Facts About The Master Cleanse Diet – What You Need to Know
Have you heard about the master cleanse diet? It is a diet that is purported to help you to lose fat through detoxing and removing toxic substances from the body. Its proponents say that if you want to cleanse and detox while you lose weight, that this is the cleansing diet for you.
The goal of this article is to tell you what you need to know before you decide to go on the master cleanse diet, what to expect while you’re on it, and to inform you of any better and safer alternatives if you’re still not sure it’s for you.
Various Claims About The Master Cleanse Diet
Apart from the claim that the diet helps to remove harmful and toxic substances form the body, it’s also claimed that the master cleanse diet will help you in getting rid of any craving you may have for drugs, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol.
But despite all the anecdotal evidence that this cleansing diet does help reduce cravings, there’s no scientific or medical evidence that this is the case. So if you’re thinking of going on this cleanse to help you break a bad habit, you need to strongly consider this before using the diet for this purpose.
On the other hand, one of the chief claims about the master cleanse diet is that it will help you lose weight. This is without a doubt the truth. The reason is that you are consuming so few calories while doing the master cleanse.
The drawback? Bounce-back weight gain once you stop the cleanse and start eating normally again. The fact is, starving yourself can cause your metabolism to crater, and that’s exactly what you’re doing on this cleanse (see below).
Now, if you can discipline yourself to gradually ease back into normal eating, and if you can also discipline yourself to change your formerly bad eating habits and eat clean once you finish the cleanse, you might maintain your weight loss. But, that’s a very big if and highly unlikely in my opinion, based on my 15+ years experience as a fitness instructor and personal trainer.
What Does The Master Cleanse Diet Entail?
The master cleanse diet drink is a sort of lemonade made out of cayenne pepper, grade B maple syrup, and fresh lemon juice. This concoction is mixed together and taken without anything else – it’s all you eat or drink while on the cleanse.
Sometimes people recommend that laxative tea is added to the master cleanse diet. Some even say you can also add saline solution (salt water) to it, and that the saline solution can also be used in place of the laxative tea. The addition of saline solution has also been claimed by some to help in flushing your lower gastrointestinal tract.
How The Master Cleanse Diet Helps You Lose Weight
The master cleanse diet is lacking in calories and is almost entirely absent of even basic nutrients. Not only is it low in calories, it is also deficient in vitamins and minerals, and entirely lacking in protein or fat.
Because of this nearly complete lack of nutrients, the master cleanse diet certainly goes a long way to helping you lose fat and drop weight fast, which is probably why it has become so popular as a weight loss program. But once again, there’s a major drawback in the program. That is, you have to follow it consistently for at least a week (a considerable period of time to starve your body of nutrition) before you can even hope to get meaningful weight loss results from the master cleanse diet.
The Master Cleanse Diet Side Effects
The main side effect to the master cleanse diet actually is its negative impact on your health if followed for too long. Short-term (when used for a day or two) it can be helpful as a quick detox. However, the long-term implications and dangers of following an extremely low-calorie and low-nutrient fast are self-evident.
Headaches, nausea, lightheadedness, and dizziness have also been reported as typical master cleanse diet side effects. Such side effects are not uncommon for anyone doing a low-calorie or fasting cleanse or flush.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article has helped shed some light on the master cleanse diet for you. Certainly, if you’re looking to drop weight quickly this cleanse will help you do exactly that. And, for a quick one or two-day cleanse, the master cleanse diet is certainly useful in that regard.
Even so, in my opinion the risks outweigh the benefits when it comes to using this cleanse for more than a day or two. And, I would strongly advise anyone against using it for long-term weight loss, simply because it is not safe to do long-term fasting cleanses without proper medical supervision and monitoring.
In addition, the negative effects such a program may have on your metabolism cannot be overlooked. It won’t do you any good to lose 10 or 15 pounds in a week of fasting, only to gain more right back once you start eating again because your body went into starvation mode.
Bottom line: Starvation diets just don’t work for long-term weight loss. That’s why I prefer nutritional cleansing instead of cleanse and detox programs such as the master cleanse diet for longer cleanses and more permanent weight loss.
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