The Dr. Oz Detox Diet is a dietary regime created by Dr. Mark Hyman and featured on the Dr. Oz TV show.
The diet aims to “detox” the body, and also is said to enable you to lose ten pounds in ten days.
The diet cuts out most sugars and starches, so limiting the number of calories.
Unlimited amounts of some healthy food, such as non-starchy vegetables, can be eaten. The diet does not involve counting calories.
It is important to realize that the whole concept of “detox,” although prevalent in the media, is unscientific. The body naturally deals with toxins using the liver and kidneys.
However, the liver can be overwhelmed and damaged by too much alcohol or large quantities of various toxic chemicals.
But the ordinary reasonably-healthy person should have no problem eliminating toxins from their body.
However, most Americans have too much sugar in their diets, so the “Detox Diet” may be worth considering.
Foods to Remove
The Dr. Oz Detox Diet starts by removing all the junk foods: these should all be set aside and not touched for the ten days of the diet. The following foods and drinks have to go:
- All processed food: This means anything from a factory packed in a can, box, or package, apart from tinned foods, such as sardines or green vegetables, where the primary natural food has only salt and water added.
- Food and drinks containing sugar: This includes desserts, candy, soft drinks, foods containing honey, maple syrup, etc.
- Foods containing refined or hydrogenated vegetable oil (such as corn oil)
- Grains: Rice, flour, oats, bread, cakes, crackers, etc.
- Anything with artificial additives, preservatives, etc.
- Legumes: This category includes beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc.
- Dairy Foods: Milk, butter, cheese, yogurt.
- Starchy vegetables: Potato, sweet potato, parsnips, squash.
- Caffeine: Coffee, tea, caffeinated soft drinks.
- Alcohol
Foods to Eat
The diet starts with a liquid breakfast, made by blending blueberries, cranberries, lemon (optional), almond butter, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, avocado, coconut butter, almond milk (unsweetened), and water.
Lunch consists of green salads, three vegetables (chosen from a given list), a small amount of healthy fat (avocados, walnuts, or olives), and four ounces of healthy protein food (salmon, shrimps, sardines, chicken, turkey, tofu, or tempeh).
Dinner consists of green vegetables, along with four to six ounces of healthy protein food (as for lunch, but grass-fed meat is also allowed, along with scallops, herring, and hard-boiled omega-3 eggs).
Snacks that are permitted include walnuts and almonds; and also tahini, hummus, or tapenade with sliced raw vegetables.
Conclusions
Although there is no scientific basis for the concept of “detox,” the Dr. Oz detox diet should make you lose weight.
Since it eliminates most sugars and starches, along with a great deal of fat, it will give you a low-calorie diet. You end up eating vegetables and a relatively small amount of fat and protein.
The emphasis on removing sugar: most Americans consume too much sugar since it’s hidden in a vast number of foods.
However, some of the foods that get eliminated, such as legumes, brown rice, natural yogurt (provided its low fat), oatmeal, and whole-wheat bread, are healthy foods, which people should get encouraged to eat.
Others, such as tea and “additives,” do little harm for most people. Some of the recommendations are strange. Why is hummus allowed, but chickpeas are forbidden since hummus is made of chickpeas?
Like all quick-fix diets, the problem comes once the ten days are over. People can’t realistically stay on such foods.
If they just go back to what they were eating before, they may put the weight back on. So, it might be better merely choosing, on day one, a healthy long-term diet that you can realistically stay on.
Council of Oz: Hunger is driven, in part, by the hormone ghrelin. By eating regularly throughout the day, you can control your ghrelin levels, and you will never get tempted to overeating.
Eating fewer calories could increase your longevity by 25%. Here’s how: Eating a little less each day activates your sirtuin gene, which increases the efficiency of your cells and improves your body’s ability to repair itself.
This ten-day diet is designed with the intention of activating your body to lose weight.
In addition to the famous, among the most enthusiastic followers of these diets are teenagers.
Health experts warn that while it is good that these diets encourage consumption of vegetables, fruits, and water, they are not appropriate for adolescents.
“Although detox diets have not been scientifically proven, people who support these diets recognize that toxins do not always leave the body properly.
On the contrary, toxins remain in the digestive, lymphatic and gastrointestinal systems, skin and hair and generate problems such as fatigue, headaches, and nausea, explains the portal Kid’s Health, Nemours Foundation.
“Teens need a lot of nutrients; As well as sufficient calories and protein for growth and development. So diets that are very restrictive and severe with food are not a good idea.”
In January 2010 we could find in the Financial Times (as strange as it seems to see it in this newspaper) the recommendation of a detoxifying diet by Dr. Oz, something like to start the year, recover from the havoc or a little bit of all this together.
According to such recommendations, we would have to be up to a month based on fruit juices, fruits, vegetables, and water.
While we believe in many remarkable contributions from Dr. Oz, this is not one of them.
In such a diet we would be several weeks consuming no less than 3 or 4 fruit juices per day. But why should the liver be detoxified?
The so-called fatty liver syndrome affects one-third of Americans. A problem that leads to chronic inflammation of this organ and could even eventually lead to cirrhosis.
And what ends up inducing this disease? According to animal studies, it seems clear that, on the one hand, over-consumption of Omega 6 acids together with an insufficient intake of Omega 3.
Although Dr. Oz’s detoxification would rule out the Omega 6, it throws overboard the Omega 3’s Long chain EPA DHA. On the other hand, it also produces fatty liver over-consumption of fructose.
The diet proposed here by Dr. Oz is to take dozens and even thousands of grams of pure fructose with their fruit juices, which can represent tens of daily fruits squeezed.