Nutrition, Training
Juice Detox: Fat Loss Or Fat Gain
Every September we all make ourselves the same promise… ‘Next summer I will be in shape’. Unhappy with having spent days on the beach covering up and vetoing any bikini shots from being posted on Facebook. The winter months go by and we postpone starting any sort of exercise or nutritional regime getting away with wearing baggy dresses and thick black tights. The fact that we live in Ireland means that winter coats are pretty much a necessity until about mid May when the leaving cert weather starts to kick in. The girls now want to organize a trip away… “Somewhere with a beach so we can get a tan”. Regretting the past few months having failed to fulfill that promise of getting shape, spending the time munching on rolls and pizza instead of taking the time to get bikini body ready we see no alternative but to look to a ‘quick fix’. Enter: The Juice Detox.
As a personal trainer and health coach I see too many girls coming to me with ruined metabolisms having crash dieted or followed starvation strategies in order to lose weight as quickly as possible. There are thousands of these sorts of diets out there and most of them are ridiculous but nothing makes less sense to me than a juice detox. The very idea of it being a detox is laughable. It is impossible to detox efficiently without the presence of amino acids and it is impossible to get SUFFICIENT amounts of ALL the amino acids from fruits, vegetables and other foods such as avocados or chia seeds.
Without wanting to get too scientific the liver has two phases of detoxification and the second one needs amino acids to function efficiently. During these detoxes there are no amino acids going into the body so toxins can only go through phase 1 of detoxification. These toxins are not converted into free radicals and without phase 2 being able to neutralize them the liver has no choice but to release them into the blood stream. This juice detox in its attempt to detox us has now in fact left us more toxic than before.
Will there be weight loss on a juice detox? Probably. Will it be true fat loss? Probably not! Toxins are released from the fat cells and passed through phase 1 but as we cannot continue to detox them we start to feel ill and they end up being reabsorbed and stored by the fat cells. Most of the weight lost will be water weight and if the juice detox is long enough the ‘detoxee’ will now probably have slowed down their metabolism. Just two days of severe under-eating can slow down your thyroid (the master of metabolism). If you choose to live on 4-5 juices a day you are on a severe calorie restrictive diet with the majority of your calories being in the form of fructose from fruit. It will be impossible to avoid damaging your metabolism especially if this is an activity you intend to engage in regularly or for longer then two/three days. The rebound weight gain seen after this kind of detox plan can leave you even fatter than you were in the first place. When you return to your original eating habits (which you will as a juice detox is unsustainable) your metabolism will no longer be able to handle the amount of calories you were once able to eat without gaining weight
Take Away Point We detox 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. A 3-day juice detox is not the way to do it! If you are interested in learning the methods and protocols that have helped so many of our clients detoxify and lose weight in a healthy manner please do not hesitate to contact us on : info@brp.ie. Please Download our Questionnaire and fill in the form to arrange your free one on one consultation.
