Lemon Detox Diet Recommendations
Get your protein!
It's essential to provide your body with nutritional support during your lemon detox diet, especially if you're cleansing for 3 days or more. We recommend a plant-based, nutrient-dense superfood blend, which will provide a broad spectrum of nutrition, including protein. These are our favorites:
Keep the colon moving.
The lemon detox diet is a liquid juice fast. Because there is no solid food or ruffage provided for the bowel, it is essential that your colon continues to move waste material. One method to accomplish this is to take a natural laxative every night of the cleanse and begin the following day with a salt water flush. There are many natural laxatives to choose from. They range from stool softeners like mineral oil, to stimulant laxatives like senna, cascara sagrada, castor oil, and Epsom salts. Choose a laxative that you tolerate well. Our personal favorite is cascara sagrada, which causes less cramping than senna and is safe to use daily for fairly long periods of time.
Supplement with probiotics.
Because you may have disrupted the biological balance inside your gut, it is a good idea to supplement with a full-spectrum probiotic during your lemon detox cleanse. Once you begin introducing foods at the completion of the cleanse, an excellent food choice is yoghurt, which will continue to bring your intestinal flora back into homeostasis. You may choose a more aggressive therapy of acidopholous culture, especially if this is your first time doing the lemon detox. These probiotics are excellent:
Go off the diet with care.
When it's time to end the cleanse you will want to gently taper your fasting diet to your normal diet, keeping in mind that your stomach has shrunk on this liquid diet and made large accommodations to burning off fat and waste. End your cleanse with daily doses of freshly juiced fruit and vegetable juices, hopefully with some whole pulp. In the ensuing days add warm soups and finally add vegetables and nuts that you have tolerated well in the past. Notice how certain foods make you feel. Take advantage of this time when your body is hyper sensitive to take stock of which foods serve you well and which do not. You may be surprised. Learn How to Go Off the Lemon Detox Diet.
How to Go Off the Lemon Detox Diet
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: With any juice fasting program, it is essential to re-introduce solid food to your body gradually and with care. This means having a plan in place. When you have not ingested solid foods for more than several days, the flora in your intestines change, sometimes rather dramatically. When you end your lemon detox diet, your body will need a few days to rebuild the mucus lining in your intestines and repopulate the intestinal flora. Probiotic supplementation is highly recommended. Here's a good general plan for going off the lemon detox diet. It is what we might call the post-lemon-detox-diet plan.
Day 1 after the Lemon Detox Diet:
- discontinue drinking the lemon detox drink
- have 5-8 small glasses of vegetable juices throughout the day (you can add spirulina as a protein source if you are feeling weakened from the fast)
- do not drink fruit juices on this day
- keep carrot and beet juice to a minimum, they are high in sugars
- good vegetable juice choices are leafy greens (chard, spinach, kale, beet greens), cucumber, celery, red cabbage, parsley
- if you do your fast during cold weather, drink hot vegetable broth in addition to the vegetable juices
Day 2 after the Lemon Detox Diet:
- drink 3-4 small glasses of vegetable juices
- have 1-2 servings of vegetable soup (no potatoes or carrots), pureed; add some seaweed if you wish; do not eat canned soup!
Day 3 after the Lemon Detox Diet:
- drink 1-2 glasses of vegetable juice
- eat 1-2 servings of whole, raw fruit
- eat soaked nuts or seeds
- have 3 servings of vegetable soup
- you may have a serving of steamed vegetables and brown rice
Day 4 after the Lemon Detox Diet:
- you can now resume a normal eating plan
- if your diet includes meat, wait another day or two before having any; opt instead for beans, eggs, or tofu