The Master cleanse diet is a diet originally developed in the 1940s to cure stomach ulcers. It is a ten day detoxification and weight loss fast. It was named after the original book that was written to describe it. It essentially involves the use of the Cayenne pepper, maple syrup and lemon. A famous variation known as the Beyonce diet, named after its celebrity follower is also used. In as much as it is referred to as a fast, it isn’t really because approximately 1,300 calories are taken daily in the form of sugars coming from the ingredients used in the preparation of this diet drink.
If the correct instructions are strictly adhered to, this diet will most certainly work for weight loss. Just like any other ‘fast’, it causes you to lose weight as a result of not eating any food. Since the sugar containing beverages of this diet contain approximately 650 to 1,300 calories, the body is bound to experience a calorie deficit because a normal body requires about 1,500 to 2,500 calories daily to sustain their body weight. A person taking 2,200 calories daily who decides to follow a 700 calorie variation of this diet will experience a change of 1,500 calories. This translates to losing about 3 pounds a week. Most diets recommend a 2 pound weight loss per week, this makes master cleanse less radical than some other fasts since it substitutes the lemon based drink for regular food and also supposedly cleans your colon!
How it works
The diet plan requires the only nourishment taken to be a lemon based concoction made from maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, mixed with water. This should be taken in six to twelve glasses daily with each glass consisting of approximately 110 calories. A herbal laxative is taken every night with a quart of saline water being taken to break the fast every morning. This results into several bowel movements during the day which means that users need to have a toilet available. Transitioning from the diet entails gradually resuming the consumption of solid food. This diet discourages the use of honey as a sweetener in the beverages, it also advices against the use of supplements during the diet.
The diet has a vegetarian transition procedure where in the first day, it is recommended to drink several glasses of lemon juice slowly in case of any digestive complications. The second day entails drinking orange juice in the morning, eating uncooked fruit for lunch and taking more fruit or salad in the evening. After this, it is okay to resume eating regular food.
The duration of the diet varies across it’s proponents but extreme lengths of time are not encouraged on such a restrictive diet plan.