MetaChat - The Lemonade Diet

You can't see me right now, but I'm doing my "skeptical eyebrow" look. It looks similar to this (on the right), only more skeptical.

posted by CitrusFreak12 26 February | 00:24

I can imagine. It sounds nuts, but I think a little fast would be good for me. I've fasted in the past and it was nice. I'm sure that I'm not going to do it for a month or anything... I love food too much to leave it for that long.

posted by youngergirl44 26 February | 00:47

Go for it.
i want someone to do that liver flush thing so we can see the pretty stones.

posted by ethylene 26 February | 01:25

Wait, isn't some enema epsom salt laxative thing suppose to be involved?

posted by ethylene 26 February | 01:28

Any diet that talks about cleansing or detoxifying seems questionable to me.

posted by arse_hat 26 February | 01:52

Seems to me that this would be really bad for your teeth. o_0

posted by taz 26 February | 02:01

The Detox Myth.

posted by TheophileEscargot 26 February | 02:09

Regarding the teeth thing: Lay That Lemon Down.

posted by taz 26 February | 02:31

old Ubyssey¹ article from my friend Duncan, about his experience on the cleanse.

footnotes:
1) The Ubyssey is UBC's student-run newspaper; the name is halfway between UBC and Odyssey, and pronounced like Odyssey with the stress on the first syllable.

posted by heeeraldo 26 February | 02:32

anyway, I've also been considering this, not so much for the detox as much as to reconsider my relationship with food and also make a fresh start with better eating habits, especially in conjunction with my list of "food sensitivities", which are like allergies but they give me indigestion and fuck with my energy levels instead of me dying.

let us know how it goes?

posted by heeeraldo 26 February | 02:37

Detox is a myth? Oh. I wanted to do a detox/fast right now as I've been mysteriously bloating (water) and have tummy aches and massive headaches every day. Clearly something's wrong and I blame the tummy-flu and my seriously bad pasta&breadpasta&morebread with cheese on top habit for the past two months. I've never done a proper detox though so I've gotten so far as to start the day with plain white fil (a type of yoghurt) and juice and a tall glass of water+apple cider vinegar in the mornings. What should I be drinking the rest of the day?

posted by dabitch 26 February | 04:21

feeling blergh and then feeling better after giving your digestion a rest for a bit isn't a myth, dabitch - whatever makes you feel good, and all that - but it's my understanding that people do object to the term 'detox' because no-one seems to be able precisely to name the toxins involved.

posted by altolinguistic 26 February | 04:40

And Ben Goldacre in TheophileEscargot's first link says it far better than I ever could.

posted by altolinguistic 26 February | 04:43

Ah, yes I just read that. I've been bad lately, now I'm all fruits and juices good for a while and will try not to go back to pasta&bread&cheese bad again.

posted by dabitch 26 February | 05:00

dabitch? Ummmm... are you sure Perle didn't order a brother/sister? :)

posted by taz 26 February | 05:02

I've done both the Master Cleanse (3x) and liver flushes. Yep. A kook here. I never heard of this "lemonade diet" though - I did the original Master Cleanse (lemons, maple syrup, cayenne pepper), as laid down by the Man, Stanley Burroughs, in the 1970s. His whole Master Cleanse book is here if you want to read it, and there's a good support forum here, just to read what others are saying about it.

The MC is fucking awesome. I can't believe someone named CitrusFreak isn't a bit more open-minded to something that embraces lemons in such a good way ;P

The liver flushes gave me the most gorgeous skin EVAR. But they're nasty as hell and I doubt I would ever do another one.

Of course you should stop smoking while you do it, yg, if you can. The first time I did the cleanse I did it for 15 days and lost 25 lbs, although I wasn't doing it to lose weight. I kept it all off by eating better afterwards. It's weird that it now seems to be called a diet, since I don't think it should really be practiced for weight loss, although that does happen. I think of it more as a cleanse. And it is.

You can email me if you have any questions or anything - iconomy at gmail.

posted by iconomy 26 February | 07:16

I don't believe in that type of "fast", but if I want to start eating "clean" again, I have to spend a day doing pretty much nothing but fruit and vegetable juices before I quite craving carbs. What's that about?

posted by lleachie 26 February | 08:06

Iconomy's got it - the Master Cleanse and the 'lemonade diet' are one in the same. Thanks for the links.

not so much for the detox as much as to reconsider my relationship with food and also make a fresh start with better eating habits, especially in conjunction with my list of "food sensitivities", which are like allergies but they give me indigestion

Very well said, heeeraldo!

posted by youngergirl44 26 February | 08:21

I think it's not a bad idea, yg. I've done something similar when my eating habits got really bad or when I just couldn't figure out what I was hungry for. Definitely try not to smoke--or try to severely limit yourself to, say, two cigarettes a day--while you do it.

The best part about that lemonade is it's good warm, too, which is important in this weather.

posted by crush-onastick 26 February | 08:47

The liver flushes gave me the most gorgeous skin EVAR.

That involves oil doesn't it? Some people on the Shangri-la diet also report softer skin. It involved taking a couple of tablespoons of olive oil each day.

posted by DarkForest 26 February | 08:49

not so much for the detox as much as to reconsider my relationship with food and also make a fresh start with better eating habits

That's the perfect attitude, and why I did it as well. It's just the gateway some people need to kickstart a healthier way of eating. It really worked for me - cleared out the mental sludge and made me forget how much I "needed" pasta and bread. After the cleanse, the simplest food tasted the most amazing.

DarkForest, that's a good point. I do eat olive oil on a daily basis though, and never saw results like that. It was kind of astounding...like I had new skin, or baby skin or something.

posted by iconomy 26 February | 08:56

how long do you plan on doing it? are you going to blog your progress? I have started that one a couple of times but never made it more than a few days. I didn't do the dieters tea though that stuff is a serious about letting loose the bowels. I did grow a fondness for the lemonade but without the syrup, lemon and cayenne was suprisingly good. I should get my but in gear and do it with you!

posted by meeshell 26 February | 09:02

Yeah. Put me down in the skeptical column.

I absolutely don't doubt you feel good afterwards, and of course you're going to lose weight: you're barely taking in any calories! The skepticism is for the abovementioned "toxins" (which are... what? exactly?) and by the way, how exactly is this "cleansing your liver?" The little stone things are just undigested food and gall bladder detritus, nothing from your liver.

posted by gaspode 26 February | 09:03

iconomy, how did you function day to day when doing the MC? I might think about trying it if I didn't think it would interfere with my ability to work. I couldn't handle four days of no carbs without becoming ill.

posted by amro 26 February | 09:59

Just about anything has carbs in it (except some animal products like meat, cheese, butter etc) , or did you mean starchy carbs? Veggies and fruit are loaded with carbs. Maple syrup has lots of carbs - about 14 carbs per tablespoon. Lemon juice also has a few carbs per spoonful as well. So if you have an 8 oz serving prepared according to the directions you're getting approx. 35-40 grams of carbs.

Everyone's different. I loved it, others hated it and felt like crap. It's not for everyone.

posted by iconomy 26 February | 10:23

I'd love to know how this works for someone who spends an hour or more a day weightlifting at the gym. Trainer after trainer has put me at 3,000 calories or so based on my athletic performance, and while I like the idea of burning off that last little bit of puppy fat, I think my body would eat itself if I tried this.

posted by mykescipark 26 February | 10:35

I once did a juice fast for three or four days. My skin got gorgeous (and I wasn't eating any oils, just fresh fruit and vegetable juices), and I started to understand the high that anorexics talk about. It also made me feel loopy, and within a week of stopping it I gained about 10 pounds.

My body's not so happy when I fuck with my metabolism. :-(

posted by occhiblu 26 February | 10:37

The link says 8 to 10 glasses of lemonade per day, each glass with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup.

According to nutritiondata.com a tablespoon of maple syrup has 52 kcal, 13g carbohydrate (12g of which is sugar).

So per day you're consuming:
782 to 1,040 kcal
208g to 260g carbohydrates
192g to 240g sugar

1000 kcal per day is pretty reasonable for a woman on a diet, so it's not too bad in terms of calories.

There are no official RDAs for carbs and sugar. This page suggests 130g would be a reasonable limit for carbs. This suggest 40g per day for sugar.

Now, I don't think a short time on this diet will do any harm, and it will almost certainly help lose weight.

But this is a very high-carb, high-sugar diet. The upper end is more than half a pound of sugar per day. (240g is 0.53 lbs)

posted by TheophileEscargot 26 February | 10:37

Haven't read any of the comments in this thread except Youngergirl's reply to my Skeptic Eyebrow. I'll read the thread in a moment, but I just wanted to ask this:

The Lemonade Diet
It sounds nuts, but I think a little fast would be good for me.

I'm not doctor, but doesn't fasting lower one's metabolism? Your body is all "shit I need to conserve because apparently we're not eating!" and so losing weight becomes sort of the opposite of what your body wants to do, especially once you end the fast and start eating again.

posted by CitrusFreak12 26 February | 10:48

I'm not doctor, but doesn't fasting lower one's metabolism?

In general, yes, and I really think the whole obesity "epidemic" has been caused by an insistence that people diet. You starve your body, your body's more likely to hold onto every calorie you give it so you don't waste away.

But it sounds like youngergirl's not doing it to lose weight, just to get some perspective on food and give her digestive system a bit of a break.

posted by occhiblu 26 February | 10:51

iconomy, I worded that last comment in a confusing way. What I meant was: I did the Atkins induction thing for four days and got sick as a result of low blood sugar. So I figure, if I couldn't handle that, I probably wouldn't do well on any other severely restrictive diet or unbalanced diet (although blood sugar wouldn't be an issue with this one). I was just wondering if you had trouble concentrating/working/functioning on it. Sounds like you didn't, though.

posted by amro 26 February | 10:57

If it makes you happy, do it, but it looks like snake oil to me. When I read the phrase, "emit a lot of toxins" my BS meter goes off the scale. Which toxins? How? Through what mechanism?

When I read this, "I did experience around 10 pounds decrease after 14 days". I think that this is just plain unhealthy. A bunch of that was probably water weight from the "salt water cleanse", but generally speaking you shouldn't lose more than 1/2 pound to 1 pound per week (this came from my MD).

And if you really want to "cleanse" (and when I say, "cleanse" I mean completely void your intestines with nuclear force), you're probably better off using a medical grade product that contains a balance of electrolytes so you don't make yourself very ill. And before you do, consider reading Dave Barry's column on getting a colonoscopy. I've had one and let me tell you, the he's soft-pedaling the effects of the prep.

posted by plinth 26 February | 11:24

A friend of mine did the Master Cleanse (or should I say she tried it) but gave it up after four or five days because she found the laxative tea stuff in the morning was a real problem. She said it's not a regime she could ever follow whilst trying to make it out the door to work every day.

But if you have three weeks' vacation time and can stay close to a bathroom, it might be worth a try.

posted by essexjan 26 February | 12:25

The lemonade diet sounds like most wasteful thing ever created in the hysterical world of weight loss. First of all, the least malignant affect is that you are training your body to stray away from unsweetened water (which is the BEST thing to drink when you are trying to lose weight), and when you finish the fad diet, you will still crave sweet drinks like soda and syrupy juices chock full of calories -- which just lead to more cravings because your blood sugar is crashing and peaking repeatedly.

Lemon juice on an empty stomach? By midnight, be prepared for your stomach to be totally sour & upset.

Also, herbal laxative tea??? Yeah, way to encourage someone to cultivate a laxative dependency.

I'm not even gonna start with the salt water drink. I weep for your sodium levels. With the salt water vs. lemon acid, you're creating a system of your body binging and purging WATER WEIGHT ONLY. Imagining two weeks of binging and purging all that water makes me cry.

Why don't you just join a gym or something? Something a bit more sustainable.

posted by scala di seta 26 February | 13:25

I guess count me among the skeptics. This seems like those magic Asian chi whatever pads they sell on late night TV that you put on the bottom of your feet that magically draw out the toxins. Through your feet. *rolls eyes*

Maybe I'm just grumpy because it seems like your typical quick fix promises. The fact is, eating right is hard work. Changing your relationship with food is hard work. I've been on a sensible diet + exercise regime for about a month now (and have lost 5 lbs so far, yay!) I've done it so far using thedailyplate.com to track what I'm eating and my exercise. No gimmicks, just eating less, eating better, drinking lots of water, and exercise.

Anyway, this is rambly but if you think a fast would do you good in terms of making a new start towards eating healthy, that seems reasonable. But a fast doesn't require salt water and lemonade and maple syrup. Anyway, just be careful about expecting too much. Also don't fast for too long, you'll just put your body in starvation mode and your metabolism will slow down a lot. Good luck!

On preview: "1000 kcal per day is pretty reasonable for a woman on a diet, so it's not too bad in terms of calories." I disagree. I'm a small lady (5'1", 118 lbs, small frame) and to maintain my weight given a fairly sedentary lifestyle is probably around 1800 cal. To lose a lb of fat requires a calorie deficit of about 3500 cals, so at a safe level of losing weight (1 lb per week) I am aiming for about 1300 cal per day. If I go to the gym, I eat even more. I think 1000 cals would be way too little for most people and would put your body into a mode of majorly slowing down your metabolism because you aren't even consuming enough for your basic metabolic functions. Plus almost all the calories would be sugar/carbs. No fats, no protein = bad.

posted by misskaz 26 February | 14:26

Aw man, this thread turned into a referendum on the whole lemonade diet thing. The original post sure wasn't phrased to invite that. :(

Anyway, I hope it works for you, yg, and that you get what you want out of it. I don't think I could ever do it. I'm curious about how it turns out. Good luck!

posted by mudpuppie 26 February | 14:54

Aww, I'm sorry if I didn't sound supportive. I hope it works for you youngergirl but please just be careful and pay attention to what your body is telling you. I too would be curious to see how it turns out - I once read a daily blog of a woman that went on a juice fast and it was pretty interesting.

posted by misskaz 26 February | 15:23

From the linked article:

Peel the lemon skin and add a little bit to your drink. (The skin may contain artificial color; make sure you peel the yellow skin surface).

Who the hell is selling artificially colored lemons? WTF?

posted by me3dia 26 February | 19:06

Wow. Lots happened when I was at work.

To clarify, I titled the post using the word 'diet' because that (or the 'master cleanse') is what it's referred to. I'm not tauting this as the new South Beach or Atkins. I'm not even doing it to lose weight. I'm just using the word 'diet' because I'm going to be drinking peppered lemonade instead of my regular diet of pasta and pizza and whatever else. :)

One of the people I know that has done the MC still drinks the stuff from time to time - when she needs to settle any lower tummy troubles. I have lower tummy troubles a lot, and I've tried the lemonade to settle things and it worked. So I'd like to go for the full thing and see what happens.

I wanted to start today - I had a big jug of lemonade that I took to work with me - but I'm starting to feel sick and am running a slight fever. So no fasting or lemonade diet for me right now. If I'm feeling ok on Monday, I'll probably start then. I will certainly update you guys with whatever happens or doesn't happen.

This seems like those magic Asian chi whatever pads they sell on late night TV that you put on the bottom of your feet that magically draw out the toxins. Through your feet.

I love that commercial, misskaz! The running joke with our friends is that you can stick the patches all over your body if you need to sober up quickly. Detox, get it? He he he

posted by youngergirl44 26 February | 19:19

That artificial color thing threw me off too, me3dia. But I passed right over it since I don't like citrus peels.

posted by youngergirl44 26 February | 19:20

26 February 2008