I’m not referring to crazy fasts where you just drink water with lemon or fruit juices or those iffy detox products (Jillian Michaels, I’m looking at you). I’m talking diets that are meant to cleanse or detox you, here’s an example. http://www.goop.com/newsletter/15/
To me that doesn’t look too crazy, just healthy unprocessed foods, no sugar or dairy and it actually looks tasty. It also looks like just a regular diet menu.
I know we have some nutritionists and doctors here so is there really a benefit to these types of diets and are there any dangers? If one does this, will you have to stay in the immediate vicinity of a bathroom?
“Detox,” especially without specifying what the “toxins” are and the mechanism by which they are “de’d” is the sure sign of a scam. Similar with “cleansing.” Your body is self-cleansing, and there are no little bags of “toxins” around that you’re going to empty out with one of these diets.
(I’m assuming normal liver and kidney functions here: dialysis could be considered “detoxing,” and I’m OK with that. Similarly, chelation when used in the medical rather than new-age sense of the word. Note that both of these procedures are vastly more complicated than a diet change.)
It’s a bit low on carbs though, and apart from a couple of portions of oatmeal and brown rice, not exactly high in fibre- no wonder it suggests a laxative might be required!
By eliminating dairy altogether you’re also cutting your vitamin D and calcium intake. Unless you are lactose intolerant your body has no more trouble processing dairy than any other type of food.
If you want to “cleanse” you should probably try to eat a diet that is going to get your bowels moving- i.e. high fibre.
Your liver is perfectly capable of dealing with most “toxins”, but avoiding alcohol, salt and trans fat wouldn’t do you any harm.
sigh I thought I mentioned that I am dubious of the crazy fasts and cleanses, nor do I want to crap my brains out.
I was mostly looking at the diet plan on that page, healthy smoothies, vegetables soups and healthy meats cooked with simple non-fatty methods. Basically, it’s just a sugarless, dairyless, healthy grains, no red meat diet that to me actuly looks doable and healthy. I was looking for more input on that type of diet. I am looking at it as more of a kick off to healthier eating and not a long term thing.
ETA: to Irishgirl, I am lactose intolerant and have already been using almond milk as a substitute, but I also use lactose free milk.
But thanks for the advice on the fiber. I’d probably eat more oatmeal than recommended in that diet anyway, just because I like it and always make enough to last a few days.
>Basically, it’s just a sugarless, dairyless, healthy grains, no red meat diet that to me actuly looks doable and healthy.
Fruit smoothes are almost all sugar. A typical smoothie is anywhere between 300-600 calories.
Theres nothing to cleanse because, as someone pointed out already, the body is self-cleaning. This is the placebo effect. If 3,000 calories of smoothies and an enema make people happy then more power to them, but its no different than eating McDonalds 2x a day.
Diets like this have been going on for hundreds of years. Kelloggs and Post cereals started out at sanitariums promoting diets and cleansing.
And it went back hundreds of years before that.
It probably wouldn’t do you any harm. I used to do a waterfast on Sundays. It was supposed to help you “cleanse” your system. It was OK and it certainly didn’t harm me any. But I didn’t feel any better in reality.
I agree with your post except for the “avoiding salt” part - while I agree that most North Americans have a diet that is far too high in sodium, it is my layperson understanding that we need some sodium in our diets, and we also need the iodine we get from iodized salt (which is what all table salt is in North America, as far as I know).
I will admit that I have done an occasional enema, [tmi alert] just every now and then it seems like by bowels get disrupted by the various meds I am on, and they don’t clear out totally … not really constipation, but just this cloged up with glop sort of feeling. An enema just seems to clear things out and ‘reset’ things as it were.
Though I still don’t understand how someone can find an enema sexually stimulating
In my experience, this is a big reason that many people fail to stay on a healthy diet - they don’t take a long-term approach and they try some kind of short-term eating plan that purports to flush/cleanse/melt off the pounds. The short-term approach may “work” in a limited way (I can give you a Nothing But Butter Diet that will make you lose weight like crazy) but as soon as you stop, back comes the weight and then people get discouraged (I’ve had many friends try various plans like this and they’ve had zero long-term success) and go back to whatever eating habits they had before.
This may not be the answer you’re looking for but I would strongly recommend that you steer clear of anything that claims to make astounding changes (like “detoxifying” you) and go with the general healthy eating guidelines that most doctors and dietary associations would suggest; fresh fruits and veggies, complex carbohydrates, decent amount of fiber, lean dairy and protein, healthy fats, minimize the unhealthy fats, sugary stuff, simple carbohydrates. Eat appropriately-sized portions (this was the hardest thing for me, portion control). If you can’t change your eating habits long term you’re not going to see long-term benefits.
Doing something short-term that isn’t what you’ll be doing long-term is getting off on the wrong foot IMHO.
I thought Kellogg and all were trying to promote a diet that avoided too much red meat (bacon for breakfast) as they knew that red meat caused young men to masturbate. They had some very odd obsessions.
One item I read once was about the bio-dome experiment in Arizona(?). Due to poor planning and listening to eco-nuts over real sciencetists, the ecology in the biodome essentially crashed. To survive without violating to experiment (or not too badly) the inhabitants were reduced to picking insects off the plants by hand one-by-one to get the plants growing, and living on a subsistence level diet. They almost starved. The levels of toxic chemicals in their bodies went up alarmingly, and the people doing the monitoring spent a while wondering what was poisoning the crew until they realized - as the inhabitants starved, they were consuming their body fat and releasing the toxins from body fat back into the bloodstream.
This is the “pseudoscience” all these detox formulae are built on. Over life, you accumulate all sorts of interesting trace chemicals into your body fat cells. BEcause were rarely starve they rarely emerge. Even eskimos have a high level of toxins like PCBs. Although they live in relative isolation, they are at the top of a big food chain that involves eating fat accumulated from the oceans.
So the real question is - do you have that many toxins in your body? Probably. Are they dangerous? Probably not as much as alarmists think. WIll these diets cleans you of a noticeable amount of them? Probably not.
Of course, there are alternate quack views, like the idea that your intestines are accumulating a coating of “bad stuff” like calcium buildup in a steam heating pipe, something that a good detox diet will clease you of.
The smoothies you buy have lots of sugar, the smoothies you make yourself have only the natural fruit sugars unless you add it. As for “no sugar” I was referring to the shite processed stuff.
As for “cleansing” being silly, I get that. I’ve said it twice that I don’t really agree with that whole concept. I would never do a fast or drink copious amounts of water or castor oil to flush myself out. I certainly don’t mind the whole cleanse/detox thing being debunked here just realize I am not even considering doing that.
I am planning to do that but I wanted a jumping off point, a plan, to get started. I liked the looks of that diet because it looked like stuff that would be easy to do. I could make some soups and freeze portions or make a couple of the dinners and freeze portions. Pretty much what I was asking about was what missing or wrong with that diet that could be a problem nutritionally so I know how to adjust it, like more fiber per Irishgirl. I am not really looking to “detox” except to get out of the processed sugar/foods habit.
About a year and a half ago I had managed to do that and lost some weight. Once I avoided the bad stuff for a couple weeks I found it easier to stay away from it. Unfortunately it went all to heck when I went on a vacation.
I was looking for a meal plan that I could build on and make ahead alot of meals. I am not looking to starve myself or try to follow a very limited diet. The linked diet appealed to me because I like smoothies and soup and I thought it might be something I could work with.
See above. Once again, I do not believe the whole detox hype, feel free to debunk that all you like. I’m sure there may be other people considering it who might appreciate the info. There may even be people who can offer the other viewpoint. I however, do not plan to follow any fasts or cleanses.
