Banana Island {My 3-Day Experience}

I took a trip to Banana Island for the past 3 days. All of my meals consisted of ripe bananas (mostly frozen smoothies/ice cream). For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term Banana Island or “BI”- simply put, your diet consists of only bananas (and optional greens) for a select amount of days, yup #bananasfordays

Just One Fruit for a Meal?

Eating a single fruit meal is very beneficial for digestion. All of the energy that would’ve gone to digestion goes to healing other areas of the body since it requires less work to digest a “monomeal” of just one single fruit, in my case just bananas. Doesn’t that sound intriguing? If anything, BI gave me a chance to really witness the miracles my body is capable of.  I use the word miracles because this is the type of healing most people will never allow their body to experience.

When to do Banana Island

There’s no perfect time to do BI. You really must want to do it in order to make it happen. We all have excuses, commitments and reasons as to why it’s not convenient right now, but maybe later… This is why I set out to do 3 days, because it was terrifying to think of doing anymore than just that but short enough to not make excuses.

Why Bananas? (and Greens, Coconut Sugar, Cinnamon and Dates)

First of all, if you love bananas and are afraid you might get sick of them on BI.. this did not happen to me, I actually still crave bananas and this might be due to the fact I added greens, coconut sugar, cinnamon and eventually dates for variety and to stop my mind from focusing too much on the thought of “just bananas.” Bananas are easy to blend, cheap and filling. The most important thing to know about eating bananas is they MUST be ripe to avoid negative side effects! This means brown spots (think leopard print). Are you afraid that bananas or BI will lead to constipation? Then don’t eat yellow unripe bananas, eat spotty ripe ones and you will have much better elimination!

Banana Prep

Bananas are the perfect food for this type of cleanse.  Most people who have done BI have told me they stopped because they ran out of bananas.  So having enough ripe bananas around is essential for BI! I started buying organic bananas in bulk from my grocery store (MOMs) and receive a 10% discount on 45 pound box. Once my box of bananas are ripe, I peel them, measure about 600 grams (because 6-7 bananas is an average meal for me) on my food scale, cut up in 2-3 pieces for easy blending, toss them in ziplock bags and put them in the freezer.

What I ate each day:

Day 1 (22-24 Bananas)
Banana Ice Cream: 7 frozen bananas
Banana Smoothie: 6 frozen bananas, 3-4 cups water, coconut sugar, cinnamon
Banana Salad: arugula, 4 bananas, cinnamon
Snacks: 5-7 bananas throughout the day

Day 2 (13-15 Bananas)
Banana Ice Cream: 7 frozen bananas, 2 tbsp coconut sugar, dash of cinnamon
Banana Mylk & Cereal: 2 cups cold water, 2-3 frozen bananas, 4-5 chopped bananas, pure vanilla extract
Snacks:10 medjool dates

Day 3 (17 Bananas)
Green Banana Ice Cream + Banana Cereal: 4 frozen bananas, 2 handfuls of greens, 1/2 cup water, 1 tbsp coconut sugar, dash of cinnamon, a few mint leaves plus 2 chopped bananas
Green Banana Smoothie: 2 cups cold water, 4 frozen bananas, 4 handfuls of spinach, a few mint leaves, 1 tbsp coconut sugar, dash of cinnamon
Green Banana Smoothie: 2 cups cold water 4 frozen bananas, 2 handfuls of spinach, 1 tbsp coconut sugar, dash of cinnamon
Snacks: 3 bananas with 5 chopped medjool dates