Detoxes. Shite.
Forgive the crassness of this post’s title, but at this point (3 weeks into 2017) I am utterly sick and tired of the relentless bullshit that is filling up my media feeds.
As with every January, a big part of the white noise is devoted to ‘detoxing’ away the festive season’s sins in an effort to get yourself to that slim and trim body in just a few weeks.
Without trying to argue the lack of sound evidence to support them, my biggest bug-bear with this approach (as with any quick fix dieting approach) is the damage they cause mentally.
Working as a coach, I already encounter enough people that have a corrupted relationship with food and the related depression caused by unrealistic expectations with their fat loss results. This yearly nonsense just adds more fuel to the fire.
This mentality of binge eating and then punishing yourself used be a cause for concern, a sign of an eating disorder, but now somehow it has become an acceptable marketing ploy.
If you are genuinely concerned about detoxing effectively you need two things to begin. A liver and at least one functioning kidney. Add some regular water and a consistent healthy diet and you’re all set.
The real key to long-term success in improving your health is paying attention to what you put into your body the first place and being mindful of what has actually been shown to work.
For example, the most important factor in successful weight loss is calorie restriction – which, to be fair, a lot of detoxes do – replacing your food with green water will certainly achieve that, all though you may find that dropping you daily food intake to less than a third of what you usually eat is somewhat problematic to stick to.
But even that takes a backseat to the real issue. Your mindset and relationship, not just with food, but yourself and your life. Which can be painful to face up to, but is the only sustainable to approach to helping yourself long term.
Your health and fitness is a product of your daily habits. Your habits are products of your daily thinking. Without changing your habits and your thinking, you are doomed to repeat the same cycle every year of being sold into buying magic beans as a cure all for your diet and health goals.
Here are a few interesting articles related to the nonsense of detoxes and diet trends to watch out for this year…