Thinking about getting into a green-juice regime to help you lose those extra pounds you got during winter?
Before doing it you should have an idea of how your body will react to being deprived of proteins, carbs and fat for several days… and all this while consuming under 1000 calories per day.
Starting off, I’m pretty sure your first question will be “what on Earth are green juices?”. Long story short, green juices are any of the thousands of juice recipes containing only fruits, vegetables and some roots. These can be with a juice extractor o simply cold-pressed.
Right from the first sip, the hunger signals your brain sends are answered by a wave of sugar coming from the fruits in the juice; this makes your pancreas secrete insulin, which is responsible for transporting the sugar – appearing in your blood as glucose – to the cells.
Around 30 minutes later, the concentration of glucose on your blood stream begins to drop as cells are absorbing it, so you might start feeling a bit dizzy. Meanwhile, as your body is calorie-deprived because your diet includes only juice, your body starts battling for more glycogen (a fast energy source stored in muscles and liver) instead of using the stored energy we were focusing on: that stored in fat.
After a couple of days following this regime, every time we take a sip of juice our insulin levels soar to the sky just to crash afterwards. Our glycogen reserves are almost depleted, and a feeling of weakness starts to set in.
Before starting a Detox diet you should have an idea of how your body will
react to being deprived of proteins, carbs and fat for several days.
Consuming half (or less than half) of our daily caloric needs will make our body run to get some energy from two main sources: triglycerides, which is fat contained in the blood; and proteins, taken straight out the muscles. So, yes, you might have guessed it: a crash diet dependent only on juices will make you lose muscle mass, even if you’re going daily to the gym. Add to this the fact that proteins taken from your muscles will break down into ammonia and uric acid and their levels on your blood will rise, causing your kidneys to overwork in order to detox your from your detox regime.
When your body is at last using body fact as fuel, elements such as ketone and ketone bodies will be produced. Around three days after starting you regime, your brain will not be happy at all: the lack of food is making it enter into a hunger-mode due to the ketones. And although ketones work, just imagine them as bad quality gasoline: you won’t be working at the usual pace and you will be confused and grumpy. Also, you brain will miss the amino acids, basic for neurotransmitters and in charge of keeping our mood in check, so, depression can be a side-effect if you were already prone to it.
Now, let’s think about all that sugar you had been consuming for the past few days. Will it just be washed away? No, actually it will favor water accumulating into your intestines resulting in diarrhea, which is usually mistaken as “improved digestion”. After 4 days of a juice only diet, your intestines will feel ignored and so the villi – the structures in charge of absorbing nutrients – will begin to shut down, making diarrhea worse and leaving you one step away from dehydration and permanent damage to your intestinal flora.
After enduring a week of a juice-only diet and finally completing your “detox” treatment, you body be in defense mode and start converting everything you eat – even the healthiest of foods – right into body fat. This is only logical, as our body wants to be prepared in case we face another nutritional deficiency and so, our “fat burning detox” really amounted to nothing.
So, what about exercise? Surely we can solve some of the issues or detox regime caused by working out? Well, actually is going to be harder: remenber out body started burning muscle as an energy source on day 2 of our detox program? Well, that muscle is still missing and now we have a different fat-muscle ratio, with has altered our metabolism and will make calories harder to burn.
So, what’s the best for our body?
We definitely must no avoid juices, but a juice-only diet has no positive impact in our body and has far away from helping us reduce body fat. If detoxing was the goal, remember we have a real state-of-the-art detox system already: kidneys, liver, lungs and even skin will help us detox in a natural way.
The best option for losing body fat is, and will always be, learning to eat better: balanced food with no nutrient restrictions instead of starving and drinking only juice, taking pills o miracle shakes. Remember, healthy diets will always include lean proteins, complex carbs, healthy fats and fiber; for example, some chicken, rice, avocado slices, and a green leaf salad with nuts and strawberries.
We do need to learn to understand and care for our body: changes won’t be easily noticed on day 3 or even in week 2, but the benefits will last a life time; so, remember to take on a diet because everybody is doing it, and rather try and eat healthier, get to a healthy weight and the benefits will amaze you!
Article written by:
MNC Andrea G. Prunera
Medical license: 7847059
Phone: (444) 811 5589
Facebook: Nutriologa Andrea Pruneda
