Wedding day approaching? A fun vacation? Kickstarting healthy living? There is a quick diet that can help you achieve your body goals for these big occasions! The GM or General Motors diet helps people reduce fat and weight in their bodies by targeting a specific food group for a week.
According to multiple sources, taking up this diet can help users lose between 10 to 17 pounds in a total of one week. Claims have been made that the GM diet significantly impacts weight loss by chopping fat and calories at full tilt.
However, many issues have been raised with this diet regarding lacking nutrition and not being a sustainable long-term plan for health and weight loss.
This article will help you look at the GM diet in more detail and provide you insight into how it works along with its advantages and disadvantages.
What is General Motors or GM Diet?
The history of the GM diet is quite interesting because this diet was devised by an organization (General Motors) for the health and well-being of employees. The company (General Motors) joined hands with FDA and USDA to develop the diet in 1985.
The idea behind it was simple—improve productivity within employees by helping them make better dietary choices. Right off the bat, the results were terrific. The employees and workers of General Motors showed significant improvement in their energy, confidence, and efficacy within just a week. Some of them even lost a lot of weight!
Although the diet was widely successful for the company and was considered a straightforward plan, most dieticians and nutritionists do not specifically recommend you to follow it. Yes, the results are immediate, similar to any other fad diet—however, there are some risks and side effects you must watch out for before jumping into the bandwagon.
We will be discussing them better at the end of the article. We stanchly believe that a balanced diet goes a long way for long-term health goals and weight loss. Our goal is to provide you with a plan that gives you ample nutrients while also allowing your body to lose unwanted fat storage and toxins.
Can the GM diet do it for you? Let’s find out by checking the diet chart for the GM diet below:
7-Day GM Diet To Lose Fat
Here, we have provided you with a complete guideline of the diet chart for seven days!
Day 1:
Hog on the fruits! The first day is fruit-only. Fruits you cannot consume today are mangoes and bananas due to their high sugar content that can adversely affect your health. During this day, eating a good amount of melons is advised for faster weight loss.
Day 2:
Relax and unwind your gut with a chockful of veggies. The second day is dedicated to eating vegetables only. You can consume them either raw or cooked. Limit your potato intake, and only have them in the morning with a dash of butter for a carb boost! This day is fiber-packed and will allow your gut for deep cleaning.
Day 3:
Relish in the delight of both veggies and fruits for the third day, and make sure you don’t include bananas (for the same reason stated as before). Avoid consuming potatoes for this day before you’ll receive a massive inflow of carbs from fruits already.
Day 4:
We skipped bananas right from the beginning, but you can eat them to your heart’s content for the fourth day! For this day, you can have at least 6 to 8 bananas with three glasses of milk. Try to use skimmed milk for better results. You can even have a cup of cabbage soup (recipe listed at the end of the article) for lunch on this day.
Day 5:
This day depends on your preferred food choice, that is—veg or non-veg. If you love your meat, you can have some portions of chicken, fish, or beef. For vegetarians, the diet will enable tomatoes, brown rice, curd, and cottage cheese! Apart from that, you’re only allowed six (6) tomatoes.
Day 6:
On the sixth day, non-vegetarians can continue with chicken, fish, and other meat delicacies while also including lots of excellent and fiber-packed vegetables. Vegetarians can have as many veggies they want while also consuming soups of your taste. Make sure not to add potatoes, peas, and corn on this day.
Day 7:
For the seventh and last day, the users can indulge themselves in fruit juices, vegetables, fruits, and brown rice! Nothing more, nothing less.
Benefits & Risks of GM Diet
Just for the sake of clarity, we are listing some proclaimed advantages and disadvantages of the GM diet that one must look out for. Scroll away to know more:
Benefits
There are a variety of health benefits you can achieve by using the GM diet. There are some notable health attributes it brings, and we have listed down a few below:
More Health Foods
The one essential aspect that the GM diet looks upon is allowing a group of healthy foods, including vegetables and fruits, in the diet chart. Food choices like mild, vegetable soups, vegetables, fruits, and animal protein all have distinct health benefits for our bodies.
Compared to other fad diets around on the internet, the GM diet does not want you to survive on an erratic nutriment. This diet offers a huge opportunity to feed your body with vital vitamins and elements.
No Calorie Restriction
Comparing the GM diet with its other counterparts on the market, the so-called “fad diets,” it is easy to say that the GM diet is safe. Caloric restriction is one of the fatal flaws of any mainstream diet, but this one doesn’t push you into the same old void.
Perhaps, the individuals who created the diet understood that consuming fruits and vegetables leads to weight loss whether or not calorie restriction is pursued. This is because most produce is low in calorie density.
Nonetheless, on days when you consume animal protein and dairy, your calorie intake will shoot up. Yet, there is no relative emphasis on cutting down calories as a method to fight fat, which is an excellent step toward making it ideal for people who find it difficult to track calories.
Risks
Although there are numerous benefits of the GM diet, a certain number of risks and disadvantages have an eye on you. The GM diet is not exactly sustainable and cannot be incorporated as a healthy eating pattern. It is our utmost duty to provide you with both benefits and drawbacks of every diet so that you can make the best choice for your body.
Unsustainable Eating Pattern
There are no qualms in saying that the GM diet is a little peculiar in its working. The diet chart asks you to be on erratic food combinations for seven days and may not be sustainable for some bodies, even for a week. This is why most users fail at this diet and cannot make it past two or three days.
When the belly is hungry, no amount of motivation for a fit and beautiful body will work. Most people opt for a hearty snack or meal rather than sipping on vegetable soup (which also takes some effort).
Yes, the bold claim that goes, “lose up to 17 pounds in a week”, is indeed true! However, how many people find it manageable to go a week on a particular set of food combinations? Isn’t that the first reason most fad diets don’t work? Another problem is maintaining the lost weight—which is incredibly difficult if you go back to your previous eating habits.
All the water weight lost during the week will come right back as you begin eating normally. These are some essential questions you must ask yourself before you start any fad diet, let alone the GM Diet. Because if you’re pushing yourself hard and maintaining a strict and unappealing diet for a week, you might as well get sustainable results out of it.
In case this diet seems whack for your body type, we suggest you religiously follow a balanced diet along with a solid workout regime that will help you lose all that fat gradually and more effectively.
Not Scientifically-Backed
Any nutritionist will give you this one piece of advice—go for an evidence-based diet and backed by science. But, what does it mean? An evidence-based diet is probably the best diet to follow. Especially when it is endorsed by scientific organizations, the food,8 and health department of the government, and even researchers, this is how you can tell that it’s going to be a nutritious choice that you can maintain for a more extended period.
Therefore, the case with the GM diet is that it brings about many bold claims that peer-reviewed scientific studies haven’t backed. Neither does it get endorsed by trustworthy organizations. It does attach itself to a well-known brand with no roots whatsoever in health and wellness. Therefore, it is a difficult task to stick value and trust to it.
Conclusion
We have nothing against fad diets; of course, many work, and many don’t. The GM diet is no different, and although we suggest following a balanced diet and workout regime, this diet might work for you if you can manage those even days without food cravings. The GM diet has both advantages and disadvantages that need to be weighed down before one decides to give it a shot.
If you’re sure this diet is your saving boon, then make sure to drink a lot of water and gently transition into your daily eating habits after seven days. If you are still two-ways about the diet and its effects on your body (medical reasons), consider reaching out to your doctor.
