This is the time of year when people are thinking about dieting and losing weight. I say, forget about dieting. Eat healthy, and you will lose the weight naturally and then keep the weight off, too. If you want to lose weight quickly, do a detox diet, and lose weight as an extra bonus on top of all the great benefits you will get from detoxing–like getting lots of energy and feeling great.
I have been doing the detox diet from Dr. Thomas Rau’s book, “The Swiss Secret to Optimal Health” for many years now. I try to do the diet a couple times each year except for when I am pregnant. Every time I do the diet, I have wonderful results and I feel fantastic! (Read more about the specifics here.) And I get better and better at keeping that wonderful feeling afterwards. (The first time I did the detox diet, I went back to all the junk food as fast as I possibly could, and I lost the wonderful effects of the diet pretty quickly. But I have come a long ways since then.)
If you feel even the slightest inclination to try it out, please do! You will be so happy you did. And then tell me all all about it. I would love to hear about your experience. 🙂
The diet is split into 3 weeks, adding in new things each week. Weeks 2 and 3 incorporate tricky ingredients (like spelt bread and goat feta cheese), have more time-consuming recipes, and include foods that are more likely to cause subtle allergic reactions. I have found that it is most effective for me to repeat week 1 multiple times rather than do the menus for weeks 2 and 3. For this reason, I am only giving you the outline for week one. (Feel free to buy the book and do weeks 2 and 3 if you want.)
Week 1 is basically oatmeal, a little bit of fruit, and a ton of vegetables. All the foods are pretty ordinary, like apples, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, etc. And if there is something you need to substitute, you can.
Is it hard to do the diet? Yes. I don’t know why it is so hard to give up eating yummy, delicious, and satisfying food for a few weeks, but it is. Is it worth it? Absolutely!!!
Give the diet a try, and see what happens to you when you eat really well. You can download my organized Menu Plan and Shopping List for it if you would like (although I have recently realized that the shopping list is not quite right.)
Get the PDF here:Detox Diet Menu Plan and Shopping List
Or get the LibreOffice document here:Detox Diet Menu Plan and Shopping List
Read on if you would like to see my tips on how to make preparing foods for the detox diet a little quicker and easier:
It can be pretty time-consuming to prepare the food and eat it, but I have discovered some tips and shortcuts over the years that have made it relatively simple and quick to do. I now find that it takes less time to prepare the food and clean up than it takes for regular meals. (Too bad I still have to prepare food for the rest of the family! 🙂 )
Here is what I have found that makes it much quicker and easier:
****The alkaline soup is the most time consuming part for me. But it is a really important part. I have started running the vegetables through my food processor with the slice disc (except not the green beans, I throw them in in the regular size pieces). My food processor slices kind of thin, so I only boil the veggies for 5 minutes instead of 10. And I don’t measure the amounts anymore. Approximately is good enough. I estimate the amounts, and it is about
- 1/2 of an 8-10″ zucchini
- 1 large handful of green beans
- 1 large stalk celery
- 2 medium-small carrots
Also, when I put it all away, I measure it out into little containers for each meal, so I just have to dump it into the pot, instead of pull out the huge container and measure.
****I use regular rolled oats-they cook faster, and I don’t have a lot of time in the mornings.
****I use my food processor tons. I shred the salads with it, and almost all the steamed veggies are run through it and sliced thin. Once I accidentally shredded the potato instead, and it was super good, so now I sometimes do that with my potato.
****I wash hardly any of the dishes! I just rinse them and set them aside as my designated detox diet dishes to use over and over again for the next few days. 🙂
****I often prepare lots of the same thing, then put it in a tuppperware or mason jar to save for other meals. Like chopped broccoli, or sliced sweet potato. If you add cold water to the tupperware with it, it prevents it from drying out at all, and most vegetables last at least a week that way. You can even do it with potatoes if you are adding the water, because then they won’t go brown and gray. The last two days of the diet are just eating leftovers and repeating meals, so you can make extras and eat it then, and you don’t have to prepare much. I do recommend steaming things the day of, though. It is not strictly necessary, but I think it is better to store them raw instead of cooked when possible, and cook them right before you eat them.
Once you get the hang of it, cooking for the detox diet can take a lot less time than normal cooking.