Bella Adams
The ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher demonstrated that an egg diet can help you shed pounds. But is it really healthy to eat almost exclusively eggs for weeks on end?
Mono diets, i.e. starvation diets in which one focuses primarily on one food, usually have a dubious reputation, but there does seem to be something to the so-called egg diet.
This slimming diet was successfully put to the test some 40 years ago: The British politician Margaret Thatcher, known as the ‘Iron Lady’, wanted to take office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979 with a top figure – and decided to do so with the help of the egg diet.
She is said to have lost nine kilos in just two weeks.
How does the egg diet work?
Like many other fasting diets, the egg diet is based on the low-carb principle, i.e. you eat only a few carbohydrates but a lot of protein.
Because the organism has hardly any carbohydrates available as energy suppliers with this diet, it burns the body’s own fat deposits instead.
The musculature is not diminished owing to the increased protein supply, however. Et voilà! You lose weight without losing muscle mass.
Besides, the eggs provide you with vitamin C as well as the minerals zinc, calcium, potassium, selenium, and healthy unsaturated fatty acids.
Egg diet: What is allowed and what is not?
Within the framework of an egg diet, up to 35 eggs are to be consumed per week – five eggs per day end up on the plate. In addition, you can eat vegetables, fruit, lean meat, and fish.
Sugar, carbohydrate-rich foods such as bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes as well as butter and margarine are taboo. As liquids, one takes best mainly water and unsweetened herbal or fruit tea to itself.
Those who are afraid of consuming so many eggs at once can breathe a sigh of relief: although they have enjoyed a bad reputation for some time due to their high cholesterol content, they actually have little effect on our blood values.
Is the egg diet recommended?
According to health experts, you can follow the egg diet for two weeks without hesitation, but then at the latest, you should start to eat a more balanced diet again.
If you eat too one-sided for too long, you risk a lack of nutrients. In addition, it can come to the annoying Jo Jo effect if one falls after a nourishing conversion again into old patterns.
In spite of everything one can cut oneself a slice from the ‘iron lady’ and set more often times eggs on its food plan: A study by Saint Louis University in the US state of Missouri showed more than ten years ago that breakfast eggs can help overweight people lose weight.
For eight weeks, one group of subjects was given breakfast eggs every morning, while another was served bagels with the same calorie content.
Within that time, the egg-consuming participants posted a 65 percent greater weight loss than those who ate only a bagel in the morning.
So if you’re looking to shed a few more excess pounds, start your day with a breakfast egg.
