The Misunderstood Benefits of Bananas

What About The Carbs?

What About Them? You can still eat bananas regardless if you’re diabetic or on a weight loss program. All fruits have some carbohydrate, so you simply need to count them in your diabetes or weight loss meal plan. If you want to include bananas in your meal plan, become familiar with portion sizes and the number of carbohydrates in each.

Bananas vary quite a bit in size, so counting the carbs that they provide can be difficult. Below are some estimates for different sizes.

Extra small banana (6 inches long or less) — 18.5 grams of carbohydrate

Small banana (about 6–6 7/8 inches long) –23 grams of carbohydrate

Medium banana (7–7 7/8 inches long) — 27 grams of carbohydrate

Large banana (8–8 7/8 inches long) — 31 grams of carbohydrate

Extra large banana (9 inches or longer) — 35 grams of carbohydrate

Carbohydrates affect blood sugar and insulin levels. Slow–releasing carbohydrates are low on the glycemic index and can keep your blood sugar levels stable. Foods higher up the glycemic index will release their energy quicker, often causing the blood sugar levels to rise and fall rapidly. Following a low glycemic index diet helps control diabetes, weight gain and also plays a role in cardiovascular disease prevention.

Bananas are low on the glycemic index and release their energy into the bloodstream slowly. According to the GI Database, fully ripe bananas have a glycemic index of 51. This counts as a low glycemic index food, because its GI value is under 55. The maturity of your banana can have an effect on its GI rating. Slightly under–ripe bananas with green sections remaining have been calculated at 42 and over–ripe bananas with brown flecks have a GI of 48. This is not a huge difference, but it is something you might like to be aware of.

The Morning Banana diet was developed by Hitoshi Watanabe, who studied preventive medicine in Tokyo, and his pharmacist wife, Sumiko. The diet has since gained popularity by word of mouth, web sites, TV shows, magazine articles, and a book written by the Watanabes.

The Morning Banana Diet is a super simple plan. For breakfast, you have only bananas and room–temperature water. Then, you can eat whatever you like for lunch, dinner, and snacks, as long as you don’t eat after 8 p.m. The only restrictions: No ice cream, dairy products, alcohol, or dessert after dinner, and the only beverage you may have with meals is room–temperature water. One sweet snack is allowed midafternoon.

Different versions of the Morning Banana Diet tout varying explanations of exactly how bananas work to promote weight loss. One theory suggests that certain enzymes in bananas speed up digestion and elimination, causing rapid weight loss in some people.

The Morning Banana Diet is nothing else than just another fad diet. Anyone who’s used to having 3-4 sugary drinks a day would experience some sort of weight loss if he/she suddenly switched out everything for water. And only one sweet snack allowed? That’s already much less than what the average American has in a day! Is it really such a mystery why one would be able to lose weight on such a diet?

Misconceptions

Eating bananas is only part of an overall lifestyle change– including a healthy diet, cardiovascular exercise and strength training — that can result in effective weight loss. Eating bananas should not be the sum of your weight–loss plan, but rather one small part of it.

Bananas, along with most fruits have long been a part of healthy diets and weight loss plans. But while they are nutritious, they don’t have any special weight loss properties on their own.

To lose weight, you need to be physically active and control calories. And to stay healthy, you should choose healthy foods.

The truth is, there are no bad fruits, just poor lifestyle choices and often a misunderstanding of how to use fruits to your advantage in any diet. Anytime someone tells you fruit is bad for weight loss, disregard it. There really are no bad fruits, just good or bad diets.

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