Therapist comes clean on cleanses
The best strategy for longterm weight loss and good health comes down to eating a portion-controlled diet of real foods and getting our bodies moving regularly, yet people continue to look for a quicker fix.
One such diet method that has been garnering a lot of buzz is juice fasting and/ or cleansing (the terms are interchangeable depending on the program). People are turning to these multi-day liquid diets to shed weight and cure what ails them. In theory, switching to a juice allows the body to shift all of the energy it usually uses to digest solid foods (upwards of 70 per cent of its daily energy expenditure.
But while there is a laundry list of health benefits tied to this practice and the personal testimonials of success are often compelling, the hard science to back these claims up is more difficult to come by.
The oft-overlooked truth is that juice cleansing, like any other nutrition program, is not appropriate for everyone.
Charis Lynn Curtis, owner of the Calgary-based Bava Juice Company, is the first to admit this. “Engaging in a three-day program like ours will ultimately thin your blood and change your body’s chemistry, so you do need to be careful,” she explains. “Juice cleansing isn’t safe or healthy for diabetics — it’s too much sugar to regulate — drug addicts or those on a lot of medications such as anti-depressants, as it will increase the potency of the drugs and could lead to overdoses, or those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.”
Curtis was a holistic therapist with extensive knowledge of the alternative health field before she became an entrepreneur. Bava — Sanskrit for rebirth — was born in 2010 out of Curtis’s desire to help a client who was battling breast cancer and didn’t have the time or energy to make juice for a cleanse.
This isn’t to say her company’s three-day cleanse, consisting of three juices and one nut milk per day, as well as a bottle of lemon and cranberry concentrate to add to their recommended daily water consumption, comes cheap. Made fresh every Friday, each individual cleanse contains 27 kilograms of locally sourced produce and costs $333.
According to fitness nutrition specialist Kimberley Parsons, orchestrating a juice cleanse for yourself is also a costly proposition. She says the extra costs of going with a company that delivers ready-to-drink juice, may be worth it when you factor in the time you spend prepping and cleaning. “Juicing is super time consuming,” says Parsons, who has done a number of cleanses ranging from three to seven days and opts for a juice-only day once a month. “You can only store juices for a couple of days, so every two days you have to make multiple litres.
Parsons believes there are certain instances for which such a program could prove beneficial. Those suffering from acne, digestive problems, disturbed sleeps, night sweats or who are having trouble dropping stubborn pounds are all candidates for juice-fasting success. “It is a fantastic way to clean out the digestive system, to increase liver function and to cleanse the kidneys, but I wouldn’t advise anything longer than seven days.”
Curtis admits that most weight loss attached to the Bava cleanse is shifting water weight and removing colon debris (both good things), rather than actual fat loss, but if your juice cleanse is the start of a new lifestyle rather than a fast fix, who really cares as long as you’re feeling great?