The juice diet has been popular for a long time but many people just don’t understand how to take advantage of juice fasting to gain the best results for weight loss. It should be realized that the juice diet is used mainly for fasting, so it is not expected to be used long term. However, having said that, there are some reports that over 30 days people have lost 30 – 40 lbs on the juice diet, but that it is very much a diet of will power for this length of time.
Okay, so back to the basic juice diet which is basically used to detox the body after days, months or even years of eating all kinds of junk food that is bad for us. The juice diet is a fast way to reduced the amount of fat you have stored in the body. Now the length of time spent on this diet has been suggested as the number of days it takes you to get rid of the symptoms of detoxification, plus 2 days.For some people this will only be a few days, but for others the process may take a lot longer, but if you are considering this approach, talk to your doctor about it before hand, and if you are still on the diet after a couple of weeks, you might want to check back again, just to make sure all is still well with your health.
The detoxification of this diet can lead to various unpleasant side effects, depending on the toxins that your body has to lose. Some toxins are lost through our skin, others from the lungs, and still others through the colon and urinary tract. Now the program doesn’t have to be followed all the time, it can be a few days of fasting, followed by 3 or 4 days, with healthy foods like fish, fruit and vegetables, so you do have a lot of choice on the diet, and your medical practitioner will be able to help you decide the best program for you.
So, what do foods do you need during a juice diet? Plenty of fruits and vegetables are used, usually turned into juice with the help of a juicer, not a citric juicer, but there are a few tips too. Grapefruits are not used, because often their content can upset the balance with certain medications, while beet roots are found to be good for detoxifying the liver.Note that the juicer is very different to a mixer or a blender. It literally does take the juice out of the food, and keeps the fibre in the juicer basket, while the juice passes out through the spout. There are a few different types of juicers too, but that is for another day.
One of the concerns with this diet is the large volume of fruit and vegetables that you need to make enough juice for each day, and that the juice is best made fresh. True, you are encouraged to drink plenty of water as well to aid the process, but the foods need to be of good quality, and some juice diets recommend using only organic foods.
There are many different recipes for juices to use during your juice fasts, so there is no need just to use one fruit for the juice. In fact, it is far better if you mix different juices together so that you can increase the nutrients that are available to you from the juice, although some ingredients are used mainly for their flavour, others for their colour, and others for both the nutrition they provide as well as the flavour.
One of the advantages of the juice diet is that the nutrients from the fruits and vegetables used are more easily digested by the body after they have been through a juicer, so this gives the stomach a bit of a rest from having to digest a whole mixture of different foods.
So, whether you try the juice diet to do a little fasting is entirely up to you. I know I couldn’t handle having just juices for a few days, even if it is really good for me. I’d rather eat a good diet with all the healthy foods needed to give me the nutrients I need. I guess I just enjoy food too much! But if you do use the juice diet, remember to see your doctor first, before you start juice fasting.