Recently, Beyonce Knowles was in the news for losing weight on a lemon juice maple syrup diet. Now, the lemon juice maple syrup diet is all over the Internet as the hottest new way to lose weight. Is it safe and effective?
The Lemon Juice Maple Syrup Diet
This diet can also be found listed as an intensive cleansing program. According to Beyonce, she ate no solid food for two entire weeks. Instead, she subsisted on a concoction that consisted of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper.
Here is the recipe for that concoction:
- Two tablespoons of lemon juice
- Two tablespoons of organic, Grade B maple syrup
- 1/10 teaspoon of cayenne (or more if you can take it)
- One cup of purified spring water
Further recommendations suggest taking a laxative tea nightly in order to help with elimination, since no solid food is taken that will need to be eliminated.
Not surprisingly, Beyonce claims to have lost 20 pounds on this diet. Further investigation also produces this post-diet quote from Beyonce:
"After that I ate waffles, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, french fries, everything I could find. That was the best time of my life. I've gained twelve pounds."
Will It Cause Weight Loss?
Will living on nothing but lemon juice, water, cayenne and maple syrup for 10 to 14 days cause weight loss? Yes, it will. If you go on the lemon juice maple syrup diet and eat nothing else for 14 days, you will lose weight as your body begins to eat into your healthy lean body tissue (muscles, bones and organs) in order to find a source of energy for daily living. It will not, however, cause you to lose fat.
Why won't this diet cause fat loss? The human body is wired for survival. This means that it does everything possible to preserve its richest energy sources in times of famine, since your body has no idea how long the famine might last or when it might end. What is your body's richest source of energy? The richest source of energy in your body is your body fat. During a period of famine or starvation, which is exactly what you are instituting in your body with a lemon juice maple syrup fast, your body will cling to every ounce of fat it has in case times get even worse. Instead, it eats away at the less energetically dense tissue of your muscles, organs and bones.
Is it Healthy?
This diet is not healthy. As a matter of fact, it can have a very detrimental affect on your overall health. Not only that, but it can actually have a detrimental affect on your current and future weight loss goals.
The result of the process described above is a weakening of the tissue that your body needs to maintain metabolism and good health (muscles, bones, organs), and the preservation of the tissue that you are seeking to get rid of (fat).
A secondary side-effect of this type of starvation is a lowering of your metabolism. The hungriest tissue in your body--or that which burns the most calories--is lean body mass. What is lean body mass? It is your organs, your bones and your muscles. If you lose some of this tissue through a starvation response, then your body's calorie burning mechanism will be impaired and ultimately lowered.
Those are the affects on your health after undergoing this diet. You will also most likely experience negative health affects during the diet, including a loss of energy, possible light-headedness, the inability to concentrate and impaired coordination.
A Healthy Way to Lose Weight
There is no quick and easy way to experience sustainable weight loss. Fad diets such as the lemon juice maple syrup fast may cause quick weight loss, but they also cause you to gain the weight back just as quickly once you are done. Even if you return to eating a low calorie diet, some (if not all) of the weight will be regained. Not only that, but you are now at risk for more weight gain because of the effects of the diet on your metabolism.
The safest and most sustainable way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you burn, to eat healthy foods, to eat enough food that your body doesn't believe it is starving, and to get some exercise. Following a sensible diet and exercise plan is the only way to healthy, maintainable weight loss. .
