What is a Cleansing Diet
Although you may have just heard of it, the idea of a cleansing diet is not new.
By Donovan Baldwin
Cleansing diets have been around in one form or another for millenia. Probably, the first healer living in a cave thought that cleansing the diet of poisons of one form or another would be good for some unhealthy fellow cave dweller.
Essentially, cleansing is a natural way of ridding the body of toxins and built up waste products. While it is little understood, and often over sold, cleansing can produce many health benefits. It has become popular today as a solution to many health problems, an anti aging technique, and a natural weight loss method.
Cleansing, cleansing diet, detoxification, or body detox, as the technique is known, primarily is believed to give the body a "health boost", if you will, primarily by ridding it of the accumulations of negatives as mentioned earlier. In effect, it is believed to not only rid one of these bad things, but, in essence, reset the body's health needle naturally so that it can recover and move forward as a healthier organism.
While many are still debating the efficacy of a cleansing diet, they are simple, and, if done in a reasonable manner, at the very least do no harm. Even if the actual health benefits of a cleansing diet are overrated, those who partake of this form of detox generally report feeling better for the process.
Cleansing Diets - The Basics
While there are many different forms of cleansing diets, using various combinations of food, drink, herbs, supplements, soups, and brews (Sorry, no beer cleanse yet....unless you drink WAY too much), they all generally wind up accomplishing the same results. There are liquid diets, fasting diets, juice diets, and other cleansing diets. While some mainly involve giving up most usual foods for a short period, some make use of supplements, herbs, smoothies, shakes, high protein, and low protein concoctions which combine various ingredients to help accomplish the goal.
It is difficult to really implement a cleansing diet without making some sort of a plan first. You have to assemble ingredients, prepare certain food or drink combinations, and, generally, prepare to fit the event into your daily lifestyle.
Despite the fact that "food" was mentioned in the previous paragraph, you will find that most of the time, a cleansing diet is probably going to be a liquid diet.
A cleansing diet may last anywhere from two to ten days. It is often done two or three times a year.
It is recommended that, at first you stick with shorter periods until you know how you are going to react to any cleansing diet, and, as important, what cleansing diet, or cleansing diet product may be best for you.
While the goal is to allow your body to rid itself of unhealthy toxins, it is a good idea to choose a cleansing diet which allows for an intake of nutrients necessary for continued health. However, bear in mind, that missing such nutrients for a couple of days is probably not going to be detrimental to the health of an essentially healthy person.
However, if you DO have specific health issues, you may want to run the idea past your personal physician first before participating in a cleansing diet.
Even though a cleansing diet may be undertaken to "catch up" on all the unhealthy things that have happened to your body, it makes a certain amount of sense to believe that avoiding those toxins, and the situations which contribute to their accumulation could be effectivelhy avoided on a day-to-day basis.
Cleansing Diets - Health Benefits
The apparent benefit of a cleansing diet rests in the fact that, for a while, at least, you stop putting bad stuff into your body. Simultaneously, with most of them, you actually put some good stuff in. As a result of what you do, and do not do, during a cleansing diet, toxins and accumulated wastes and pollutants leave your body and quit affecting you negatively.
For many, the most common sought after benefit of a cleansing diet is weight loss. The great thing about this process is that there is no need to plan meals, read lables, or follow a "diet" per se. The drawback is that any weight loss is often relatively small, and mainly lasts for the term of the cleansing diet.
Most people will simply return to old habits and regain any weight loss in a relatively short period of time once the diet is over. However, for some, the "kick start" effect is enough to get them off square one and move them along towards a healthier lifestyle.
Other health benefits of a cleansing diet, and, often enough, of weight loss, is higher energy, clearer skin, reduction of digestive health issues, such as irritable bowel syndrome, improved mental acuity, and better concentration.
In the final analysis, whether a cleansing diet produces immediate, short term or long term effects, you will usually come away feeling energized and glad that you have taken a step towards better health.Diet and Weight Loss Articles What is a Cleansing Diet
Page Updated 4:30 PM Friday 19 October 2018
