Going Bananas?

There's a new diet craze that's apparently sweeping across Japan: the bananas diet. As I understand it, the idea is to replace breakfast each day with bananas and water. The diet has become popular, at least in part, because of a celebrity who has lost weight on the plan. Somehow it all feels familiar. Almost like every other fad diet I've heard of. I seem to recall a grapefruit diet; wasn't that supposed to be fat-burning or some such thing?

Here's my frustration with these diets: they promise great results, usually quickly, and sometimes they even deliver. But they're not sustainable for the long term. Think about it for a minute: do you really want to eat bananas for breakfast for the rest of your life? Or even for several weeks? And that's the problem. I need a plan I can stick with for a long time to come, probably years. I need a lifestyle, not a diet. And I need at least a little variety. Bananas are just fine, and there are some great nutritional benefits to including them as part of a larger healthy diet. But as far as I'm concerned, this bananas diet is nothing to go ape about.