It’s that time of year when people are thinking about going on detoxes or juice cleanses so here are the top 11 benefits to detoxing.

1.

You lose weight – you eat less calories for a period of time therefore you lose weight. Psychologically that makes you feel better for a week or so as society has taught you that weight gain is an ugly horrible thing.
You’d get the same impact, well, just eating less calories from food.
If you choose a detox that’s devoid of carbohydrates you also lose weight as cells empty of fuel and they dehydrate. You’ll feel like s*** but that will be sold to you as part of the process.

2.

You ease the burden on your digestive system – actually it wasn’t under any real burden before it’s just got less to do as you’re feeding yourself like a baby. Liquids and semi solids. This means less waste in your digestive tract and you feel lighter. Your pancreas typically gets hammered if you’re ‘juicing’ though as you’ve just taken away all the ‘essential’ nutrients your body needs (that means your body can’t make them and has to get them from diet). Essential amino acids and essential fats.
This impacts all of your tissue, skin, hair, nails and the ‘detoxers’ will tell you it’s impurities coming out. Cells are malnourished.

3.

Fat wallet

You might save money and time. You don’t have to shop for or buy food. You just have to buy some overpriced unregulated ‘supplement’.

4.

Your skin will feel better – almost all detoxes involve drinking lots of water. For once in the year you’re hydrated so yes your skin may well feel better.

5.

You may get a holiday to Thailand out of it. Although starving yourself and feeling like crap in a camp (retreat) for 10-14 days may not be the best way to experience Thailand. If you achieve point 5, point 3 becomes invalid.

6.

You may also, following on from point 5 learn a little yoga or have some nice massage.

7.

You may stop eating as much of the poor quality food you’ve habitually eaten your entire life for a week or two.

8.

Food tastes better once you’ve done it. Once you’re banned yourself from eating food for a given amount of time it tastes better. A whole bunch of physiological and psychological reasons for that. Most of you however will binge post detox rendering the weight loss negligible and also negatively impacting your lifelong relationship with food.

9.

You may bond with similar gullible and desperate people that the detox has brought together. People who also agree that science is utter nonsense.

10.

You have something to tell social media about how your 2017 is going to be different.

11.

You have an excuse to buy some yoga pants and a new water bottle.

Bonus content:

What detoxing won’t do is make your liver or kidneys work any faster or more efficiently than they already do. Therefore detoxing won’t, well, detox you.

Make sustainable changes to your habits and behaviors into the new year. Start small and with achievable things. Once you’ve achieved them move onto others.

I’m imploring you. Don’t detox! I have no financial or hidden benefit to telling you that only science and the fact you’re wasting your time, effort and life doing it!