Spring Diet Cleanses: What You Need To Know

Thanks to warmer temperatures and the celebrity buzz, more and more people are thinking about losing weight and getting healthier with the help of cleanses. Most will be disappointed. The central idea behind all cleanses or detox diets is that we’re sick and fat because our bodies are saddled with excessive toxins. By adhering to these very low calorie, often liquid-only diets – goes the pitch – we can detox, become healthy and lose weight quickly.

Scientists, medical doctors and legitimate nutritionists disagree, and generally don’t even believe that “detoxing” exists. According to Professor Alan Boobis OBE, toxicologist at Imperial College London’s Division of Medicine:

The body’s own detoxification systems are remarkably sophisticated and versatile. They have to be, as the natural environment that we evolved in is hostile. It is remarkable that people are prepared to risk seriously disrupting these systems with unproven ‘detox’ diets, which could well do more harm than good.

Very low calorie diets are also known as crash diets or semi-starvation diets in scientific literature. While these diets can help you lose weight very rapidly, they also fail 98 percent of the time. That is, 98 percent of the people on these diets regain everything they’ve lost, or everything plus interest.

These diets also become progressively less effective for the initial weight-loss boost because they negatively impact your metabolism, sex hormones, muscle mass and thyroid function.

Health and fitness expert Mark Fisher sums up cleanses nicely: “If eating food leaves you full of toxins. . .perhaps we should seriously consider the quality of the food you eat.” Losing weight is easy, but keeping it off is the hardest and most important part.

Your long-term success is mostly dependent on how you lose the weight in the first place. Quick weight-loss is sexy, and it sells $200 cleansing kits, but it almost always fails you. Instead, by focusing on small, manageable habit changes that you can stick to, you set yourself up for progressive success, building a lifestyle that will deliver the health and fitness you want for a lifetime – not just a weekend.

A best-selling author and fitness expert with 16 years of experience, Josef Brandenburg owns The Body You Want club in Georgetown. Information about his 14-Day Personal Training Experience may be found at TheBodyYouWant.com.