Is Detox a Way to Manage Your Weight?

If you talk about a detox treatment, it generally means that you are going to visit a spa or studio to receive a short term cleansing of your system or that you are going to cut certain food and drinks from your diet. The latter would involves cutting out all meat, dairy, fish, and eggs for example. Another common option is to stop caffeine and alcohol or smoking too.

The ultimate aim of a detox is to leave you with a cleaner internal body, rehydrated with water, see better skin tone and texture and of course have more energy.

When is a Good Time to Detox?

This can be particularly attractive after periods of indulgence, such as Christmas, when many of us feel we may have rather overdone our celebration of the holiday spirit. However, it should be born in mind that detox slimming is not a long-term solution. Its often quite drastic and if continued for long periods of time may have a negative impact on your overall health and on your immune system. This is because youre not consuming bad stuff but youre also not getting what your body really needs. None of us can live on carrot juice forever! Thats also why the results are often not very sustainable. If you drink more water and eat more fruit and veg, you will lose weight and feel better. But if you just go in for punishing yourself for a week before quickly returning to your old habits, the positive results will quickly disappear. It might be more realistic to try a more gentle approach over a longer period of time. You could use a short intense cleansing out period to kick-start a change of lifestyle. Just remember thats whats really going to count in the long term is eating a healthy balanced diet and exercising on a regular basis.

Is There Such a Thing as a Detox Diet?

Detox diets are essentially about trying to rid of our bodies of the many pollutants that afflict them. These include alcohol, caffeine, cigarette smoke, food additives, pesticides and poor diet in general.

Detox diets are about purifying the body of toxins that are thought to be stored in the body. These mild poisons may cause us to gain weight as well as effecting our overall well being by making us more tired, irritable, vulnerable to illness, bloated and unhappy.

While there are many different types of detox diet, most of them focus on cutting out alcohol, caffeine and junk food. Some can be quite strict in terms of what can and cannot be eaten. Meat and fish are generally avoided. Theres an emphasis on fruit and raw vegetables as well as drinking lots of water.

Yoghurt is also often recommended as well as herbal supplements. The effect is that of the short sharp shock and as calorie intake is drastically reduced, weight loss occurs quickly. Most of these regimes last from a week to ten days. They are not intended for long-term use but rather are about cleansing the body of harmful substances before embarking on a healthier long-term nutritional plan. For this reason, they have proven to be particularly popular after holiday periods of indulgence such as Christmas. They can be a useful way to get yourself back on a more healthy track although without follow through in terms of exercise and eating a balanced diet, the benefits are likely to be short term.