Has anyone ever had successful (even if temporary) weight loss doing this? (It’s the lemon juice/cayenne/maple syrup thing that Beyonce and Robin Quivers claim to have used to drop 20 and 70 lbs, respectively.) I’m curious and may give it a shot for ten days. I’m not looking for de-bunkers or pooh-poohers. I’m not saying this is anywhere near healthy or a good, long-term plan. I just want to know if it’s ever worked for “real” people. Thanks!
I have not done it, but have 2 non doper friends who did. One of them couldn’t make it past the 5 day mark, the other one went to 14 days. The both thought it was amazing and would do it again without hesitation, I think they are both crazy.
The person who made it to 14 days was very skinny by the end (he wasn’t all that big to start with) but I was with him when he broke the fast, and I have never seen a person happier to eat real food in my life. He claims he was having waking dreams about food (like in cartoons where everyday objects turn into foodstuffs) and that the apple he used to break the fast was the best apple of his life. He likened it to a religious awakening. Again, I think he is crazy.
The person who stopped after 5 days (maybe only 4) was a little more normal. She didn’t lose any weight that I am aware of, but more than anything feels like a failure because she couldn’t make it to the 10 day mark she set for herself. I think she is a bit more normal, but they are both kind of hippie/new agey and have a whole different outlook on life than I do. She just couldn’t deal with the hunger.
But like I said , even though (to my mind) they got more negative than positive effects from it, they both say they would do it again. So take that for what it’s worth.
I bought the book and did it for 10 days. I almost passed out on the second day and had to eat several tablespoons of the maple syrup straight to get something in my stomach. After that, it was pretty easy hunger-wise. I even worked in a restaurant and continued to regularly ride my horse during the 10 days, I wasn’t too weak to do anything as I imagined I would be. But how can you NOT lose weight if you fast for 10 days? Of course you will lose some weight.
Like NAF’s friend, I started becoming obsessed with food. I would stare intently at Carl’s Jr. commercials and I also surfed the web constantly for recipes that I planned to make as soon as the fast was over. I might try it again right before my wedding - my stomach has never been flatter than it was right after fasting!
Also - I didn’t do too much of the cayenne because it tasted bad to me and I didn’t guzzle a liter of salt water in the mornings because that also seemed gross, but I did drink the senna tea in the evenings.
Samm and Naf: How many glasses of the stuff did you/your friends drink per day? The directions just say 6-12.
Samm, how much weight did you actually lose in the 10-day period?
Basically, I’m just looking for a jump-start to get rid of the weight I’ve gained since quitting smoking 2 months ago. (about ten pounds, plus about 13 more pounds since the New Year…apparently I did the reverse of a resolution.)
I did it once and lost the same 7 pounds I lose whenever I change my diet. Doesn’t matter what change I make - I could start the cheesecake diet and lose those same 7 pounds, I think. Within a month of ending, they were back.
The thing is, it’s not really a calorie cut unless you make it so. It was not really pushed by Burroghs as a “diet” but as a “fast”.There’re around 100 calories in each glass of lemonade, and you’re encouraged to drink as much as you want, with an emphasis on drinking at least 12 glasses per day*. That’s a minimum of 1200 calories a day - not a professional athlete’s level, to be sure, but hardly into Very Low Calorie Diet range requiring close medical supervision. It’s about what a 170 pound 40 year old woman who works an office job is alloted on the weight loss phase of Weight Watchers, and can be sustained - *calorically *- more or less indefinitely. You will not starve on this, no matter what your mother or your bowels tell you.
Can you *thrive *on this long term? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t do it more than 14 days every 6 months. There are no macronutrients to speak of - no protein, no fat, no complex carbs, no fiber to speak of. If you did it long enough, you could suffer the effects of protein deprivation, including kwashiorkor. But most of us fat USAsians have ample stores of fat, and probably more than enough protein to see us through a two week fast with few ill effects. You should, of course, check with your doctor first, and if you’ve got obvious digestive diseases like diabetes or kidney disease or IBS or celliac’s, do a lot more research before you and your doctor decide whether or not this is safe for you.
Any reasonable weight loss plan will “jump start” your weight loss. Most people drop at least double, sometimes quadruple or more, their normal weight loss average in those first two weeks. That’s why this one looks so good - it only lasts two weeks. So if you drop, say, 8 pounds during a 14 day Cleanse, you think, “Oh, wow! This is a 4 pounds a week weight loss diet!” Nope. If it was safe to keep going, you’d discover that the weight loss slows down to an average of 1-2 pounds a week, just like any low (but not very low) calorie diet. You’ll get the same weight loss results in your first two weeks of Weight Watchers or Atkins or South Beach. Or should I send you some information on my new Cheesecake Diet? 
*Full disclosure: I haven’t read the original book. I followed the directions that agreed on half a dozen websites and ignored the weird “liver tonic” ones that were unique to one or two of them.
Can’t say for sure. I know my friend who did it for the 14 days had a sport bottle full of it that he took everywhere he went.
The thing about cleansing fasts for weight loss is that, while many of them work in dramatic and previously unimaginable ways, bragging about one’s losses is saying something significant about the shape one was in beforehand. Maybe it’s a way to kickstart the ol’ metabolism, but anyone who lost 70 lbs. on a cleansing fast passed the time (and a lot of other stuff) the old fashioned way. It’s difficult to cheat on a fast when the fridge is in the kitchen and all forces are moving one, rapidly, towards the bathroom.
Can someone please tell me what is so “special” about this diet/cleanse? As far as I can tell, there really isn’t anything better in this diet than merely drinking sugar water every day, with maybe a vitamin C tablet (other than I guess lemonade tastes better.)
What “magical” properties do the cayenne pepper and maple syrup supposedly confer? It seems to me someone out there knew they could make a lot of money by selling a new type of fasting/cleanse diet, and just decided to throw together a few random things he found in his kitchen cabinet to make it sound new-age and cool.
“Hmm…let’s see…garlic, ginger, and vinegar are sooo last decade, what new random pantry items will work?”
ETA: I don’t mean to sound snarky, but I am always suspicious as anything marketed as a “cleanse”, because science, medicine, and common sense have proven every single one to be complete bunk (WRT the cleansing aspect. Plenty of them work fine as fasting diets, I’m sure.)
Kinda my thoughts, too. My understanding of “detox” diets is that all they’re good for is seemingly drastic weight loss that only lasts for a very short time. But most medical professionals contend that they don’t actually clean your insides any more than your usual bodily functions do.
From what I’ve read, there’s not a whole lot of risk in a fast as long as you don’t stop eating for a long time, but there’s also not a whole lot of good that will result, either.
Then again, maybe the effects are more mental than anything else? I guess if it helps to get you going on a healthy diet or makes you feel more spiritual, whatever floats your boat.
I think this is mostly it. I don’t brook with “toxins” in the physical purge cleanse puritanical our-bodies-are-filthy sense. But when I did do this particular cleanse, I *felt *great (after day 1 was over). I felt energetic and bright and clear and creative. I think it was, indeed, more a mental exercise than a physical one.
That makes sense - sounds like a kind of re-set instead of a true weight loss tactic.
I did it once but didn’t make it to the 10 day mark. I did I think 5 days and lost about 5 lbs. IIRC I poured one certain size bottle of maple syrup into a gallon jug of water with some amount of lemon juice and cayenne pepper and the whole thing had something like 800 or 900 calories. I remember it was below the 1000 mark (maybe I had diet syrup or something?).
Anyway, I guess it’s about a 1 lb. per day loss. But for me once I hit day three my kids’ heads started looking like big cartoon hams and I was evenually found gnawing on my leather chair at work trying to get at the remnant cow flavor.
Maybe I’ll try it again and let you know how it goes. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight over the last 6 months (not on the Beyonce diet) and it would make it much easier to see a 10 lb. weight loss and I’m tracking it more now.
ETA: forgot to mention - turns out I really liked the way it tastes to have spicy lemonade!!
Its just a fad diet. It’s dangerous. And it doesn’t “cleanse” anything.