Daily Diet: The Master Cleanse

Gossip sites, news sites, and diet sites are all reporting on the latest trend in health: Master Cleanse. Recently undertaken by power couple Demi and Ashton, this liquid-only diet is severely restrictive, difficult to maintain, and is designed to be followed for at least ten days. The purpose is to detoxify the body, clearing the colon, and revitalizing your health.

Detoxification can be an emotionally painful process, as clearing your body of toxins can make you feel physically tired, mentally confused, irritable, and unhappy. But once you rid your body of the poisons living inside, you will feel more alert, alive and happy.

There are three steps to the Master Cleanse detox diet: Ease In, Lemonade Diet, Ease Out. Initially, you “ease in” to the Cleanse with three days of diet modification. You start on day one with only live food, a 40:60 mix of fruits and vegetables; no dairy, meat, or processed foodstuffs. On the second day, you rely on juicing fruits and veggies and having vegetable-based soups, preparing for a liquid-only Cleanse. Day three consists of fresh-squeezed orange juice (mixed with maple syrup for additional energy).

The second step is the Lemonade Diet. For a minimum of ten days, you drink only a formulaic Master Cleanse lemonade mixture—made with organic grade B maple syrup, fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice, and cayenne pepper added to spring, distilled, or purified water. It is recommended that you drink six to twelve glasses of this every day. No food at all and only naturally non-caffeinated herbal teas allowed to supplement the lemonade mixture. In addition, you take a daily laxative and prepare a specially formulated saltwater flush.

You can and probably will experience a number of issues during these ten days, most notably cravings (not unusual with any diet), fatigue (due to reduced calorie consumption and the detox process), irritability, physical discomfort (purging those toxins is a hard process), and hot bowel movements. Both the irritability and physical discomfort in the early stages can be partially due to caffeine withdrawal. All of these symptoms may come and go during the Cleanse and as you reintroduce foods to your body.