All about the popcorn diet
The popcorn diet is a fad diet that involves eating buckets and buckets of popcorn. Sounds like a good thing, right? Actually it can be a very bad thing, and it doesn’t involve just eating popcorn. Of course there are some aspects about popcorn that make it seem like a very good dietary choice, but the bad things about popcorn far outweigh the bad. Let’s start with benefits of eating popcorn.
The benefits of popcorn
Probably the number one reason popcorn seems like such a great diet food is because it is extremely high in dietary fiber. Most people do not get enough dietary fiber in their diet, so popcorn certainly does seem like the perfect solution. It not only tastes good, but it seems as if it fulfills the need for enough dietary fiber to help you lose weight.
Another good thing about popcorn is that it has the potential to be very low in calories. However, this good point is balanced by the fact that popcorn can also be very high in calories and fat. Popcorn that is loaded with butter is certainly not the kind that could be effective in any kind of popcorn diet. Usually hot air popcorn is the variety of choice when it comes to people trying to be health conscious, and that popcorn is completely dry with no salt or butter.
The bad things about popcorn
The list of bad things about popcorn is much longer than the benefits of it. In fact, all that butter can make popcorn have even more calories than the average potato chip, and many of those added calories from butter come in the form of almost pure fat. Another problem with most popcorn is that people love to load it up with salt. Too much salt means too much sodium, which can cause you to retain water and gain a lot of water weight.
Another problem with popcorn lies in the corn itself. Corn prevents your body from absorbing vitamin B, which means a diet that consists almost only of popcorn will most likely result in vitamin B deficiency. Common signs and symptoms of a vitamin B deficiency include rash, anemia, extreme fatigue, and depression.
The basics of the diet
Now that we have examined the good and the bad aspects of popcorn, let’s look at exactly how the diet is supposed to work. It actually does not involve eating just popcorn. It actually consists of several small, healthy meals per day. Those meals should focus on foods that are high in protein and low in fat. Then, all snacks are replaced with unbuttered, plain popcorn. Since the popcorn is high in fiber, it should help keep you full in between meals. Experts on the diet recommend that all the popcorn be made with a hot air popper in order to cut down on the calories further.
Another part of the diet is drinking water with all popcorn snacks. This basically requires you to replace all sodas and other drinks with only water.