Detox Diets - Do They Work?

Detox Your Diet For Spring

The Real Way

If you’ve sailed through winter in good shape, consider yourself lucky. The rest of us will reluctantly shed our winter clothes and assess the damage. After all, according to the latest nutrition report by the Ministry of Health, we’re way up there in the global ranks of obesity.

Out of all the seasons, winter is by far, the cruelest.   It’s perfectly natural to gain a kilo or two over the chillier months. We’re less likely to exercise when the weathers bad and many of us experience tiredness and a general down in the dumps feeling during cold bleak weather. The lack of daylight hours and Vitamin D in winter can lower our feel good hormones, serotonin and melatonin. To offset this hormone imbalance, we reach for more carbohydrates and calories than our bodies need to burn. Problem is, come spring, it can be easy to panic and reach for the first advertised ‘miracle diet’ that comes along.

Beware of crazy diets like the HGC Diet, on this regime, participants are restricted to just 500 calories a day and given diluted HGC (a hormone found in the urine of pregnant women). Even though numerous clinical trials have proved that HGC doesn’t have any effect on weight loss, people are still peddling dangerous, misleading diets such as this. Take the Lemon Detox Diet for example, if you want your metabolism to grind to a halt, or to lose precious muscle, go on the Lemon Detox Diet. It’s so severely deficient in protein and vitamins, you’re guaranteed to lose muscle if you stick to the diet for 14 days.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t make a huge transformation this summer. I’m not ‘anti-diet’ per se. Just anti-diet bullshit, if you know what I mean.

So lets get cracking. Just because I said, don’t go on a stupid diet, doesn’t mean you cant lose 10-12 kilos of fat by the end of the year. And no, you don’t need to have someone kicking your butt in a boot camp session. Seriously, how long can you put up with that kind of pain and suffering?

So here’s the key. It’s no secret. You have to eat less. But you don’t need to drastically starve yourself. In fact starving is counter-productive. All you need to do is figure out your calorie goal, then eat as much food as you can, while keeping to your target.  Figuring out your calorie goal can be the tricky bit.

To lose a kilo of fat a week you need to be in a calorie deficit of 1142 calories each day. You could go for a walk each day. Depending on your weight, that’s going to create a deficit of 300 calories if you walk for an hour. That still leaves you with another 842 calories to trim from your diet.

Find out your base calorie or maintenance requirement. Take your weight in pounds and multiply it by fourteen. For example if you weigh 80 kilos, your base calories are 2464. (This is an estimate. In real life, a nutritionist would work it out based on activity levels, fat percentage and health status too. ) Back to the numbers. We still have 842 calories to remove so deduct them from your base calories. This leaves you with 1622 calories a day. That’s your target to lose a kilo of fat each week, until the end of the year. The more you weigh, the more you eat. If your deficit of 1142 calories a day takes your target below 1400 calories, you’ll need to do more exercise to make up the deficit. Reducing your calories below 1400 a day is counterproductive and without professional advice you risk vitamin and mineral deficiencies. 
Never mind trying to be a clever and lose more than one kilo a week. Your body is way to smart for that carryon. You’ll just lose fluid and slow things down later on. It’s better to stick with a kilo loss at most. It can take a fair amount of time to plan a daily diet around 1600 calories a day. I’m talking 300-400 calories a meal over 4-5 meals a day. Make sure you include food that you actually like too. If you want to do it yourself, use a planner on the Internet or even better enlist the help of a professional dietician or nutritionist. Their goal is to make it easy for you and give you tools that you can use forever to help manage your health and your weight.

So what are my top three tips for a Spring Detox?

Drink more water, keep a food diary and start exercising.

Researchers from the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Science conducted a 12-week study to demonstrate water’s ability to promote weight loss. Professor Brenda Davey found that dieters who drank two glasses of water before meals consumed up to 90 fewer calories during each meal and lost more weight than dieters who did not increase their water intake. Water will also keep your body systems, including metabolism and digestion working properly and give you the energy necessary for exercise.  Exercise helps increase blood flow to your cells. Your blood carries nutrients from your food around your body to nourish your vital organs. Exercise helps with immunity and keeps your detoxification systems functioning well. Another up side to exercise is that it builds muscle too, which helps us burn more fat. Remember, you don’t need to do boot camp for successful weight loss. Light exercise can be great for killing the desire to eat. Try burning a few calories instead of eating them by taking a walk each day. If you are serious about losing weight, keep a food diary and stick to your calorie target.