The GM or General Motors Diet, as the name suggests, was a diet devised by the General Motors Corp. to help its own employees deal with weight gain, due to the sedentary lifestyle behavior. Well, a car company selling you nutrition advice, is not exactly what you should be opting for.

Acc. to the stupid proponents of GM diet (and many other such diets), the GM Diet program was developed in conjunction with the grant from the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. It was first tried at the Johns Hopkins Research Centre and was approved for distribution by the Board of Directors of General Motors Corporation at a general meeting on August 15, 1985.

The GM diet program, is intended to make you lose 5-7kgs.

In 3 months? No.

In 1 month? No.

You mean to say even less that? Yes.

15 days?

Still lower.

Don’t tell me!

I am, go down further.

A week?

Bang on!

You must be joking? How’s that possible.

This is how the conversation goes, when someone explains you the GM diet and the tall claims it offers in terms of weight loss. Best part, that’s not all. Here are the amazing benefits the GM diet proponents offer you:

• Lose 5-7kgs a week. (That’s over 20-25kgs a month)
• It will improve your attitude and emotions because of its systematic cleansing and detox effects. (too good to be true, isn’t it?)
• The effectiveness of this seven day plan is that the foods eaten burn more calories than they give to the body in caloric value. (can’t understand a bull what this means)
• It is designed to flush your system of impurities and give you a feeling of well-being. After seven days, you will begin to feel lighter by at least 10 pounds. You will have an abundance of energy and an improved disposition. (what else does one need?)

Indians love this diet, especially because of the low non-veg consumption, and heavy focus on vegetarianism. It’s a diet which is designed for a week with specific guidelines for each day (the most stupid thing when it comes to dieticians and diet).

When you listen to a dietician recommending only one-two foods to be had in a particular day, in any diet, that’s the GM Diet for you. There is no dearth of idiots in this world. Trust me!

So, Day 1 could be all fruits, Day 2 all vegetables, Day 3 would be a mix of fruits and vegetables, Day 4 would be only bananas and milk… I can’t write this anymore.

Here is a sample GM diet plan for a week. Read yourself and the see the extent of human stupidity:

DAY ONE – All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consists of all fruits you want. It is suggested you consume lots of watermelon and cantaloupe.

DAY TWO – All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the new and cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the account or type. Avoid oil and coconut while cooking vegetables. Have large boiled potato for breakfast.

DAY THREE – Any mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet and no potatoes today.

DAY FOUR – Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. You can also have I bowl of vegetables soup.

DAY FIVE – Today is a feast day. You will eat 1 cup of rice. You also have to eat six whole tomatoes and drink 12 glasses of water today to cleanse your system of the excess uric acid you will be producing.

DAY SIX – Today is another all vegetables day. You must eat 1 cup of rice today and eat all the vegetables you want cooked and uncooked to your hearts content.

DAY SEVEN – Today your food intake will consist of 1 cup rice, fruit juice and the vegetables you care to consume. Tomorrow morning you will be five to eight kgs. lighter than 1 week ago. If you desire further weight loss, repeat the program again. Repeat the program as often as you like, however, it is suggested that you rest for three days before every repetition.

The stupidity doesn’t stop here. You have some special points to be noted:

• During the first seven days, you must drink 10 glasses of water each day. You can also flavour the water will some lemon to make the drink easier.
• While on the program, take only black coffee
• And never more than one teaspoon of oil. Preferably do not use oil because the high calorific content.
• No fruit juices before day seven.
• Motor than one cup of coffee with milk is especially forbidden.
• Alcohol is complete no.

There is also GM special soup which can be had in unlimited amounts. It is made of water, onions, green peppers, whole tomatoes, cabbage, celery and herbs and seasonings.

NOTE 1: many websites and dieticians have created a non-vegetarian version of the diet, far from what was the real basis of the diet. But we will see, how there is no known origin of this diet. So tomorrow, you can create any similar diet and call it modified GM diet or so on.

NOTE 2: the best part of all this crap is that they try to justify it by some self-made reasoning, using flowery language, to convince you, as if everyone is as dumb as they are.

Let’s bust the fad of GM Diet:

• Well the name suggests that GM diet was given by the General Motors company for its employees. There is not even a single research study or paper of proof which testifies this claim.

Roger Cohen, foreign correspondent and writer for The New York Times, in his 2009 write-up falsifies any links of GM diet to the General Motor company. Cohen spoke to Tom Wilkinson, a G.M spokesman, who confessed that he’d never heard of the diet. Wilkinson told Cohen, that he has gone through all the board meetings from the 1980s and found that, this diet is a myth. He said, that Nobody recalls anything about such a diet, and he had no idea how it got attached to G.M.

Acc. to Cohen, “Wilkinson had thought the diet might be linked to Jose Ignacio Lopez De Arriortua, an executive of Basque origin whose obsession with cost-cutting through a global supply chain earned him legendary status during a spell at G.M. as head of purchasing. Lopez was into fruit and lean meats… needed to keep up with all the 24-hour traveling of the global age.”

• Ok, fruits and vegetables are healthy for you. No problems in that. They are low in calories and nutrient dense. Accepted.

But where the hell in this world, we ever consume only one type of food in a day? Which culture, tradition, or group of people, followed such stupid concept, in the history of humanity?

This diet concept lies in something called ‘negative calorie foods’, or foods that burn more energy digesting than they actually contain. To start with ‘negative calorie foods’ is a myth. It is just an attractive phrase to grab attention of those looking to lose weight, and is heavily used for marketing.

Negative calorie foods are a separate topic which I have covered in another video . There are multiple studies now proving it to be a myth. However, examine.com has compiled it perfectly when it says: “There is no evidence that a food can possess negative calories, thereby directly contributing to with weight loss. But foods typically categorized as ‘negative calorie’ items tend to be high in water and fibre, so their consumption may lead to weight loss because you consume less food overall”

Acc. to dietician Christy Wilson, a freelance writer for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics in US , “As enticing as it seems to eat foods that require more energy to chew, digest and absorb than they actually contain, there is no research to support this claim. Although foods such as celery, lettuce and cucumbers may have negligible calories, make no mistake, they still count towards a day’s worth of calories.”

• A diet is not planned on the basis of only vitamins and minerals. You need calories to sustain healthy bodily functions and a good ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Skipping on foods for some days, and then taking a day to cover it all up, is not dieting, it’s called stupidity.

There is no concept in the world wherein you eat a particular food group a day and then another the next day. Daily calories are balanced comprising of both macro and micronutrients.

In a 2015 study in the journal Advances in Obesity, Weight Management & Control, researcher Dana L. Hamwi , suggests that, “Headache, excess sweating, hunger feeling, muscle pain, incessant thirst, dehydration, malaise and weakness, are the common side effects during the first days of this diet… People who go through GM diet are advised to avoid alcohol. This is because alcohol prevents the effects of the diet from taking place; in addition, Alcohol triggers water retention, which prevents individuals from getting rid of the excess fluids from their bodies… I myself don’t advise people to do GM diet because it’s basically just a fad crash diet.”

• Where the hell are the fats & proteins? Healthy fats and proteins are the most important macronutrients for the body. They are required for a range of vital functions in the body. One can write volumes on the functions and benefits of fats and proteins. The GM diet, in short, doesn’t provide even close to the bodily requirements.

• You cannot sustain any such diet. I have been harping upon the fact that a diet is first made on the basis of your culture, tradition and taste buds, followed by allergies and sensitivities, and nutrition. Calories comes last.

Whenever anyone gets some stupid like the GM diet to me, my first question is, “till when can you follow it? And what after this?”. I have never got an answer to this, because there is none.

Such fad diets, as I have covered in my videos and articles before too, work because you are eating lesser overall calories at the end of the day, and you are cutting off the junk. Not because you are following some scientific diet pattern.

• Who actually follows such diets. There are many people who have tons of inherited money to spend, and nothing worthwhile to do. Such people are looking for adventures in life, and following these diet patterns is one of the adventures.

The stupid nutritionists are there to sell you such crap, because they know that you have nothing to do, and ample of money to spend on their fees. Plus, they need a new diet to be discussed in the social circles, which comprises mostly of like-minded stupid people.

Children, pregnant women, elderly, sportsmen, people with medical issues etc. should not even think of following this diet.

So, who’s left. I guess we all know, Stupid!

There are some sites, which are confusingly against such fad diets. On one end, they warn you against them, and on the other hand, they suggest that you can follow them for a short time to get results. For e.g. an upcoming marriage function, or a pool party.

This is an absolute wrong advice and often dangerous. What’s broken for a year, can’t be fixed in 10 days. This is exactly the reason students fail to score good grades, when they don’t study the entire year, and try to cover up the syllabus, 10 days to the exam. They never score good. Even if exceptionally one odd student does, that has no value to his education in the future. That’s exactly how the nutrition concept works. If it took you ten years to get into a shape, you cannot lose it all in 10 days.

Aim to lose fat and get strong, not to lose weight and get thin. These two statements are stark opposite. If you cannot follow a diet for life, then you are on an adventure.