There are a lot of people out there are struggling to find the best solution to control their weight from consuming diet supplement up to conducting a certain diet program. The fact is, controlling weight is easy as long as you know how to control your appetite and consuming only healthy food, especially those that are low in calories that promote weight loss naturally in daily basis. Everybody loves grapefruit because of the combination of sweet and sour taste and many researchers have proven this fruit is amazing for weight loss.
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What is Grapefruit?
Grapefruit is originated from Barbados. Do you know that grapefruit is actually a hybrid? Grapefruit is included in citrus family and was the combination of Indonesian pomelo, citrus maxima and Jamaican sweet orange, citrus sinensis.
That’s why the appearance of grapefruit is a bit unique with semi-sweet flavor with a bitter trace just like the flavor of sweet orange and pomelo combined and the color of pulp which similar to pomelo which is bright orange or pink. The size is also closer to pomelo which is a bit bigger than orange but not as big as pomelo. The hybrid happened accidently when the seed of pomelo was brought to Barbados and somehow naturally the hybrid occurs between those two types of citruses. That’s why for sometimes, grapefruit was well known as ‘forbidden fruit’ but now grapefruit is on the list of “Seven Wonders of Barbados”.
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Nutritional Value of Grapefruit
| Fresh Grapefruit (Pink or Red)
Serving Size: 123 grams |
|
| Calories | 51.7 |
| Carbohydrate | 13.1 g |
| Protein | 0.9 g |
| Fiber | 2 g |
| Fat | 0.2 g |
| Vitamin C | 38.4 mg – 64% |
| Vitamin A | 1,415 IU – 28% |
| Folate | 16 mcg – 4% |
| Thiamine | 0.1 mg – 4% |
| Panthothenic Acid | 0.3 mg – 3% |
| Vitamin B6 | 0.1 mg – 3% |
| Potassium | 166 mg – 5% |
| Calcium | 27.1 mg – 3% |
| Magnesium | 11.1 mg – 3% |
Why Grapefruit is Amazing for Weight Loss? Grapefruit is low in calories but rich in dietary fiber. The dietary fiber contained in grapefruit will help you suppressing your appetite, that’s why very recommended for you to drink a small portion of grapefruit juice before meal in order to control your appetite. As it is low in calories, your body will still have calories to burn for energy but nothing that is left to be stocked as fat cells. For complete review, below is the list of health benefits of grapefruit for weight loss:
- As Rich of Fiber is Promoting Healthy Digestive
Healthy digestive is the key success to weight loss program. Sometimes people are only focusing on counting the calories they eat but forget to maintain the health of their digestive system. Grapefruit is so rich of fiber and it is a common knowledge that fiber is excellent for the health of digestive system. Healthy digestive system will make sure all nutrients you consume is optimally absorbed and used to promote healthy metabolism. Healthy metabolism is what you need to control your weight.
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- Dietary Fiber will Assist in Suppressing Appetite
The hardest part when you are conducting a diet is dealing with your appetite. Actually, avoiding what you usually eat is not the solution because your desire to eat it will only get bigger and if you are not careful, instead of losing weight, you will gain more weight. Drinking a glass of grapefruit juice before meal is able to help you suppressing your appetite. The dietary fiber contained in grapefruit will help you feeling full faster and stop you from consuming food in excessive amount.
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- Grapefruit is Low in Calories
As low in calories, grapefruit is excellent fruit to consume during diet. In other words, you don’t need to worry at all about counting calories if you add grapefruit to your diet in daily basis. You could get all the benefits of grapefruit and at the same time keeping your body in shape. That’s why grapefruit is excellent for weight loss.
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- Improve Insulin Resistance
Do you know what insulin is? You probably have heard about it a lot but most of you don’t really know the function of insulin other than controlling blood sugar level. It is true that pancreas is producing insulin that responsible to turn glucose in blood into energy or stored as fat cells. In other words, if insulin is not working optimally or somehow body is resisting its existence, the problem like excessive storage of fat cells and the spike of blood sugar level is likely to happen.
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- Solution to Natural Metabolism Booster
Healthy metabolism is actually the main key to ideal body shape. Healthy metabolism means all parts of your body are functioning optimally. Grapefruit contains a certain compound that will assist in activating a certain enzyme called AMPK or AMP-activated protein kinase. This kind of enzyme is responsible to the production of energy in your body. When glucose is not stored as fat cells but optimally turned into energy, this condition will lead to weight loss.
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- Contained Nootkatone to Activate AMPK
If you are not familiar with nootkatone; it is one of the organic compounds found in grapefruit that has main function to activate AMPK or AMP-activated protein kinase. One of the main job of that type of protein is to produce energy which at the same time also boosting the metabolism that will lead to weight loss because as mentioned above healthy metabolism is the solution to maintain ideal body weight.
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- Prevent Obesity
Though there are more studies that should be conducted but so far through animal study has been proven that nootkatone found in grapefruit is effective to prevent obesity. The organic compound has been proven to be effective in reducing the accumulation of abdominal fat, high fat and high sucrose. Those three factors are usually responsible to weight gain if the amount in the body found to be excessive.
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- Improve Physical Performance
One more benefit of nootkatone that has been proven through animal study is this organic compound is not only able to prevent obesity but also able to improve physical performance. Surely you have known that those with ideal body weight will move more efficiently than those with excessive body weight. However, as mentioned above nootkatone is also responsible to the production of energy so you will feel energized just by consuming grapefruit regularly. In other words, the more you move the more fat and calories will be burnt.
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- Contains Caffeine with Slimming Effect
One of the amazing benefits of caffeine that most people don’t realize is that it has slimming effect. If you think coffee could make you fat and then you thought wrong, unless you drink coffee latte or cappuccino which has high refined sugar and dairy product that will contribute to your weight gain. Black coffee is effective to help you losing weight because of its caffeine. Grapefruit contains enough caffeine that you need to control your weight.
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- Reduces the Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases
The more fat you have in your body is the higher the risk to cardiovascular diseases. Surely you have realized that weight gain issue is closely related to cardiovascular diseases like heart problem and hypertension. It is because the fats in your body are disturbing the blood circulation due to blood clot or other factors. In those conditions your heart is forced to work too hard. That’s why by making sure you are in ideal weight; you could reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases as well.
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- Natural Body Detox
Grapefruit also has some properties that could act as detox to your body, especially inside your intestine. The combination of certain vitamins, organic compounds, antioxidants and dietary fiber are excellent to detoxify your digestive track. Detox is essential to keep your body healthy by cleaning up all the unnecessary stuffs from inside your body, so body could function optimally without intervention. However, one of those health benefits of grapefruit for weight loss.
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- Recommended Pre-meal Snacks
Well, during diet the hardest part is avoiding snacks. Actually, as long as you know what kind of snacks you should consume, you could do snacking as much as you like and grapefruit is one of the healthy snacks recommended. You could consume it as pre-meal snacks to help you controlling your appetite or after or whenever you feel like snacking because it is low in calories and packed with nutrients that are great for your body.
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Cautions of Grapefruit
The problem with weight loss program sometimes people prefer instant solution and forget about process. Process is important during weight loss program and though grapefruit is great for weight loss but still you cannot only depend on it to lose weight. The caution of consuming too much grapefruit is as below:
- Grapefruit is just like any other citrus could be very harmful for digestive system if it is consumed in large amount.
- Allergic reaction could occur though the case is very rare.
- Too much grapefruit in your stomach could cause diarrhea.
- You should aware of medication interaction as well if you are currently taking some medication is better to consult your doctor first.
- Women with sensitive hormone condition to cancer should avoid grapefruit in all cost.
- As mentioned above, grapefruit contains caffeine; too much caffeine in your body could cause conditions like headache and jitteriness.
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Grapefruit has a lot of benefits to human health not only for weight loss but also excellent for immunity booster and skin health because grapefruit is so rich of vitamin C that could promote the production of collagen for healthy skin and vitamin C is the source of powerful antioxidant to provide protection to human body from various diseases. Thus, that are health benefits of grapefruit for weight loss.
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