While healthy eating is our birthright, for many of us it seems like taking the plunge into eating a whole foods-based diet is the equivalent to traveling to some distant land. But it doesnt have to be such a scary or foreign experience.

In my work as a Functional Medicine Doctor, my priority is to guide each patient through a safe, simple, realistic and pleasurable (yes!) transition into healthy eating. Because whole foods-based diets remove all the sugary, fatty, chemical-laden, artificial stuff from the diet, they sometimes get called a detox or a cleanse.

Why is detoxification important?

When our bodies become toxic, it means that our natural means of ushering out metabolic waste from normal human metabolism, environmental pollution, and what has become known as the Standard American Diet (or SAD diet funny, right!) have exceeded the threshold for what the bodys innate detoxification system can tolerate on its own. With this toxic load, every system in the human body can become affected. From our head to our toes and everything in between, toxicity makes us sick!

How do you know if you are toxic and need to properly cleanse?

Usually a constellation of complaints helps you determine whether or not you are toxic and to what extent you need to cleanse. Some examples of what might infer a toxic system are:

How long should you stay on a cleanse?

Typical cleanses that harness our bodys natural processes for filtering and removing waste tend to be gentle and can therefore be tolerated for longer periods of time than more extreme protocols. A safe cleanse is one which doesnt make you starve yourself or take fancy pills, potions or expensive drinks.

Safety means allowing the body to do what it wants to do naturally, with a little assistance from some guided healthy eating, appropriate supplements and relevant lifestyle modifications. I usually have my patients do a cleanse for 7 days to 6 weeks, or even longer, depending on their particular needs. You should work with a trained medical provider to help you determine what length of time is right for you.

How can you prepare for a cleanse?

Like we would plan for any big trip to a new destination, we need to prepare, plan and set out some main goals for our journey. And by the way, as in all travels, its always a good idea to leave some room for the serendipitous excursions to occur. When handled properly, they can be the best part of a trip! So how can we plan for a safe and simple detoxification protocol?

Take some basic measurements before you begin so that you can track your progress as you go through your program. For example, if weight loss is your goal, measure your waist, hips and weight. If, migraines are an issue, determine the duration, intensity and frequency they currently plague you. Keep a journal, which will help you in more ways than one.

Common Symptoms of Withdrawal from a Toxic Lifestyle

The following symptoms are very common at the beginning of the program and should dissipate within the first few days of your program. Dont worry, these symptoms are indicative that your body is eliminating toxins and are a good sign!

These symptoms can occur for a number of reasons. First, eliminating food allergies and un-junking the diet causes reactions similar to withdrawal from other addictive substances like caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, cocaine or heroin. Note: We are often most addicted to the foods we are allergic to! Getting off those allergens can cause a brief, flu-like achy syndrome that may last 1-3 days. Second, toxins in our digestive tract may make us feel ill if we dont eliminate them. The best way to get relief from these symptoms is to follow the recommendations below.

How to Avoid Withdrawal Symptoms

Those who consume the most caffeine, alcohol, and sugar, and those who have the most food allergies, will have the most difficulty initially. Symptoms usually disappear after 3-4 days. It is best to slowly reduce your intake of caffeine, alcohol, sugar, white flour, and over-the-counter medications (except as directed by your physician) a week or two before you start your program.

While safe, these types of cleanses can still be stressful on the body and mind so remember to relax. Actively engaging your parasympathetic nervous system helps restore your energy, which your body needs to replenish itself. Meditation, deep breathing or any calming activity is good.

Eliminate all refined sugars, flours, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, gluten and any other addictive substance. By allowing certain triggers to stay in the diet, the body stays on the vicious cycle of cravings and addictive behavior. Reset your biology to eliminate all triggers.

Keep a journal and track your symptoms. You should feel better in 3-7 days. If you do not feel well at this point, please exercise caution and check in with your doctor.

Tune in to your body and listen to the cues it provides you. A cleanse is a great journey to learn more about understanding how to operateyour very own owner's manual!

Read the rest here:
Detox Made Safe and Simple | The Dr. Oz Show

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Weight Loss Overview Studieshttp://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/66/...http://www.jstor.org/stable/25457080?...Low Carbhttp://annals.org/aim/article/717452/...http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/...https://login.medscape.com/login/sso/...http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/...http://content.onlinejacc.org/article...High Proteinhttp://www.pnas.org/content/110/26/10...https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...Metabolic Slowinghttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2...Biggest Loserhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/hea...White Tonguehttp://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/wh...

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No Diet Is Suitable for Everyone - YouTube

Remember when the Atkins Diet was such a big deal in the 90s?

Even though Atkins was widely regarded as a fad, there are still numerous people around the world who swear by it.

The creator of Atkins alleges you can lose up to 15 pounds in the first two weeks alone - a startling claim considering that on average you cant lose more than one to two pounds per week safely on a diet.

Heres the thing, though. Even though the media may think Atkins was a fad, scientific studies show it really does work, as do similar low-carb diets.

Losing 15 pounds in two weeks isnt typical, but it is possible.

And even if you dont, odds are if you do a low-carb diet like Atkins properly, you will lose weight steadily and successfully.

In fact studies suggest low carb diets lose more weight and more fat mass than low fat diets (1)

But How Does It Work?

Since youve found your way to this page, its evident that you dont want to just hear that you can lose weight using a low carb diet. You want to know the science behind how it works.

That is a very smart attitude to take, because there are a lot of diets which are proven to help you lose weight, but not necessarily over the long term, and not necessarily in a healthy way.

You want to be sure that a low-carb diet is a safe, healthy approach before you dive in.

The truth is, there may not be just one mechanism that explains how low-carb diets work.

Scientists are still studying them, and they seem to offer a number of weight loss and overall health benefits (2).

These benefits all combine to help you achieve the weight loss success you are looking for.

Lets take a look at them now.

Test your knowledge now or come back after reading this article to check your learning:

Why Low Carb Works Infographic

Want to use this infographic on your blog? Just copy and paste the code below!

Please include attribution to AuthorityDiet.com with this graphic.

Low Dietary Carb Intake Reduces Insulin Levels

First, lets talk for a moment briefly about fat.

Fat is your bodys way of storing energy for long-term supply.

Your fat stores are a kind of emergency reserve fuel.

Your body does not store them for everyday use - you break into them when your food supplies are low (usually).

But you also break into them when you reduce your carbohydrate intake, even if you are otherwise eating plenty of food.

To explain why, we need to look at insulin (hormone) and blood sugar.

While insulin controls the serum nutrients circulating throughout our body, its principal action is on glucose (blood sugar).

Insulin has the job of telling your body to pull glucose out of your blood and burn it for energy.

The more carbohydrates you eat, the higher your blood glucose levels are going to be, and the more insulin is secreted to pull out this glucose.

Your blood glucose is your first source of energy to burn, before your fat.

That means when you are burning blood glucose for energy instead of fat, your fat stores remain untouched.

Your body always turns to those blood glucose stores first and falls back on your fat as a backup plan.

If you always provide your body with plenty of blood glucose in the form of dietary carbohydrates, you are simply never going to reach that point where you need to turn to your fat.

The backup plan remains simply that: a backup plan.

In this process, insulin inhibits fat burning (lipolysis) (3).

When you reduce your carbohydrate intake, two things happen:

Here is a graph of a comparison study on low carb diets for insulin levels over a 24 hour period (40):

But wait, it doesnt stop here.

Insulin also activates the production of fat (lipogenesis) of which a proportion will be stored (4)

So reducing insulin also reduces fat production and storage.

Multiple studies have demonstrated how low carb diets significantly reduce serum insulin levels (5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

KEY POINT: Reducing dietary carbohydrates directly reduces blood levels of insulin. Low insulin levels allow fat burning and high levels encourage fat production.

Most low-carb diets also tend to be high in protein.

This is something of a coincidence since there is nothing about carbohydrate intake which directly inhibits protein intake.

But when you eat less of one type of macronutrient (carbohydrate, protein, and fat), you have to replace it with another.

Most high-carb foods happen to be high in sugars and grains also happen to be low in protein.

It is common to replace carbohydrate-rich foods with protein-rich foods like eggs and meat. This boosts your overall protein intake.

As it turns out, in the majority of studies comparing the weight loss achieved from low carb vs low fat diets, the low carb diets have been protein rich.

Protein helps you lose weight through several mechanisms (10):

For one, satiety goes up and appetite goes down (11, 12).

Since you feel fuller and satisfied, you are less likely to overindulge. More on that shortly.

For another, your metabolism receives an overall boost, helping you burn more calories throughout the day (13, 14, 41)

Eating protein helps maintain muscle mass which supports our metabolism and calorie burning not only while we are working out, but also while we are resting.

Finally, if you work out with adequate protein intake, you can build muscle.

Increasing your muscle mass to fat ratio can increase your resting metabolism (15).

Keep in mind that this benefit is for those who incorporate resistance/strength training into their lives (16).

You cannot expect to build muscle mass without effort, simply by eating protein - you have to challenge your body physically .

If you do, you can look forward to burning more calories around the clock.

KEY POINT: Low carb diets tend to be high in protein. Protein has the benefit of increasing metabolism, increase satiety, reduce appetite and maintain muscle mass.

A Low Carb Diet Helps You Lose Water Weight

Coming back to that claim that you can burn 15 pounds in your first two weeks on phase 1 of the Atkins diet, how does that work?

Well, whether it works or not probably depends on how much water weight you have retained in your body.

If you have a good deal of water weight, you will probably notice a huge improvement in the first couple weeks, because a low-carb diet helps you shed that water weight rapidly

If you dont have much water weight, you will not notice such a huge change in the beginning, but that means you were just ahead of the curve to begin with.

There are two reasons that you lose water weight when you stop eating so many carbs.

When your insulin levels drop, your kidneys start excreting sodium (17).

This helps you shed your excess water weight, and also has the bonus of lowering your blood pressure (18).

The other reason is that glycogen binds water in your liver and muscles.

Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen (19).

Fewer carbohydrates in your body equate to less glycogen.

That means your body stops binding water in your muscles and liver and is free to release that water.

Even if you drop calories dramatically on a high-carb diet, this effect is not nearly as pronounced.

Dont worry; you dont need that water weight for anything. It literally is nothing more than excess weight.

A side benefit is that typically low carb dieters experience less bloating.

You may have heard people say, The low-carb diet does not actually work; it only drops your water weight, not your fat.

This is a misperception.

Low-carb does reduce your water weight, but it also helps you burn fat for reasons you are now starting to understand.

Read on to find out more.

KEY POINT: The rapid weight loss experienced in the first 2 weeks of low carb is explained by reduced insulin and glycogen which in turn causes the body to shed water.

One study (20) conducted on participants across a 4-week period on a series of different diets (low fat, low glycemic index, and low carbohydrate) found that a low-carb diet boosted energy expenditure at a rate of approximately 250 calories per day in comparison to other types of diets.

KEY POINT: If you have tried to lose weight by exercising, you know that burning an extra 250 carbs a day is quite a challenge, and can take up to an hour of moderate intensity exercise. Low carb can burn those calories without the exercise.

Low Carb Makes You Feel Full and Satisfied, so You Are Less Likely to Overeat

There are a lot of reasons why people overeat, but one of them is feeling hungry even though you have had plenty of food.

Some types of food are more satiating than others.

Protein is one such food (20, 21) and may have a direct effect on weight loss (22, 23).

Many people overeat because they are not getting enough protein in their diets.

Even though they are eating plenty of calories, they still feel a need to eat more.

This forces them to take in additional calories which they have no hope of burning.

The result? They put on weight.

If you have ever tried a low-fat diet, you have probably noticed the focus is on calorie restriction.

But you have to get energy from somewhere.

That is why a low-fat diet can become uncomfortable and even dangerous past a certain level.

With low-carb, you do not focus on restricting calories, and you get plenty of energy.

You get full at an appropriate time because you are eating protein-rich foods.

These foods help you feel satiated when you have eaten the right amount of calories.

Ketosis also has an impact (24). When you are on a ketogenic diet, you may only feel hungry for 1-2 meals per day.

Research also shows that low carb diets may regulate ghrelin and leptin (25, 26). These two hormones regulate your appetite.

This not only makes a low-carb diet a healthy, natural alternative to a low-fat diet but also helps you break bad habits and gauge correctly when you are really full.

It also makes a low-carb diet easier to stick with than a low-fat diet.

In fact, many research studies which compare low-carb and low fat dieters take this into account.

More:
Why do Low Carb Diets Work? Heres 6 Scientific Reasons!

If you're aiming to live longer, get smarter, and lose belly fat, The Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) is your be-all and end-all solutionat least according to researchers from the University of Southern California say. In the study, researchers analyzed yeast (to look at the effect of fasting on a cellular level), mice (to provide details on fastings lifelong effects), and humans (to see if the yeast and mouse studies were applicable) on dietary restrictions.

In the pilot human trial, 19 subjects underwent three cycles of the FMD (with a specific protein-carb-fatmicronutrient composition that slashed caloric intake by 34 to 54 percent) once a month for five days. The other 25 days, participants went back to their regular eating habitsgood or badand, interestingly enough, all saw positive changes.They had fewer risk factors and biomarkers foraging, a decreased risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, andcancerwith no major adverse side effects.

It's about reprogramming the body so it enters a slower aging mode, but also rejuvenating it through stem cell-based regeneration, Professor Valter Longo said in a release. It's not a typical diet because it isn't something you need to stay on.

Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be dangerous, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body, Longo added.

You may recall some of the more ridiculous, strictest diet programs to gain popularity over the years. And if you dont, we did for you.

[RELATED1]

Cabbage Soup Diet

Just as it sounds, the premise of this seven-day diet is to eat as much cabbage soup as humanly possible, according to Weight Loss Resources. And as a treat, youre allowed additional foods. Like many other single-food diets, this is a quick-fix starvation plan that causes you to drop tons of water weight and muscle. You wont accomplish much after a week of eating primarily cabbage, except a newfound intimate relationship with your toilet.

Day 1 - Cabbage soup plus as much fruit as you like, excluding bananas Day 2 - Cabbage soup plus vegetables including 1 jacket potato with a little butter Day 3 - Cabbage soup plus fruit and vegetables excluding potatoes and bananas Day 4 - Cabbage soup plus up to eight bananas and as much skimmed milk as you like Day 5 - Cabbage soup plus up to 20 ounces of beef and up to six tomatoes Day 6 - Cabbage soup plus as much beef and vegetables (excluding potatoes) as you like Day 7 - Cabbage soup plus brown rice, vegetables (excluding potatoes) and unsweetened fruit juice

The Grapefruit Diet

The 80s were a strange decade. Lots of spandex and lots of fad diets, apparently. Coming in around 800 calories a day, this popular diet once involved eating half a grapefruit before every meal, drinking as much black coffee your nervous system can handle, the occasional piece of toast, and some protein (mainly boiled eggs), according to Weight Loss Resources. Fast forward to the 21st century, and its much more refined. Were informed. Now people eat half a grapefruit before every meal without changing their diet, and hope to lose about 3 pounds in three months.

The Russian Air Force Diet

Originally created to keep Soviet Union soldiers fit, the week-long diet is low in calories and incredibly strict (as you may have guessed), according to the Diet Channel. Youre encouraged to drink at least four glasses of water or diet soda a day. And youre allowed to season your meals with salt, pepper, herbs, vinegar, soy sauce, mustard, ketchup, even Worcestershire sauce. The catch? Finding a food youd actually top with one of these condiments. For breakfast, you have black coffee; lunch is two eggs and a tomato; and dinner is seven ounces of red meat with a green salad.

The hCG Diet

Have no clue what this is or what it stands for? Thats because hCG is a hormone found in the urineof pregnant women, according to Weight Loss Resources. Basically, youre restricted to 500 calories a day supplemented with an injection of this very hormone, or with oral hCG drops. The idea is that the hormone will trigger your body to mobilize or tap into the fat stores in your body to bring energy to an imaginary baby.

The Master Cleanse

Dont you get tired of chewing your food all the time? Apparently the people behind this cleanse did. According to their site, the liquid diet is supposed to supply you with a healthy amount of calories and nutrients, all while cleansing your body, giving your digestive system a rest, and letting your body heal naturally. Youll drink six to 12 glasses of a lemon-maple syrup-cayenne pepper concoction every day, followed by a laxative before bed, and another to start the day off with a bang.

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The Most Outrageous Restrictive Diets of All Time (And One ...