re not talking about scarfing a banana because
you missed lunch. We’re talking about downing 15 or so bananas at each
meal.
[post_ads]Mono diets are nothing new: There's the Apple Diet, the
way-too-good-to-be-true Chocolate Diet, and even the Milk Diet (which
was actually developed by two doctors). In the slightly less hardcore
realm, there are fruitarians, or people who limit their fuel to the food
group of fruit (fruitarianism is the diet that famously sent Ashton
Kutcher to the hospital in 2013). Today, the #monomeal hashtag on
Instagram—highlighting people's beautiful pictures of a plate loaded
with a single kind of food—has over 24,000 uploads. (But is it as bad
as The 8 Worst Weight Loss Diets in History?)
The
most famous of mono diet devotees, though, is Freelee the Banana Girl,
an Australian who regularly blends 10 to 15 bananas into one breakfast
smoothie—then repeats that for lunch and dinner, downing about 50
bananas a day (that's including a few whole ones she eats to tide
herself over between meals). Freelee has been blowing up the internet
for the past year or two, garnering a massive social media following and
even writing a book, 30 Bananas a Day.
Why on earth
would you want to eat 50 bananas in one day? Advocates argue that eating
a single type of food can not only help you lose weight and solve
digestive issues like bloating, but also takes the guesswork out of
healthy eating and streamlines your meals.
But,
while Freelee the Banana Girl's flat stomach and pseudo-credentials may
be tempting, no social media following matches up to an actual
nutrition degree. “I would never recommend a mono diet, and I don’t
think any dietitian would suggest you just eat fruit for an extended
period of time,” says holistic nutritionist Laura Lagano, R.D.
A day or weekend of paring down your diet to a few nutritious staples
can certainly help people who get overwhelmed about food decisions. But
sticking to just a few foods—let alone a single source—for any longer
than that deprives your body of essential nutrients, she says.
Mono
diet disciples typically do allow themselves to trade out their food of
choice—sometimes. Freelee, for example, will turn to a single fruit
that’s on sale that day, and she eats one head of lettuce a few times a
week—and she recommends 2,500 calories a day to her “banana girls,"
including a miniscule amount from additional sources like coconut water,
potatoes, or other fruits and veggies. One banana, by the way, has 105
calories. That means she herself is consuming upwards of 5,000
calories.
But her guidelines for where your calories should come
from suggest 90 percent carbs and max five percent from fat and protein a
day. Most other monomeals, like those of fruitarians, fall into a
similar realm. The problem? Fat—which no fruit has a sufficient amount
of—is essential for neurological functioning, Lagano says. And many
vitamins, like E, D, and K, are fat-soluble, so your body can’t even
digest the great nutrients you’re trying to load it up with, Villacorta
explains. As for protein, the amount in fruit isn’t enough to sustain a
sedentary person, let alone the levels needed by the body of an active
person—a category we assume people using this extreme diet to be
“healthy” fall into, he adds. (You also need these 7 Nutrients That Help Increase Muscle Tone.)
And
those are just the macronutrients. The reason nutritionists recommend
eating a rainbow of colors is because there are different
micronutrients, like phytonutrients, antioxidants, and vitamins, in each
kind of food. If you’re only eating oranges or bananas, your body isn’t
garnering the lycopene in tomatoes and red bell peppers or the
beta-carotene in carrots and sweet potatoes, not to mention countless
other essential nutrients.
On top of all the physiological damage
monomeals do to your health, it can be psychologically
damaging. “Limiting your food to a single source sounds like disruptive
eating,” says Lagano, referring to an eating disorder. In fact, Freelee
does say on her site that she has a history of bulimia, anorexia, and
extreme dieting (which her banana diet supposedly cured as monomeals
throw portion control out the window). This idea of qualifying mono
diets as an eating disorder, which is echoed by most nutritionists, is
made even scarier considering the fact that Freelee has over 230,000
Instagram followers. But followers aren't everything: Mono dieting can
also limit your socialization—so much of our social life revolves around
food, and interacting with friends is one of the most crucial factors
to your health as well, Lagano adds. (Sound familiar? Check out these
other 9 Signs You’re on a Fad Diet.)
Just
like with all fad diets, monomeals won’t help you lose weight or
“reset” your psyche without causing serious damage to your health. But
there are ways to achieve both: Cutting out processed foods and
incorporating more smoothies of all colors can help your body reboot,
says Villacorta. Opt for something like The Clean Green Food & Drink Cleanse which focuses on robust smoothies and clean foods. You'll only have to scarf down two bananas a day, max—we swear.
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“We
need to eat a variety of foods because they each provide different
nutrients essential to the functioning of our bodies,” says Manuel Villacorta, R.D., author of Whole Body Reboot: The Peruvian Super Foods Diet to Detoxify, Energize, and Supercharge Fat Loss. “Eating 50 bananas a day is crazy—it would create a massive nutrient deficiency.” (And so do these 7 Ingredients That Are Robbing You of Nutrients.)More:
