Beverly Hills Diet - Focus on Food Combining

The Beverly Hills Diet is considered by many dietitians to be based on an incorrect understanding of how the body works. The diet claims a weight loss of ten to fifteen pounds during its 42-day duration. It argues that good digestion is critical to weight loss and recommends enzyme-rich foods that will assist the digestive process. To achieve ongoing weight loss, the diet argues it is important to identify foods that have good enzymatic action and to manage the combination in which they are eaten. The diet summarizes these key points in the concept of conscious combining - deliberately eating the correct foods at the correct time. Successful weight loss is not so much about how much or what you eat, but when you eat it and the combination of foods you eat together. The Beverly Hills diet insists that food combining must be strictly observed. Proteins are to be consumed only with proteins and fats. Carbohydrates are to be consumed only with carbohydrates and fats. Fruit stand in a class of their own. For example, for the first ten days of the diet, only fruit may be eaten. During the eleventh to eighteenth days, the dieter can add bread, two tablespoons of butter plus three cobs of corn. On the nineteenth day, high protein foods like meats and seafood can be eaten. Eventually, carbohydrates are also allowed. Breakfast might consist of any one of the many enzyme-rich fruits such as pineapple, strawberries, or watermelon. Consumption of these fruit is not limited. However, the diet requires a dieter to wait an hour before switching from one fruit to another and two hours before introducing protein, carbohydrate or fat. Once a non-fruit food is consumed, fruit are not allowed for the rest of the day. If a dieter eats carbohydrate after fruit, carbohydrate may be consumed without restriction until protein is introduced. Once protein is consumed - even the smallest amount such as a dash of milk in tea or coffee - eighty percent of anything eaten during the rest of the day must be protein. The Beverly Hills Diet is based on the notion that if food is not digested well, the body converts it into fat. The theory behind the diet is that there are enzymes in certain foods that help the body digest the food properly and different foods need different conditions for digestion and therefore should not be eaten together.