The Beverly Hills Diet revolves around "conscious combining" or consuming the right types of food at the right time. The dietary counselors who endorse this diet as well as their followers believe that losing weight does not depend on the quantity of the food that you eat. Rather, it depends on the combination of foods that you eat as well as the time when you eat them.
The Old Beverly Hills Diet
Written by Judy Mazel in 1981, the first book entitled The Beverly Hills Diet features a very restrictive diet that involves eating only fruits for the first ten days. The reason for this is that the author believes that certain enzymes present in fruits are needed in order to burn fat and when protein is combined with these enzymes, the body ends up being confused, causing one to gain weight. From the eleventh to the nineteenth day, the dieter can start adding some carbohydrates and vegetables to her diet. And, animal proteins cannot be eaten until the twentieth day. Because of the restrictive nature of this diet, it received a lot of criticism from the medical field.
The New Beverly Hills Diet
The new version is less restrictive as protein and carbohydrates are no longer taken out of the diet. It is, however, still very particular with combining foods and the time for eating a certain combination. In this diet, the day always begins with fruits. Enzymatic fruits such as pineapples, strawberries, grapes or watermelon are usually eaten at the beginning of the day. The consumption of the fruit of one's choice is unlimited. But, the dieter can't eat a different type of fruit until an hour has passed. In other words, one cannot combine the fruits that she eats.
Before consuming some carbohydrates and proteins, the dieter should wait for two hours. Once beginning eating any of these food groups, one can not eat any more fruit during the day. Once the dieter has begun consuming some protein, 80% of the foods that she eats during the remaining hours of that day should be protein. Also, carbohydrates and protein can only be combined during one meal.
How it Works
According to Judy Mazel, fruits contain enzymes that make their digestion and conversion to nutrients faster. This takes around 15 minutes. Carbohydrates, however, tend to take three hours. Proteins, on the other hand, are harder to digest and take around ten hours. Mazel believes that weight gain occurs when the food that can be digested at a shorter time is "trapped" behind a food that is difficult to digest. For this reason, foods that can be easily digested should not be combined with foods that are more difficult to digest.
This diet, however, was never really accepted by medical practitioners. Although it encourages the consumption of fruits and vegetables, the diet falls short of other important nutrients. At the same time, most of the people in the medical field believe that the weight loss is caused by the low calorie consumption, not the combination of food.
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