Juice fasting is an often misunderstood practice and can be very detrimental if not approached correctly. Promises such as "lose 5 pounds in 5 days!" and "get glowing skin!" are often bandied around detox and fasting programs, leading you to jump too quickly into a fast without prior preparation, sufficient knowledge and managed expectations to ensure you have a safe, enjoyable and beneficial fasting experience.

While the promises above are certainly achievable through fasting, I dont encourage any regime which blindly promises physical results without real education and guidance on the fasting process.

When used intelligently and carefully, juice fasting can be a beautiful, nourishing tool to improve your health, clarity and sense of connection to self and your spiritual life. It can allow you to go deeper into cleansing your body, breaking down acidic waste matter and rejuvenating your body at a cellular level, which is then reflected in the health and vitality of all of you.

Before you try juice fasting, you need to understand how it works and when to use it. What is juice fasting?

It is a certain period of time when all you typically consume only liquids, specifically water, herbal teas, fresh fruit and vegetable juices and strained vegetable broth.

Just as important is what you are not consuming when fasting -- any liquids which will tax the body such as coffee, caffeinated teas, milk, soda, pasteurized juice, protein powder mixes, diet drinks and so on. Solid or blended foods are also not consumed as the fiber content activates digestion which is avoided during fasting. Why juice and what types of juice?

When you juice your fruits and vegetables, you remove the fiber and drink only the liquid which contains the organic hydration, nutrients, vitamins and enzymes from the plant food. Although you do need fiber in your diet, going for a certain period of time without it will give your body a chance to spend less energy on digestion.

Around 70% of your energy every day is spent on digestion alone, so when you are eating 3 meals a day plus snacks, you are rarely giving your body a chance to direct energy to deeply cleansing the body and drawing up old acidic waste that is likely causing a whole host of symptoms.

If you suffer from headaches, constipation, diarrhea, skin troubles, fatigue, irritability, excess weight, bloating or any other number of symptoms, your body needs some help to cleanse. The intelligent application of fasting is a brilliant way of helping you to do this.

Enjoy plenty of fresh vegetable juices, particularly green vegetable juices (see recipe below), with a touch of fruit to sweeten the juice and ensure it is still delicious. You can also use sweeter vegetable such as carrot, beetroot and bell pepper to add sweetness.

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How to Juice Fast Safely - mindbodygreen.com

Losing weight can be difficult at any age, but finding a healthy diet plan is the majority of the battle.

If you categorize diet plans into two main groups, you have online diets with built-in support communities, and meal delivery plans. This site focuses on the best of the online diet plans the diets that work.

There are manyDukan Diet, Sonoma, Denise Austin, and the list goes on. But there are three that truly stand out from among the others.

Dieters have largely had impressive results with our short list, and we will tell you why they have achieved so much success with them. These diets are very healthy, they are very safe diets, and most of all, the majority of dieters can plug right in and start losing weight right away.

A quick summary follows more detailed reviews are further below.

Pros: Highly effective and drops weight really fast. Just one capsule twice per day with a meal works like a charm. Dr. Ozs #1 fat burner.

Cons: You still need to eat healthy and exercise.

Bottom Line: Raspberry ketones are the most powerful and effective supplement we have found to drop weight. Dieters are astounded how quickly the product works and the amount of weight you can lose. Very easy to use. See review below for free bottles.

Raspberry Ketones Website

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Diets That Work | The 3 Best Diet Plans For 2015

In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism.[1]

Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. The word diet often implies the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management reasons (with the two often being related). Although humans are omnivores, each culture and each person holds some food preferences or some food taboos. This may be due to personal tastes or ethical reasons. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy.

Proper nutrition requires ingestion and absorption of vitamins, minerals, and food energy in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in the quality of life, health and longevity. It can define cultures and play a role in religion.

Some cultures and religions have restrictions concerning what foods are acceptable in their diet. For example, only Kosher foods are permitted by Judaism, and Halal foods by Islam. Although Buddhists are generally vegetarians, the practice varies and meat-eating may be permitted depending on the sects.[2] In Hinduism, vegetarianism is the ideal, Jain are strictly vegetarian and consumption of roots is not permitted.

Many people choose to forgo food from animal sources to varying degrees (e.g. flexitarianism, vegetarianism, veganism, fruitarianism) for health reasons, issues surrounding morality, or to reduce their personal impact on the environment, although some of the public assumptions about which diets have lower impacts are known to be incorrect.[3]Raw foodism is another contemporary trend. These diets may require tuning or supplementation such as vitamins to meet ordinary nutritional needs.

A particular diet may be chosen to seek weight loss or weight gain. Changing a subject's dietary intake, or "going on a diet", can change the energy balance and increase or decrease the amount of fat stored by the body. Some foods are specifically recommended, or even altered, for conformity to the requirements of a particular diet. These diets are often recommended in conjunction with exercise. Specific weight loss programs can be harmful to health, while others may be beneficial (and can thus be coined as healthy diets). The terms "healthy diet" and "diet for weight management" are often related, as the two promote healthy weight management. Having a healthy diet is a way to prevent health problems, and will provide your body with the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.[4]

An eating disorder is a mental disorder that interferes with normal food consumption. It is defined by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive diet.

A healthy diet may improve or maintain optimal health. In developed countries, affluence enables unconstrained caloric intake and possibly inappropriate food choices.[5]

It is recommended by many authorities that people maintain a normal weight by (limiting consumption of energy-dense foods and sugary drinks), eat plant-based food, limit red and processed meat, and limit alcohol.[6]

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Diet (nutrition) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional recommendation originally inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of Greece, Southern Italy, and Spain.[1] The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits, and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and low consumption of non-fish meat and non-fish meat products.[2]

In 2013, UNESCO added the Mediterranean diet to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Cyprus, and Croatia.[3][4]

Despite its name, this diet is not typical of all Mediterranean cuisine. In Northern Italy, for instance, lard and butter are commonly used in cooking, and olive oil is reserved for dressing salads and cooked vegetables.[6] In both North Africa and the Middle East, sheep's tail fat and rendered butter (samna) are the traditional staple fats, with some exceptions.[7] Indeed, one researcher concludes: "It appears that currently there is insufficient material to give a proper definition of what the Mediterranean diet is or was in terms of well defined chemical compounds or even in terms of foods.... The all embracing term 'Mediterranean diet' should not be used in scientific literature...."[8]

The most commonly understood version of the Mediterranean diet was presented, among others, by Dr Walter Willett of Harvard University's School of Public Health from the mid-1990s on.[9][10][11][12][13][14] Based on "food patterns typical of Crete, much of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy in the early 1960s", this diet, in addition to "regular physical activity," emphasizes "abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products (principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts". Total fat in this diet is 25% to 35% of calories, with saturated fat at 8% or less of calories.[15]

Olive oil is part of the Mediterranean diet, although not of all Mediterranean cuisines: in Egypt, Malta, and Israel, olive oil consumption is negligible,[5] and in other areas, it is not predominant.[6][7] It contains a very high level of monounsaturated fats, most notably oleic acid, which epidemiological studies suggest may be linked to a reduction in coronary heart disease risk.[16] There is also evidence that the antioxidants in olive oil improve cholesterol regulation and LDL cholesterol reduction, and that it has other anti-inflammatory and anti-hypertensive effects.[17]

Although it was first publicized in 1975 by the American biologist Ancel Keys and chemist Margaret Keys (his wife and collaborator),[18] the Mediterranean diet failed to gain widespread recognition until the 1990s. Objective data showing that Mediterranean diet is healthy originated from results of epidemiological studies in Naples and Madrid [19] confirmed later by the Seven Countries Study, with first publication in 1970,[20] and a book-length report in 1980.[21]

The Mediterranean diet is based on what from the point of view of mainstream nutrition is considered a paradox: that although the people living in Mediterranean countries tend to consume relatively high amounts of fat, they have far lower rates of cardiovascular disease than in countries like the United States, where similar levels of fat consumption are found. A parallel phenomenon is known as the French Paradox.[22]

A diet rich in salads was promoted in England during the early Renaissance period by Giacomo Castelvetro in A Brief Account of the Fruits, Herbs, and Vegetables of Italy.[23]

A number of diets have received attention, but the strongest evidence for a beneficial health effect and decreased mortality after switching to a largely plant based diet comes from studies of Mediterranean diet, e.g. from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study.[24]

The Mediterranean diet often is cited as beneficial for being low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat and dietary fiber. One of the main explanations is thought to be the health effects of olive oil included in the Mediterranean diet.

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Mediterranean diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mayo Clinic Diet: A weight-loss program for life The Mayo Clinic Diet is a different approach to weight loss. It's a lifestyle that can help you maintain a healthy weight for a lifetime. By Mayo Clinic Staff

The Mayo Clinic Diet is a weight loss and lifestyle program designed by Mayo Clinic health experts. The Mayo Clinic Diet is a lifelong approach to help you improve your health and maintain a healthy weight. The Mayo Clinic Diet uses the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid as a guide to making smart-eating choices and encouraging daily activity.

The purpose of the Mayo Clinic Diet is to help you lose excess weight and to find a way of eating that you can enjoy for a lifetime. The Mayo Clinic Diet aims to teach you how to choose healthy foods and portions and to develop healthy lifestyle habits so that you can maintain a healthy weight for life. The Mayo Clinic Diet says that making healthy changes in diet and exercise can reduce your risk of weight-related health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and sleep apnea.

Why you might follow the Mayo Clinic DietYou might choose to follow the Mayo Clinic Diet because you:

Check with your doctor or health care provider before starting any weight-loss diet, especially if you have any health conditions.

The Mayo Clinic Diet is the official diet developed by Mayo Clinic, based on research and clinical experience and detailed in the book of the same name, published in 2010. You might have tried what you thought was a Mayo Clinic diet something you saw on the Internet or that was passed along by friends but it was probably bogus. The true Mayo Clinic Diet says that successful, long-term weight control needs to focus on your overall health, not just what you eat. It also emphasizes that the best way to manage weight long-term requires changing your lifestyle and adopting new health habits. The Mayo Clinic Diet can be tailored to your own individual needs and situations it isn't a one-size-fits-all approach.

The Mayo Clinic Diet has two main parts:

Follow the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight PyramidThe basis for the Mayo Clinic Diet is the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid. The pyramid illustrates the importance of balance between exercise and eating healthy foods.

Eat healthy foods and portionsThe base of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Weight Pyramid focuses on generous amounts of healthy foods that contain a small number of calories in a large volume of food, particularly fruits and vegetables. Healthy choices in moderate amounts make up the rest of the pyramid, which encourages selecting whole-grain carbohydrates, lean sources of protein such as legumes, fish and low-fat dairy, and heart-healthy unsaturated fats. The Mayo Clinic Diet teaches you how to estimate portion sizes and plan meals. The Mayo Clinic Diet doesn't focus on counting calories, nor does it require you to eliminate certain foods.

Increase your physical activityThe Mayo Clinic Diet promotes regular physical activity and exercise, as well as healthy eating. When you're active, your body uses energy (calories) to work, helping to burn the calories you take in. If you've been inactive or you have a medical condition, talk to your doctor or health care provider before starting a new physical activity program. Most people can begin with five- or 10-minute activity sessions and increase the time gradually.

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The Mayo Clinic Diet: A weight-loss program for life Mayo