You may ask yourself, “If I eat only fruits and vegetables for a week, how much weight will I lose?” Although eating only fruits and vegetables may sound like a promising way to lose weight, you won’t get the results you want. No matter what you eat, you won’t lose much in two days. Additionally, if you eat solely from one food group, you’ll miss essential nutrients from the other food groups, which can lead to poor nutrition and hinder your weight-loss efforts.
At best, you may lose a little less than a pound eating only fruits and vegetables for two days. If you lose more than that, it’s most likely water and your weight loss won’t last.
Weight Loss 101
Whether you eat fruits and vegetables or nothing but donuts, losing weight always comes down to calories, which you can track on a calorie counter. You must eat fewer calories than you expend, because expenditure causes your body to burn stored fat for energy.
One pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories, so losing this pound requires a deficit of 3,500 calories. Most experts recommend that you lose no more than 1 to 2 pounds per week, which happens when you eat 500 to 1,000 fewer calories daily than you need. If you do the math, 0.3 to 0.6 pounds is the amount you can safely lose in two days.
Calorie-Count Specifics
Even if you choose serious calorie deprivation, you simply can’t lose much in two days when you consume only fruits and vegetables. Assume that your fruit and veggie daily meal plan includes six apples, five carrots and four oranges, which comes to approximately 805 calories.
If you typically burn 2,000 calories per day, that would create a deficit of about 1,195 calories each day or a deficit of 2,390 calories over two days. That would lead to a loss of only about two-thirds of a pound, which would barely make a dent in your waistline.
A Watery Issue
Despite the meager fat loss, it is possible to lose a few pounds of water over two days. Food is a major source of water, so restricting your intake may lead to lower fluid consumption. Fruits and vegetables are also low in sodium, which controls water retention.
When you reduce sodium, your body lets go of water, which may register on the scale as weight loss. Any lost water weight will return as soon as you begin eating normally again.
The Main Drawback
While fruits and vegetables are healthy in a balanced diet, your body needs a variety of food groups to function normally. By eating only fruits and vegetables, you’ll fall short on your daily requirements for protein and fat as well as for an assortment of vitamins and minerals. You may not experience malnutrition limiting your food choices for only two days, but you may not feel your best either.
The best approach for weight loss is to eat from all major food groups, but to reduce your portion sizes and increase your physical activity to reach a safe calorie deficit.
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