Whenever I mention “cleansing” to anyone, more often than not I hear a similar response. “Oh yea, Beyonce did one, the lemon drink with the cayenne pepper.” I had to Google that one since I never heard of it and it sounds downright icky to drink that concoction followed with a lukewarm glass of salt water thrown in for good measure. If anyone out there is doing it, kudos to you! That one does not sound easy. The one that I chose to do was the 9-day Isagenix cleanse. And if it’s your first time doing a cleanse, they suggest you “pre-cleanse” for two days, so it turned into an 11 day cleanse. Not a lot of fun I must admit. But I followed the rules and 11 days later I was nine pounds lighter. Not bad. And not easy. But was it necessary?
Ask any bride what she’ll do to lose a few pounds before her wedding day and most likely she’ll tell you she’ll go on a diet consisting of sprouts and beans for 30 days or some other crazy fad diet. Well that’s where I was last year and I was determined to lose a few pounds before fitting into that wedding dress. And I reached my goal and felt fabulous and headed to Greece unafraid to put on a bathing suit. And once back from the honeymoon, all nine pounds magically reappeared! Granted, I took the month of August off, ate what I wanted and never lifted a weight, so I knew what was coming. And my first thought was, well I’ll just do the cleanse again. And then I thought better, because I know better. It’s not healthy for the body to lose so much weight in such a short period of time. We should be losing 1 to 2 pounds per week for healthy weight loss, that’s it! These cleanses offer you the results you want because you are basically starving your body. By day 11 on that cleanse I had absolutely no energy. I remember walking into the kitchen at work and a co-worker looked at me and asked if I was ok because I seemed so sluggish. I was a crazy bride-to-be, what more can I say!
Cleansing is a quick fix and I would not recommend it to any of my clients. Healthy weight loss guarantees a healthy lifestyle and that’s what is most important. Below are a few healthy ways to lose weight and keep it off. I hope you will try these before gulping down a lemon drink flavored with cayenne pepper. Ick!
Healthy choices you can make now to help lose weight:
- Try cutting just 100 calories a day from your diet. (Ex., ditch the soda for flavored sparkling water.)
- Watch your portion sizes. A great way to keep your portions small is to buy paper plates that have sections for meat, veggies and a salad, like the ones you use at a picnic.
- Eat breakfast! Try instant oatmeal with blueberries. (Just note the sugar on the label, some may be very high, but if you search you can find reasonably low sugar amounts.)
- Drink green tea, and lots of it!
- Plan, plan, plan your meals, this way you’re not stuck in a bind with only a frozen bag of french fries in your fridge.
- Add exercise to your daily routine. Get your heart rate up and burn those calories!
- And eat five to six small meals a day, this will help keep your metabolism up all day which helps to burn more calories.
