About the Seven-Day Cleansing Diet

The seven-day cleansing diet is designed to give your digestive system a rest and to include only nutritious, easy-to-digest foods. This is not a starvation diet, but rather a detoxification diet, eliminating incoming toxins to allow the body to rid itself of stored toxins. The diet includes lots of water, along with fruit, vegetables and brown rice.

Significance

The theory behind detoxification diets is that one's body usually is able to eliminate toxic substances through waste and perspiration, but sometimes it becomes overwhelmed with the daily bombardment and stores toxins in the colon and body fat. This also happens when people's elimination systems have not been working properly due to an unhealthy diet with too little fiber and too many refined and processed foods. When the toxins do not leave the colon fast enough, they can become reabsorbed into the body.

In modern society, we encounter so many toxins from pollution, chemicals, smoke, alcohol and over-the-counter as well as prescription drugs that the body often cannot keep up. Storage of toxic material can cause bad breath, body odor, fatigue, headaches, constipation, pimples and a greater susceptibility to disease.

Considerations

Drinking sufficient amounts of water is extremely important on the seven-day cleansing diet to flush out toxins and any material that was lodged in the colon. Six to 10 8-oz glasses a day is ideal, depending on weight and activity.

Time Frame

The entire idea behind the seven-day cleansing diet is to provide one's body with nutritional foods that are the easiest possible to digest. Beginning with a one- or two-day fast is recommended, if you can handle it. On those days you would only drink water; if this type of fasting is too difficult, fruit juice could be added too.

Features

On the second or third day, you can move into the rest of the diet. The other foods allowed are organic raw fruit and vegetables, steamed or stir-fry vegetables and brown rice or brown basmati rice. Stir-fry vegetables should only be cooked in virgin olive oil or sesame oil. Herbs and spices can be added. You can eat as much of these food items as you like and as often as you like. Be sure to eat lots of green vegetables, such as spinach, broccoli, celery, kale, chard and beet greens, and also be sure to have some fruit each day.

If the menu still seems too restrictive, you can find manufactured rice-based foods in health food stores and natural food sections of supermarkets that will fit into the diet. Gluten-free cereals and frozen rice waffles that contain no artificial ingredients or refined sugars are a nice addition if you start having some real difficulty eating only fruit, vegetables and rice.

Adding a high-quality milk thistle supplement is beneficial because this herb aids in liver function. If you are flushing out a lot of toxins, your liver will be getting a workout.

Effects

The main focus of this diet is to provide great nutrition and eliminate all the foods that contain artificial ingredients or pesticide/herbicide residue, and foods that are difficult to digest or have a tendency to cause sensitivity or allergies. This includes all processed and refined foods, all types of meat and other animal products, wheat, legumes and soy. It is also important to avoid coffee and other caffeinated beverages, and alcohol.

After seven days, many stored toxins will have been eliminated, and a person should be feeling more energetic and healthier in general.

Expert Insight

A number of nutritional experts such as Dr. Andrew Weil state that a detox diet is not very effective for various reasons. These physicians and other researchers believe that toxins actually do not build up in the body as alternative health practitioners claim, and that fasting or cleansing can result in rapid water loss and the loss of muscle tissue. Some people overeat after a cleansing diet because they feel deprived and excessively hungry.

These researchers do, however, typically agree that when not taken to extremes of fasting, the components of this diet are healthful and beneficial, and can help introduce people to the basic components of a healthy nutritious diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables and avoidance of high-fat, high-sugar, processed and refined foods.

Resources

• The debate about the effectiveness of cleansing diets