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For many years you have heard about the grapefruit diet. This diet begs the question in the age where so many people are looking to not only lose weight but to find the secret shortcuts to lose weight in a short time. So the question now becomes, is it a myth, a fad diet or does it really work. Well, some dieter will swear by it saying that it has caused them to lose much-unwanted pounds.

photo credit: Csizmadia Tamás

Yet there are also other skeptics that will tell you that it is not effective. It is just a fad diet and holds no truth to its claims. They will tell you that they have either tried it or know someone who tried it and it did not work. Plain and simple, it just does not work and you cannot convince them that it does.

Well, it is time to separate the fat from the meat and find out the truth about this weight loss controversy.

A new study was done by the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center and it found that just by adding grapefruit or grapefruit juice to your diet can actually cause you to lose weight. A twelve-week pilot test was done to monitor the weight loss factor of insulin secretion, which affect the metabolic levels in your body.

This pilot study included both men and women to ensure that it was done with both sexes to get a more comprehensive result. As science would have it, it turned out that on average all the participants that had half a grapefruit with each of his or her meal lost weight. Yes, those who had grapefruit with their meal lost a total of 3.6 pounds. Other participant was given grapefruit juice instead of just the fruit. Those who had grapefruit juice verse grapefruit juice lost only 3.3 pounds. But please remember that these numbers were just average. The study reveals that some of the participants lost more than 10 pounds! Now those numbers are definitely not a myth or a fad diet. This study has scientific numbers to back it that it really does work. The data will now back up the words of those who swear by their grapefruit diet.

The study proved that there is a physiological link between insulin and grapefruit as it pertains to weight loss. The chemical properties of the grapefruit reduce the insulin levels and thus encourage weight loss to occur.

It must be noted though that the participants of this pilot study did moderate exercise routine. Thought the research clearly shows that because grapefruit reduces insulin levels, it causes weight loss, you should realize that some kind of exercise was involved. For any weight loss program to be effective, it must have some amount of exercise, even moderate at best. Some foods or in this case fruit will cause weight loss but you will get even faster results when you add exercise to your weight loss plan.