Juicerexia
With the introduction of new diets, abuse is almost always bound to happen and health concerns are raised by professionals. The juice-only diet is a relatively new fad that is starting to gain ground here owing to its popularity among Hollywood celebrities and its claims of health benefits and weight loss (which I do not deny).
I am a huge fan of juicing. It’s a great way to detox the liver and cleans the body of toxins, but sometimes people just take it a bit too far – thus a new term has been coined to describe such a condition: “juicerexia”.
When juicing with fruits and vegetables, either fresh or cold pressed (as in crushing them to squeeze out juice), we lose the fiber content and sometimes some of the vitamins that are found in the nutrient-dense skins. So depending on a juice-only diet for more than three days is just crazy.
You might lose weight – your body being dependent on your fat stores as the sole source of energy – but you would also lose the body stores of essential proteins, free fatty acids, minerals and some vitamins, without replenishing them, which would lead to your body systems shutting down and the total opposite of health.
Some people avoid this with supplementation of pills. However, embracing a juice-only diet for long periods of time leads to a substantial loss of weight, resulting in the so-called juicerexia. It is an obsession with the juicing lifestyle – with intermittent phases of binge eating, leading to a major loss in muscle mass, weakness, frailty, weaker bones and osteoporosis. You will be more prone to bone fractures, loss of mental clarity and a whole lot of chronic nutrient deficiency diseases.
So yeah, you would get super skinny, but not at all healthy. So don’t over do it.
When going on juice cleanses or a detox, substitute your snacks and two of the main meals a day with juice mixes and eat a single raw fruit and vegetable meal for just three days to replenish your body stores of vitamins. However, if you want to go further, or would love to try juicing for fat loss, consult a nutritionist to set up a diet program that won’t make your body wasted.
Keep always in mind that we are meant to eat solid foods. We’ve been blessed with an incredible digestive system that can process the foods eaten, extract the needed nutrients and dispose of the wastes. Just stick with a balanced diet of healthy choices with regular exercise and you won’t even think of dieting.
Stay healthy everybody!
WE SAID THIS: Speaking of fad diets, does the fasting-feasting method work?
