‘Big Breakfast Diet' helping women lose weight

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Just grabbing a glass of juice in the morning won't help you lose weight, but a new diet says that eating a big breakfast can help to drop those pounds.

Starting off the morning with a plate packed with carbs, lean protein and a small chunk of chocolate can lead to significant weight loss. Venezuelan researchers call it the "Big Breakfast Diet."

Sedentary, obese women put on the Big Breakfast Diet lost almost five times as much weight as those who ate a traditional low-carb, low-fat breakfast. Here's better news: They kept it off.

So, what's in the diet? For starters, it's low-calorie -- just 1,240 calories a day -- but you front-load them in the morning.

You eat 610 calories in the morning: 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein and 22 grams of fat. It's a sample diet: a cup of milk; 3 ounces of lean meat, such as turkey; two slices of cheese; two whole grain servings; a serving of fat, like mayonnaise; and 1 ounce of chocolate or candy.

For lunch, you eat 395 calories: 34 grams of protein, 34 grams of carbs and 13 grams of fat. And dinner is the smallest meal of all at a mere 235 calories consisting of 5 grams of carbs, 18 grams of protein and 26 grams of fat.

At the end of eight months, women who ate the Big Breakfast Diet lost 21 percent of their body fat compared to the traditional group, which lost just 4.5 percent.

The idea of eating the bulk of calories early and burning them off is a good one. But keep in mind, this really is a low-calorie diet and works best if you combine that with exercise.

E-mail: drkim@ksl.com