Beverly Hills Diet: Another View

 

Author Judy Mazel, an actress, first published The Beverly Hills Diet in 1981. This "New" Beverly Hills Diet is a revised version, which eliminates the original's restrictive initiation phase and other extremes, and promises weight loss of 15 pounds in 35 days. This diet plan actually has nothing to do with Beverly Hills - presumably, like many other diet plans the name serves to conjure images of the good life. But the hook in this diet book is something called Conscious Combining, which is the practice of combining the foods you eat in a specific way, and eating them at specific times. As Mazel says, "it's when you eat, and what you eat together" that is the secret to healthy weight.

The idea of conscious combining is borne from the theory that our bodies only digest food properly if they're getting certain enzymes found in certain foods - that these specific chemical reactions keep the enzymes from getting confused and making us fat. This is key to weight loss and maintenance because - according to Mazel - if food isn’t digested it will become body fat. (Note: the body cannot metabolize food - meaning burn it for energy, or store it as fat - until it has been digested.)

So on a Beverly Hills Diet, fruit is the main ingredient, and you keep your food groups separate. You eat protein with protein, carbs with carbs, and your fruits are mostly exclusive of all other groups. Mazel says the reason fruit is the centerpiece of the diet, and is rarely mixed with other foods, is that fruit prompts specific reactions in the body: papaya breaks down fat, pineapple burns fat and watermelon flushes fat out.

You will have fruit-only days, veggies-only days and the occasional day for carbs. It's amusing to learn that you can substitute wine for your fruit, that alcohol is a carb and that Mazel considers champagne "neutral" as it "goes with anything." How Beverly Hills is that! But be warned that the first 10 days of Beverly Hills Diet are fruit-only days, and you're not allowed any protein until day 19. If that sounds like it might be rather extreme, wait until you learn that you can dig into an unlimited amount of the fruit of your choice, but you must wait an hour before switching from one fruit to another. Or that you must wait two hours before consuming carbohydrates or proteins. And - that once you've partaken of a carb or a protein, you are banned from fruit for the rest of the day. Digestion breaks down, according to Mazel, when you "trap" fast-digesting foods, like carbs, behind slower ones like proteins.

First things first, this is an approximately 800 calorie per day, heavily vegatarian diet. While it's great to promote higher consumption of fruits and veggies - most Americans don't eat enough - note that there are some big nutritional deficiencies (protein, calcium, etc.) in this plan. Experts say there is no magical enzyme chemistry at work here - there is no scientific evidence anywhere to support the theory - so "food combining" is really only a hook. And though Mazel doesn't emphasize exercise for weight loss - she approves of it for cardiovascular and mental health - you don't need exercise to lose weight on a diet like this, because you're starving yourself. You're living on fruit. Remember Tom Hanks in "Castaway"?