You will ask yourself: but why do you first talk to us far and wide about hot lemon water, about the benefits on intestinal regularity, against free radicals, on metabolism, etc., and then you reject the lemon diet? 

Okay, I know you’re not all wondering, because many of you are casual readers of this blog.
But some, when I talked about hot lemon water as a little trick to digest better and help eliminate toxins in this article, asked me what I thought of the lemon diet . Well, I consider the lemon diet in the classic sense, or the Master Cleanse diet, a diet to be avoided. It makes you lose a lot of weight but also has many contraindications.

LEMON DIET: THE MASTER CLEANSE DIET

But let’s proceed in order: what is the lemon diet?
Like the diet of minestrone, cabbage and so on, the lemon diet is a diet based essentially on the belief that by drinking a mixture of hot water and lemon you can lose many kilos in a few days. It makes you lose weight, but it doesn’t make you lose weight as much.
Weight loss is what you would have with three days of dysentery.

If you drink pure lemon juice all day, surviving the abdominal pain that this juice can give you, then you will have a guaranteed laxative effect. And you know what I think of laxatives for weight loss .

Too much lemon causes intestinal problems, while hot water acidulated with a few drops of lemon can be good for overall health. If it bothers you on an empty stomach, you can drink it for breakfast, after a first glass of water and a few bites.

But the lemon diet is NOT based on hot lemon water.

It is based on a drink developed sixty years ago by Stanley Burroughs, a naturopath who called his diet the “Master Cleanse”.
The drink is made of water, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup: the juice of one and a half lemon in 3ooml of water, a pinch of pepper and two teaspoons of maple syrup.

You need to drink eight glasses a day, plus a liter of water, plus at least three cups of a tea with laxative properties. You need to go to the bathroom at least three times a day, with laxatives or drinking water and salt on an empty stomach in the morning.
Some crazy people have posted photos of their evacuations on the internet, convinced that they demonstrate a detox effect.

LEMON DIET: SIDE EFFECTS OF MASTER CLEANSE

The lemon diet lasts from three days to a week / ten days with the risk of being seriously ill.
The first day you have to drink only this drink and tea, for the rest total fast: in the evening you can drink orange juice.
On the second day you can eat minestrone or other vegetable soups, only vegetables, in liquid form. So on until the seventh day, the tenth day or, if you are a masochist, the fortieth day.

Weight loss is ensured by the fact that you lose more water than you replenish, and that on the days you starve your body takes your muscles and literally tears them apart. It is the classic diet that proclaims the loss of a pound a day in the very first few days.

In the following days of the week you cannot eat animal proteins, but only fruit, vegetables and mash.
On the official website, the lemon diet kit costs sixty dollars. And let’s not forget that in a month you will regain all the weight lost with interest. And at that point what do you do?

For those who want to try a lemon-based detox diet and lose weight with a detox plan, I recommend the 7-day lemon diet or Dr. Petrucci’s grapefruit diet. 
They are effective diets, which do not include fasting but a serious purification process without side effects.