Pineapple, ginger, mint, apple, eggplant, cucumber, flax-seed, coconut water. Who has never seen at least some of these items included in the list of ingredients for juice diets to lose weight, or even a fat burning tea?
You don’t have to go to great lengths to find this kind of promise: just enter the term in a search engine and you’ll see hundreds of different recipes for ridding your body of fat for every region of the body where it can accumulate.
As a fierce advocate of ‘real food’ I have no criticism of any of these foods listed, by the way. They are very healthy!
But however hard the reality is, we need to stop fooling ourselves. There is no single food, anywhere in the world, that can solely rid your body of fat.
Think about it: if this food had already been found, the discoverer would have made it into pills and would be a millionaire now.
Juice diets to lose weight don’t exist
We need to emphasize this so you can begin to understand that magic formulas don’t exist.
Picture a patient coming into my office and making the following request:
“Doctor, I’d like to lose weight only in my arms, I’m happy with everything else.”
This is totally unfeasible!
Not even a physical activity is able to focus on a single region. If your goal is to tighten your belly and, with this in mind, you start running regularly, there’s no way to tell the body that you only want to lose abdominal fat.
Likewise, if you do a workout focused exclusively on your abdomen, without reviewing your diet and looking for a more active lifestyle, you won’t see any clear results.
It’s the same as with food; By itself, it can’t perform some type of tailor made miracle.
Expectation vs. reality
Juices can have many nutritional qualities, and I like the idea that they can be taken from time to time in reasonable quantities, that is, 1 glass. But not as a rule and much less as an obligation.
Nowadays, with social networks, juice diets to lose weight have gained many supporters. After all, there are so many famous people spreading the benefits of these juices that it’s difficult not to give in to them. Many people may think, “Why not just try it?”. Or, “It’s natural, it can’t hurt.”
After all, if these same people who promote the juice diets to lose weight have defined abs, it signals that it works! Right? No!
It’s important to make it clear that your body doesn’t work like this, it’s not as simple as that. I’m going to list some of the problems that this type of message causes.
1. Everybody is different
That rule is pretty obvious. The needs of my body are not necessarily those of yours. There are so many factors that influence this calculation … Age, gender, genetic conditions, sleep quality, weight, height, health problems, habits, stress level, medications you take, etc.
With juice diets to lose weight it’s the same thing. They may have some small beneficial effect for a particular person, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll cause the same reaction in you. And again: alone they’re not going to rid your belly of fat!
2. Having an excess of anything is bad
Fruits and vegetables are wonderful. But overdoing anything can be more harmful than beneficial. A person who drinks too much of such juice diets to lose weight and doesn’t pay attention to their eating habits as a whole can end up overdoing it, and their body can even change some metabolic functions like the thyroid, for example.
In addition, by believing that the juice is like a “shot” of vitamins, you might then neglect the other meals of the day, imagining that the drink is able to supply all your vital needs.
3. Eating should not be an obligation. It must be a pleasure!
Imagine how annoying it would be to put yourself through the obligation of making and drinking juice diets to lose weight every single day. I always advocate going to the kitchen and preparing your own food and drinks, as long as it’s within a sustainable diet and respects your body’s needs and wants.
One day we wake up wanting to drink coconut water; In another, coffee; natural juice, tea. This is normal! Abnormal is a repetitive routine, full of difficult to fulfill rules.
Listen more to what your body asks for. I guarantee: this will improve your relationship with food and, as a consequence, don’t be surprised if your belly fat begins to decrease!
Golden tip
To conclude, I would like to give a very interesting tip to anyone who wants to reduce the consumption of sugar-rich drinks, such as soft drinks, juices or alcoholic drinks. Bet on flavored waters.
Choose a pretty jug, fill it with water and add your favorite fruits and herbs. Leave it in the refrigerator for some time and consume ice cold.
Some very aromatic ingredient tips to inspire you:
- Lemon or lime
- Pineapple
- Kiwi
- Tangerine
- Strawberries
- Ginger
- Mint
- Basil
- Fennel
- Cinnamon sticks
- Star anise
- Cloves
Use creativity and bon appétit!
Learn more!
Now that we have clarified the myths about juice diets to lose weight, we want to deepen your knowledge with other content we’ve prepared.
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