The ‘Diet 80’ is one of the latest trends in the world of health and nutrition works on the basis that 80 percent of your calories should come from carbs, 10 percent from protein and 10 percent from fats. However, this diet dictates a very special rule about carb intake: they can only come from fruits and vegetables.
Dr. Douglas Graham, the man behind this innovative diet plan, has taken the increasingly popular and tremendously successful low-fat, plant-based diet and turbo-charged it for unprecedented, off-the-charts results. Dr. Graham’s plan is the first to present a low-fat diet and lifestyle program based exclusively around whole, fresh, uncooked fruits and vegetables.
The 80/10/10 Diet delivers efficient body weight management, health benefits, fights diseases and adverse health conditions, and aids athletic performance. Dr. Douglas Graham, a retired chiropractor and former athlete, created the diet with the intent to help people discover a sustainable lifestyle that leads to weight loss, better health, and disease prevention.
Dr. Graham worked professionally with world-class athletes and trainers from around the globe, including tennis legend Martina Navratilova, NBA pro basketball player Ronnie Grandson, track Olympic sprinter Doug Dickinson, pro women’s soccer player Callie Withers, championship bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams, and actress Demi Moore. As with any diet, this one comes with big claims such as weight loss, reversal of chronic diseases and aging, improved energy, better sleep, regulated mood, and improved athletic performance.
Eating so much fruit may seem hard, but you’ll soon realize it’s natural and satisfying. Your body responds to natural food much more positively than processed food.
Whether you’re a SAD eater, a cooked food vegan, a high fat raw foodist, or otherwise, Dr. Graham does an excellent job of explaining the pitfalls of those diets and backs his claims up with his 80/10/10 diet plan.
Meat, grains, and the process of cooking all seem normal in the context of our lives, but they all do their part to diminish our health. Dr. Graham argues that the majority, if not all, of the food we consume should be eaten raw. He proposes that cooking damages the nutrients in food and releases toxins that can cause disease and lead to excessive gain weight.
Unlike many diets, the 80/10/10 diet plan has no phases or time frames and is practiced as a long-term solution to ultimately increase your lifespan while keeping you healthy and in shape.
What Can You Eat
The rules are fairly simple: stick to fruit and vegetables. The most important rule of this diet is to eat low-fat, raw and unprocessed fruit and soft greens. Fruit and vegetables are split up into four groups: non-sweet fruits, sweet fruits, soft greens, and fatty fruits.
- Non-sweet Fruits – tomatoes, okra, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, courgette, and other squashes.
- Sweet Fruits – berries, bananas, apples, mangoes, peaches, apricots, oranges, etc.
- Fatty Fruits – avocados, olives, nuts and seeds, ackee, durian fruit, etc.
- Soft Greens – spinach, lettuce, cabbage and other leafy greens.
What Foods To Avoid
The 80/10/10 diet is strict when it comes to avoiding certain foods. Most of the food commonly consumed is prohibited by this diet, as well as certain beverages and taste enhancers:
- Cooked and processed foods–this includes both processed foods and foods cooked in vegetable oil, olive oil, nut oils, butter, margarine, etc.
- Dairy products–milk, yogurt, ice cream, cheese, cream, etc.
- Eggs–eggs from all birds and any other products that contains eggs
- Meat and seafood–chicken, red meat, fish and other sea foods
- Taste enhancers–artificial sweeteners, monosodium glutamate, sodium caseinate, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and all foods containing added sugars
- Certain beverages–coffee, tea, energy drinks, soft drinks, alcohol, etc.
The 80/10/10 diet plan argues that raw, unprocessed fruits and vegetables are meant to be our ‘staple food group’ and make up most if not all of our diet. This is because this diet plan’s purpose is to regulate your protein and fat intake as well as your carb intake by focusing on carb-rich fruits and vegetables.
Benefits
The diet claims to prevent eating disorders by having a high carb intake, as well as fending off food cravings and providing energy for people who feel fatigued.
It also claims its low fat and protein content protects against cancer, diabetes, organ failure, weak bones and heart disease. This is due to the fact that anyone undertaking this diet will cut off all toxins and harmful chemicals from processed foods as they’ll be substituted fresh fruits and vegetables. As with any diet that focuses on raw foods, the 80/10/10 is likely to help dieters become healthier and lose weight with limited to no exercise.
Other claimed benefits include weight loss, improved skin, better quality of sleep and an overall healthier body. The fruits and vegetables that this diet emphasizes are guaranteed to improve your health over time while consumed on a daily basis, as research has consistently linked a higher consumption of fruit and veg with a lower risk of heart disease, dementia, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure and some types of cancer.
In addition, the diet recommends against cooked food with the aim of preventing chronic fatigue, hypothyroidism and arthritis. Dr. Graham strongly believes that the many additives and chemicals derived from cooked food are what causes these debilitating symptoms.
Other alleged benefits of the 80/10/10 Diet include weight loss, clearer sinuses, easier breathing, better sleep, clearer skin, heightened mental clarity and an overall longer, healthier life.
Downsides
Since this diet promotes a very high intake of carbs and a low intake of protein and fats, it can easily be established that it is not a balanced diet. There are also some who argue that it requires dieters to eat too much fruit and vegetables.
To put this diet into everyday perspective, you would need to eat 6 pounds of fruit, 4lbs or vegetables and two tablespoons of nuts to consume 2,000 calories a day while following it.
There are also concerns around the lack of protein and fat available in this diet. Many nutrition experts such as online portal Authority Nutrition argue there is little proof that consuming less than 10 per cent of calories from protein or fat provides any healthy benefits.
Elizabeth Boham, a physician at UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, told that people on the diet may not feel as satisfied if they are not eating enough protein, which debunks the claim that the fruit and vegetable derived carbs in this diet keep its dieters satisfied. She also raised concerns that too much fruit can raise blood sugar levels as well as how protein is an essential building block to repair cells and muscles in the body and shouldn’t be consumed in such low levels.
How Many Calories You Should Consume
Since this diet may prove difficult to follow due to its strict food selection, you should know how many calories you need to consume on a daily basis.
The 80/10/10 does not dictate a specific amount of calories that you should consume while following it, and since it only focuses on fresh fruits and vegetables, it may be dangerous to undertake it without knowing your BMR.
A useful way to estimate how many calories you need for a whole day is by using what is called the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).
Your BMR is approximately the number of calories required to operate your body and all its functions while at rest. For example, a woman weighing 125lb or 56.7kg would need to be eating approximately 1,250 calories (125 x 10 = BMR) a day while at rest. That means literally doing absolutely nothing all day, no moving around, no house work, no exercise and other activities, which all require extra calories.
As a general guideline, active and athletic women should be aiming towards 2,000-2,500 calories a day, while active and athletic men should be aiming towards 2,500-3,000 calories a day. If you’re not as active, then overall calories will be less.
Conclusion
Dr. Douglas Graham believes junk food is killing people. He suggests the 80/10/10 model to combat this epidemic by shunning the cooked and processed foods that make up the majority of the modern day food pyramid.
For Graham, raw is what it’s all about. Eating raw fruits and vegetables is what he believes to be the most effective way to reverse slowly-progressing diseases, increase overall health and live a long life.
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