What is the Blood Type Diet for Weight Loss?

What is your blood type? For the first four seconds or so, you might be dumbfounded and may not find an answer. However, if you are to know about blood type diets, you surely must be aware of your blood type. Blood type can be used to mean the same thing as blood group.

We all have unique body makeups and knowing your blood type is helpful in knowing the kind of meals that would be best for your body chemistry. When you eat foods that match your blood type, it will help you maintain or regulate a healthy body weight, make you fit and keep you away from chronic diseases.

Being fit is attributed to good health and good health is tied to eating the right blood type meals and exercising regularly (this isn’t about the exercises though).

There are different dietary meals for different blood types. The man who brought the blood type meal concept forward is Peter D’Adamo. He is a naturopathic doctor and is best known for his most successful book, ‘Eat Right for Your Type.’

The core message delivered by this doctor cum writer is that your blood type plays a huge role in determining your health status. So it is expedient to know your blood type so that you can know exactly how to eat and exercise to make you the healthiest of you.

On the other hand, skeptics might nurse second thoughts on how safe it is to stick to blood type diet. Well, it has been endorsed by the spokesperson for Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics, Sonya Angelone R.D. “The blood type diet preaches that you eat healthy foods, not totally abandoning the food groups,” says Sonya.

How reliable is the blood type diet for weight loss?

Processed foods are one of the culprits for unnecessary weight gain. “However, blood type diet helps you to eat real and wholesome foods and keeps you from your unhealthy eating habit which may have been the reason you gained weight in the first place. Blood type diet gives results in less than a week, depending on your eating habit before the regimen,” according to Julie Upton who is the co-founder of ‘Appetite for Health.’

However, in contrast to the blood diet theory, a research was carried out and the results were published in PLOS ONE in 2014. According to the research, 1500 people with different blood types underwent different blood type diets and their diet score was analyzed.

Analysis of the results showed there was no correlation between an individual’s blood type and the health benefits of the Peter D’Adamo’s prescribed blood diet. It implies that D’Adamo’s prescribed blood type diet helps you to lose weight because it makes you eat healthily and not because it has any effect on your blood type.

However, if you find the foods prescribe for your blood type as unappealing, you have every right to do away with the diet but ensure you eat healthy because even though blood type diet has no proof of its potency, healthy eating does.

So by implication, the blood diet helps you to lose weight not because it works with your blood type but because it encourages you to eat healthily and exercise, both of which are expedient for weight loss.

The Blood types and different blood type diets

• Blood type A – fresh organic foods, adhere to a vegetarian’s type of diet and perform tai chi, hatha yoga and meditation to diminish stress levels.
• The Blood type B – stay away from foods that can influence metabolism and weight gain such as corn, sesame seeds, wheat, lentils and tomatoes. Also stay away from chicken, eat meats such as mutton, lamb and goat, eat eggs, vegetables and dairy that’s low on fat, perform martial arts, cycling, hiking and golfing.
• Blood type O – stay away from carbs and grains as this may lead to bodily inflammation for type O’s, perform more of running.
• Blood type AB – avoid alcohol or caffeine, avoid cured or smoked meat, eat dairy, seafood, and dairy, eat small but frequently too, perform yoga and HIIT workouts.