How to do a juice fast to lose weight and how long is safe?

Ask:

I want to do an orange juice fast, cause I am a picky eater and don’t really like any other juices. The purpose of this is to lose weight, how long is safe and can I use just orange juice and water? How much weight will I lose?

Answers:

Answer 1:

It is not a safe way to lose weight. You might not lose any, and you will gain back everything you lose as soon as you start eating again. Weight loss is an overall process and there are no magic answers. Pay no attention to weight loss supplements and pills and all the latest fads. You need to think about many factors but most of them are related to issues we’ve known about for a very long time. There are many sensible things you can do that will make a tremendous difference over the long term if you need to lose weight. It can be done in a healthy way. This is what has worked for me.

Keeping a food journal really does help. It will give you a much better sense of how much you are eating, and when, and why.

Make a few additional small changes – walk everywhere, always use stairs instead of elevators, walk on escalators, get up and move around at least once an hour if your work or your life in general is sedentary, walk every day, use a pedometer. Walking 10,000 steps a day is a really good idea. Build up to a long brisk walk everyday, or most days. Be more active and watch less TV and spend less time on the computer. Buy one piece of exercise equipment to have at home and be strict with yourself about using it. Sometimes you can find mini-steppers or exercise bikes at second hand stores and thrift stores for just a few dollars.

Start a weight lifting routine. Join a gym. Possibly you can find one that has someone who specializes in weight lifting programs for beginners. Weight lifting will increase your metabolism as well as improve posture and appearance overall. Even if you can’t get to the gym you can work out at home using things around the house. Invest in a good weight training book. The Dummies series actually has a good one.

In terms of diet, cut out or reduce things like junk food, pop, fat, fast food. Eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, fish. Particularly if you choose a vegetarian lifestyle include natural peanut butter, hummus, dried fruit and nuts. Pay close attention to getting the nutrients your body needs to be healthy.

Make your portion sizes smaller. Use a smaller plate – in our society we have become accustomed to thinking that we need a large plate of food at every meal, and we don’t. About quarter of your plate of food should be protein and at least half of it should be veggies.

Learn to count calories. At your current weight and activity level, you may possibly need about 2000 calories or more to maintain your current weight. So you will lose weight at a reasonable and healthy rate if you cut back to about 1600 or 1700 calories a day.

Eat small amounts frequently, rather than three large meals. Never skip breakfast. Include some protein in your breakfast. It will help get you through the day.

Drink plenty of water, at least 8 big glasses of water a day, and more if it is very hot, if you sweat a lot, or if you are exercising intensely, and eliminate fruit juices. Fruit juices have too many calories, so get your vitamins from fresh fruit, not the juice. You will begin to see changes in your body.

Vary your routines. Don’t eat the same number of calories every day (vary your calories from 1400 a day to 1900 or 2000 some days), eat a variety of foods, and do different kinds and amounts of exercise. You will lose weight much more efficiently if you mix things up from time to time so that your body doesn’t adjust to any one routine.

An area that many people overlook is getting enough sleep. You are much more likely to overeat or to binge eat if you are tired and not well rested, so get enough sleep.

Answer 2:

Most people who go on juice fasts lose an average of a pound a day – more at the beginning of the fast and then less toward the end. While that may initially sound like a great deal, there are a few things that you should be aware of before jumping in and trying a juice fast.

One of the major problems with juice fasting is that it does not provide your body with enough calories. When you lose weight on a fast you lose some fat, but you also lose muscle and water weight. The amount of lean muscle in your body determines how fast your metabolism runs. When you lose muscle your metabolism slows down as a result. That means that even as you are dropping weight on the fast your metabolism getting slower and slower.

Here’s where things get sticky. When you reach the end of the fast and resume eating normally your metabolism is dragging. As a result it is highly likely that you will gain back every bit of weight that you lost while you were fasting. Not only that, but you may actually gain more weight than you lost, which obviously is not an ideal situation. This is because when you deprive your body of food for any length of time it doesn’t know when its next meal will be coming so it grabs onto any food that you provide it and stores it away as fat in case you start starving again.

If you do decide to do a juice fast it is advisable not to stay on it too long. The longer you are on the fast the more likely you are to lose muscle mass and to have your body go into starvation mode and start storing away fat instead of using it. When you come off the fast come off gradually and reintroduce normal foods slowly to avoid as much weight gain as possible.

 

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