My Three Day Journey Of Fruit Diet

Fruitarianism entails - as its name would indicate - eating nothing but fruit (with a sprinkling of seeds and nuts thrown in).

What is a fruitarian

People do it to various levels, but the rule of thumb is that your diet should consist of 75% raw fruit (by weight), and 25% nuts and seeds. Yikes.

Most famously, the overdue Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent a while as a fruitarian (he claimed it fueled his imagination ). But when celebrity Ashton Kutcher tried to follow a fruitarian diet for a month prior to playing Jobs in a film, he ended up in hospital.

But it is possibly on Instagram where the lifestyle is the most visible.

There are only under 475,000 Instagram articles with all the hashtag #fruitarian - that the photographs mostly feature young, lithe ladies, fruit-topped smoothie bowls and beautiful fruit platters. It's a lifestyle that seems healthy and glamorous.

Here's what happened:

Day 1

I had a major fruit salad and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. An hour after, I was already hungry so had a banana. By 11.30am I was so hungry I had a Nakd pub (it was only nuts and dried fruits, so maybe not minding the rules too much).

By 12 noon I did not feel well. I had been bloated but starving and could not believe just how much I'd eaten. Fruit does not fill you up.

All I will say is thank God avocados are technically fruit because there's no way I can endure without anything savoury, and that I have the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know.

Over the course of the afternoon I had some dried lemon crisps and coconut water, and that I was already sick of fruit.

I had a glass of wine in a restaurant launch celebration that evening - I couldn't find anything in the rules that said whether alcohol was wasn't permitted but I state that wine is just grapes so completely fits fruitarianism.

It was delicious, but I had been aware of the fact I had not eaten any carbohydrates that day and could very easily get completely sloshed, so I figured it was better to stop at one glass.

Day Two

I began the day with a smoothie (Pack had frozen fruit mixes are good ), a bowlful of berries and half of an avocado. But by mid-morning I was hungry again (is there something wrong with me?) , so that I had yet another smoothie.

Day 3

I woke up having a headache which did not go away all morning. I ate much the same things that I'd eaten for the last two days, but that I was not enjoying it and my entire body was not happy. I was in severe pain.

That day I threw in the towel and had a bowlful of pasta with veggies. Needless to say, it tasted fantastic.


So it turns out fruitarianism isn't for me, - and I did not even follow it rigorously - but is it really for anyone? Why do people do it?

There are various reasons why people follow a fruitarian diet, such as:

To avoid cooking
To detox
To reduce carbs
For environmentally-friendly
To be'morally superior'
Many fruitarians think we should only eat foods that have dropped from a tree, which would actually be unbelievably difficult in the present world.

Everyone kept asking me if my fruitarianism had led in, ahem, my getting better acquainted with all the bathroom, but for me personally it totally didn't. If anything, the opposite happened. It wasn't comfortable, your diet & lifestyle will ultimately decide how healthy you can be in your life so choose it wisely.