The concept of juice diets and cleanses has gained traction over the years, often touted as a quick fix for weight loss, detoxification, and overall health improvement. Among these, the 60-day juice diet plan, popularized by figures like Joe Cross, has garnered attention. This article delves into the intricacies of such plans, exploring their potential benefits, risks, and scientific validity, while also presenting a balanced perspective on incorporating juicing into a healthy lifestyle.
Understanding Juice Diets and Cleanses
A juice cleanse involves consuming only fruit and vegetable juices for a specific period. Advocates claim this approach removes toxins from the body and aids in weight loss. However, scientific evidence supporting these claims remains limited. Research even suggests potential risks, including health complications and the development of eating disorders, associated with liquid diets.
The Master Cleanse: A Variation
The Master Cleanse diet, created by Stanley Burroughs in 1941, is a liquid diet used to detoxify the body and promote weight loss. He proclaimed that the liquid cleanse was a healthy and natural way to flush the body of deadly toxins, pesticides, and other impurities and was originally intended to treat ulcers and act as a detox. The cleanse gained renewed popularity after Peter Glickman’s book “Lose Weight, Have More Energy, and Be Happier in 10 Days” was published in 2004.
The Master Cleanse diet must be followed strictly over a three- to 10-day period. It’s broken up into three phases: Ease In, the Lemonade Diet, and Ease Out. The Ease-In section isn’t technically required, but it’s recommended as a way to prepare your body for the rest of the diet. This first phase is divided into three days:
- Day 1: living foods, such as vegetables and whole grains
- Day 2: soup broths and fruit and vegetable juices
- Day 3: orange juice
The Lemonade Diet phase is the main component of the Master Cleanse. During this phase, you consume only a special “lemonade,” which is meant to be drunk six to 12 times per day, or whenever you’re hungry.
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The Master Cleanse lemonade is made up of:
- 2 tbsp. of organic lemon juice that must be freshly squeezed
- 2 tbsp. of organic grade B maple syrup (not imitation maple syrup, as it contains additives)
- 1/10 tsp. of ground cayenne pepper
- 10 oz. of filtered water
During the Lemonade Diet phase, you must also take either a nightly herbal laxative, which you can buy at a drug store, or a morning saltwater flush made up of water and sea salt. These are meant to induce daily bowel movements. The Ease-Out phase is essentially the Ease-In stage in reverse:
- Day 1: orange juice
- Day 2: soup broths and fruit and vegetable juices
- Day 3: living foods
Once the Master Cleanse has been completed, it’s important to wait at least 60 days before going on another cleanse. The diet is also sometimes referred to as the Lemon Detox Diet or the Maple Syrup Diet.
Joe Cross and the "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead" Phenomenon
Australian businessman Joe Cross tipped the scale at 310 pounds when he realized he needed to regain control of his life. His solution? Under the supervision of a doctor, Joe drank his way across the country while interviewing Americans about their diet and attitudes toward food. Following the film's success, Joe founded Reboot Your Life, a health and wellness company that helps people lose weight by teaching them how to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diets.
Joe Cross (born 30 May 1966) is an Australian entrepreneur, author, filmmaker, and plant-based diet advocate who promotes juicing. He is most known for his documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead in which he tells the story of his 60-day juice fast. Following the release of his documentary, Cross has published six books about juicing.
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In 2005, Cross weighed 140 kilograms (310 pounds) and suffered from an autoimmune condition, chronic urticaria, for which he had been taking medications such as the steroid prednisone for years. He spent his 30s trying traditional and non-traditional medicine to solve his illness and unsuccessfully tried various diets in fits and starts. His daily diet mainly consisted of processed foods. Cross was a smoker and consumed alcohol regularly. According to Cross, he believed that his eating habits had caused his illness and he wanted to change his lifestyle. He wanted to get off medication as he believed that the medication or doctors were not able to offer a cure for his condition. In 2005 when he was 39, the doctors told him that with his health, he would die early and he decided to consume only juice for 60 days.
Joe's Approach to Juicing
Under the supervision of his doctor and a team that monitored his blood work regularly, he started the juice fast in May 2005. For his juice fast, he decided to travel across America while talking to people about their attitudes toward food. He travelled in a truck with a cameraman, a sound guy, a juicer and a generator. He used an 80/20 rule, according to which he used 80 percent vegetables and 20 percent fruit in the juice that he made to avoid getting too much sugar into his system. Cross used a special juice that he prepared called the Mean Green Juice - a mixture of kale, apples, lemon, cucumber, celery and ginger. According to Cross, he felt groggy and unstable the first three to five days. However after consuming only juice for five days, he started feeling well both physically and mentally.
After 49 days, he lost 67 pounds (30 kg), his total cholesterol dropped from 204 to 135 and his LDL cholesterol went from 132 to 86. As of March 2013, Cross weighed 240 pounds (109 kg), a weight that he maintained for the previous five years. Cross does not recommend the diet as a long term solution and only recommends it as a reboot for the body. According to him, he took up the diet because he wanted a circuit breaker to stop what he was doing and not to adopt it as a permanent lifestyle. One of the misconceptions that Cross tries to correct is that people think he consumes nothing but juice.
The Documentary's Impact
Cross filmed his juice and travel through America, and released Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead in 2011. In the movie, while travelling, Cross meets people and talks to them about their eating habits. The movie features interview segments with people who were inspired to follow his example. He charts his progress with an itemized list of what day of the fast it is, what city and what state Cross is filming in, how much weight he's lost (both in pounds and kilograms) and what kind of medication he's taking. During his road-trip Cross meets and inspires Phil Staples, a morbidly obese truck driver from Sheldon, Iowa, in a truck stop in Arizona to try juice fasting.
The movie was originally called Death By Fat. Then it became Faster. The film has been credited with doubling the sales of Breville juicers since the documentary launched on Netflix in the US in July 2011. After completing work on Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, he continued to travel around the world to promote juicing and also plans to make a second movie about life after juicing. Cross released his first book titled Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead in 2011 followed by a second book titled Reboot with Joe Recipe Book (Plant-Based Recipes to Supercharge Your Life) in 2012. In February 2014, he released his book titled The Reboot with Joe Juice Diet: Lose Weight, Get Healthy and Feel Amazing. In this book, he shared the plan that he used for his juice fast and subsequent diet as well as stories of some other people who have lost weight with a juice fast.
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Potential Benefits of Juicing
Eating a plant-based diet is linked to lower risk of heart disease, stroke and some cancers. Juicing is a fun and easy way to add more fresh produce to your diet. Juicing floods the body with micronutrients that are easily digestible, so your body will get more of what it needs with less food. When you blend fruits and vegetables, you’ll get more fiber. That’s good for your digestion and can also help keep you full. Plus, it’s easy to add protein (like a scoop of nut butter or protein powder) to blended beverages. They also provide a way to enjoy smoothies, granola, coffee-based drinks and more with deeper nutrition.
Micronutrient Boost
Fruit and vegetable juices are high in nutrients and can play a crucial role in balanced diets. Micronutrients in our diet come from vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and beans. Just about everything else is a macronutrient - the chemicals in our diet that we are consuming way too much of.
Kidney Health
Many fruits and vegetables are rich in nutrients that can assist in the good working of the kidneys. Increasing fluid consumption can also be beneficial for kidney function.
Risks and Considerations
Juice-only diets can be dangerous to some people, so check with your doctor before starting a fast.
Lack of Scientific Evidence
The Master Cleanse Diet claims to help the body become healthier and more energized. Throughout the cleanse, toxins will naturally be removed from the body and weight will subsequently be lost. There’s also no scientific evidence supporting the claim that the cleanse helps to clear toxins out of the body. In fact, the body is designed to eliminate toxins on its own through the kidneys, liver, and lungs. This means people don’t necessarily need to go on cleanse diets to detoxify their bodies. The evidence to support the possible benefits of juicing tends to be anecdotal.
Nutritional Deficiencies
Due to the low caloric intake, people will lose weight on the Master Cleanse Diet. However, the diet only includes 600 to 1,200 calories per day, which is well below the recommended 2,000 calories for an average adult. In addition to being extremely low in calories, the cleanse is deficient in vital nutrients, such as protein, carbohydrates, essential fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. A person on a juice cleanse may not consume enough proteins or fats. Both of these are crucial to physical health, healing, and brain function. Eliminating food groups for extended periods may also lead to malnourishment.
Potential Side Effects
People often suffer the following while on the cleanse: headaches, dizziness, diarrhea, nausea. Severe caloric restriction is not sustainable for most people and rarely leads to long-term weight loss. It may also increase a person’s risk of other complications. In most cases, a person will return to their starting weight quickly once caloric restriction ends. Consuming an insufficient number of calories can cause a person to experience symptoms relating to low blood sugar, including fainting, weakness, dehydration, headaches, and hunger. If a juice cleanse includes laxatives or other methods of bowel stimulation, a person could lose too many nutrients in their stool. This can lead to dehydration and imbalanced electrolytes.
Kidney Problems
However, some foods are high in oxalate, a compound that can increase a person’s risk of kidney problems when consumed in high quantities. Foods high in oxalate include spinach and beets. People living with chronic kidney disease may be at risk of oxalate nephropathy. In rare cases, healthy people may also be at risk of this. Oxalate nephropathy is a condition in which the body cannot excrete enough oxalate through urine, causing it to build up in kidney tissue. In rare cases, this can cause kidney failure.
Unsustainable Weight Loss
The Master Cleanse is a crash diet that isn’t safe or sustainable. The cleanse is deficient in essential nutrients and calories, which puts the body in a state of starvation. This can reduce muscle tissue and destroy healthy bacteria that aid digestion and boost immunity. People can lose weight on this diet. However, they’ll most likely gain the weight again after this type of weight loss. Repeated periods of weight loss and gain can severely stress your body, particularly your cardiovascular system.
A 2017 review found that while juice cleanses may cause initial weight loss due to calorie restriction, they will lead to overall weight gain once a person resumes a full, healthful diet. Studies also show that weight loss from juice-based diets may be “physiologically harmful” to participants. Researchers have also observed links between liquid diet trends and eating disorders.
Impact on Gut Bacteria
Proponents claim that juice cleanses can alter a person’s gut bacteria. However, research shows that juice-only diets have a limited effect on gut bacteria composition.
Alternatives to Juice Cleanses
There are much healthier and more effective ways to lose weight that don’t involve long-term health risks. Someone wishing to lose or maintain a healthy weight and support their body’s natural processes can try the following alternatives:
Balanced Diet
Eating a balanced diet and staying adequately hydrated are the best ways to maintain a healthy weight and support the body’s removal of toxins.
Plant-Based Diets
Based on minimally processed foods, these diets are naturally rich in fruit and vegetables and are associated with reduced body weight. With good planning, a plant-based diet can provide all the nutrients necessary for good health.
Intermittent Fasting
This involves abstaining from eating for limited periods and eating a regular diet at other times. Reviews have linked intermittent fasting with weight loss and improvements in insulin sensitivity.
Juicing as Part of a Balanced Lifestyle
Despite claims, juice cleanses offer little to no proven health benefits and can pose real risks, including nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar spikes, and a slowed metabolism, which can actually hinder weight loss. Experts emphasize that our bodies already have effective detox systems and that the fiber and nutrients lost in juicing are essential for health.
Juice cleanses are often marketed as a way to ‘detox’ the body, boost energy, and promote quick weight loss,” says Michelle Routhenstein, a New York City-based cardiology dietitian at EntirelyNourished.com. Some juicing programs even claim to help “jump-start healthy habits,” “reset cravings,” or “get back on track after overeating,” says Gabby Zeagler, a weight loss dietitian and diabetes care specialist based in Brooklyn, New York.
Most experts will recommend a balanced, healthful diet instead.
The Importance of Fiber
Zeagler notes that you might be getting some extra vitamin C in your diet from drinking juice regularly, but you’d be much better off eating the whole fruit instead. Whole fruits and vegetables contain fiber, which is mostly lost during juicing,” she says. “Short term, you might start to feel fatigued or dizzy because you’re getting fewer calories and not enough protein or complex carbs to sustain your energy levels throughout the day,” Zeagler says. Fruit juice, in particular, is high in simple sugars, which can cause unnecessary blood sugar spikes. This can make you cranky and lead to cravings, Zeagler says.
Long-Term Considerations
For juice cleanses that are longer than a few days, Zeagler notes that you might start to lose some muscle due to the lack of protein. “Your body needs to get energy from somewhere, so it will start to break down muscle for energy,” she says. “Your body will try to preserve energy as best as it can, so that when you start to eat regularly again, it may hang on to those calories a bit tighter,” Zeagler says. Both she and Zeagler recommend staying away from them and instead focusing on a balanced eating pattern that includes whole foods, plenty of vegetables, lean proteins, healthy fats, and fiber-rich carbs. Zeagler emphasizes the importance of small habits that lead to sustained weight loss. “Weight gain doesn’t happen overnight, and weight loss that lasts doesn’t either,” Zeagler says. “It’s not flashy. It’s not the quick fix people want to hear.