After more than two decades working as a nutritionist specializing in weight loss and detoxification, I'm still completely in awe from the liver. As far as I’m concerned, this unique organ, nestled away within the right side of the abdomen, has a lot more than earned its name, which derives from an Old English word for “life.”
Your liver is the largest internal organ, and it’s responsible for an astonishing variety of life-sustaining and health-promoting tasks — including those that make healthy weight loss and weight loss possible. Integral to countless metabolic processes, the liver supports the digestive system, controls blood sugar and regulates fat storage. It stores and mobilizes energy, and produces more proteins than every other organ in the body.
One of your liver’s most important functions, though — and the one most crucial to your weight loss — is chemically breaking down everything that enters your body, from the healthiest bite of organic food to the poisonous pesticides that may linger in your salad; from the purest filtered water to a glass of wine; from your daily vitamin supplement to your blood pressure medication.
It’s your liver’s job to distinguish between the nutrients you need to absorb and also the dangerous or unnecessary substances that must be filtered out of your bloodstream. However when the liver is clogged and overwhelmed with toxins, it can’t do a very effective job of processing nutrients and fats. The upshot: The more toxic your body becomes, the more difficulty you’ll have losing weight and keeping it off.
The Low-Carb Diet Problem
Ironically, many of the low-carb diets that people adopt only make matters worse. By encouraging us to consume a lot of meat (much of which is laden with toxins) and discouraging us from eating enough fiber-rich, water-dense fruits and vegetables, such diets can slow elimination. By loading us up with so many proteins that our stomachs can’t produce enough acid to digest them all, these diets also can inhibit proper digestion, overloading our livers and intestines with a stream of nasty, internally produced poisons such as indican, ammonia, cadaverine and histide.
Fortunately, the liver, in its infinite wisdom, produces bile, an important substance for detoxifying the body. Bile lubricates our intestines and works together with fiber to prevent constipation. Bile is also where the liver dumps all the drugs, heavy metals, xenoestrogens, excess sex hormones from oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy, medications, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and other toxins, so they can eventually be eliminated from the body.
One of bile’s other main duties would be to help our bodies break down the fats we need and to assimilate fat-soluble vitamins. Without bile, we couldn’t convert beta-carotene into vitamin A, nor could we use calcium. However when our bile becomes overly congested with the toxins it’s trying to remove, it simply can’t function properly. It might be thick, viscous and highly inefficient in breaking down fats. The result: You are more prone to gain weight and to have greater difficulty losing it.
Cleansing the liver helps it produce better, more effective bile. That helps your body flush toxins and break down fat more effectively. It also makes more energy-giving nutrients open to your body and reduces stress on your digestive and immune systems. Your elimination improves, and your colon is relieved of unnecessary burdens. The net effect: You look and feel better, also it becomes far easier for you to achieve and maintain your ideal weight.
The Fast Track: A Three-Stage Process
Ready to give your liver a healthy boost — and give your entire system a thorough cleaning? My Steps for success Detox program is a proven, impressive detox and weight-loss system that provides a simple, safe and effective way to drop excess pounds; to clear out toxic gunk; and also to improve your health and vitality. Described in detail in my book, The Fast Track Detox Diet, the program is, in reality, less a diet than a multipart program for healthy living. It has been carefully tested inside a clinical setting.
Although the fasting area of the detox plan is just a day (making it very safe), the complete process calls for both a seven-day preparation along with a three-day follow-up phase designed to properly prepare your system for the one-day liver-cleansing juice fast and then help extend and compound your healthy results.
This three-part detox process can dramatically enhance the state of your liver and colon and help cleanse tissue throughout the body — all while eliminating bloating, improving your energy and assisting you in dropping excess fat. Best of all, unlike water fasting and long-term juice fasting, this program is safe and gentle enough that you should employ anytime you are feeling loaded down and sluggish and in need of more vitality. I personally do Fast Track Detox fasts 3 or 4 times a year, usually around the fall and spring equinoxes, and whenever Personally i think myself to be on overload.
The Steps for success Detox program is simple to work into your normal life: You spend a full week on the Seven-Day Prequel, eating the liver-loving foods that your body’s major detox organ needs. You’ll also load up on colon-caring foods to help your colon purge the toxins and waste from your body.
Next, you’ll spend one day following a special juice fast made to flush impurities and stored wastes out of your system.
Then, you’ll seal in the results with a Three-Day Sequel that includes additional liver and colon support together with special natural-food sources of probiotics — fermented foods that support the friendly bacteria your system needs to synthesize vitamins and promote immune function.
Many people experience significant and immediate weight reduction on this program, but the net benefits for energy and long-term health are just as dramatic. So, whether you are seeking to slim down or just lighten your toxic load, give the Fast Track Detox a try. You’ll be blown away at what your liver can accomplish with only a little help.
Seven-Day Prequel
Illustrations by Stephanie Wunderlich
Before you start the detoxifying One-Day Juice Fast, it’s crucial that you prepare your body by strengthening your liver and colon for the work ahead. If you don’t do this, you might end up more bloated, constipated and “toxic” than you were before. You may also inadvertently place the brakes on desired weight reduction.
Fasting can be dangerous if it’s dirty properly. Why? Fasting releases toxins which were previously lodged in your fat cells and shuttles them to your bloodstream for filtration and transport through your body’s elimination channels. But without prior liver and colon support to assist these toxins clear out of your system, the poisons may simply get relocated within the body, settling into any number of sensitive organs and causing you to feel tired, anxious, headachy and more fatigued than when you started.
So if you wish to avoid feeling unnecessarily lousy and when you want to maximize weight loss, follow the six steps described below — along with your regular diet — for 7 days before you embark on the liver-flushing One-Day Juice Fast:
1. Every day, for seven days, choose a minumum of one serving from each number of the following liver-loving foods:
- Crucifers, such as cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, broccoli sprouts
- Green, leafy vegetables and herbs, like parsley, kale, watercress, chard, cilantro, beet greens, collards, escarole, dandelion greens and mustard greens
- Citrus, like oranges, lemons and limes (avoid grapefruit and grapefruit juice, that have a compound called naringen that can interfere with the liver-cleansing process)
- Sulfur-rich foods, like garlic, onions, eggs and daikon radish
- Liver healers, for example artichoke, asparagus, beets, celery, dandelion-root tea, whey and nutritional yeast flakes
2. Every day, choose at least two of the following colon-caring foods: powdered psyllium husks, milled or ground flaxseeds, carrots, apples, pears, or berries.
3. Every day, drink half your body weight in ounces of filtered or purified water.
4. Every day, make sure you have at least two servings (the size of the palm of your hand) of protein by means of lean grass-fed beef, lamb, skinless chicken, turkey or fish, or, if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, a minimum of 2 tablespoons a day of a high-quality blue-green algae or perhaps a spirulina source (available in natural foods and health stores).
5. Each day, make sure you have 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil in the form of essential olive oil or flaxseed oil.
(For specific serving sizes on all of the above, along with more detailed guidance, read The Steps for success Detox Diet.)
6. Avoid the following “detox detractors”:
- Excess dietary fats, especially trans fats and fried foods
- Any type of sugar, including honey and maple syrup
- Artificial sweeteners
- Refined carbohydrates, including white rice and products made from white flour
- Gluten, found in wheat, rye, barley and all sorts of their related products, such as packaged cereals, macaroni and cheese, pizza dough, pasta, tortillas, pancake or waffle mixes, and cookies.
- Gluten also appears in many “low-carb” products, vegetable proteins, some soy sauces and distilled vinegars
- Soy protein isolates, present in many protein energy bars and processed soy foods
- Alcohol, over-the-counter drugs and caffeine (coffee, energy drinks, etc.)
One-Day Juice Fast
Illustrations by Stephanie Wunderlich
The One-Day Juice Fast area of the Fast Track Detox is designed to flush impurities out of your liver and other cellular tissues while supporting your current health and energy.
While I do not advocate water fasts, or even long-term juice fasts, decades of professional clinical experience and research have convinced me that healthy, short-term juice fasting — the type supported by adequate nutritional preparation for that liver and sufficient fiber for that colon — is probably the best-kept secret around for good health, long-term weight loss and an overall sense of well-being.
By reducing the amount of work your digestive tract has to do, you release a great deal of energy for healing and regeneration. And while you will be limiting your calorie intake for one day, it is not a long enough period to suppress your metabolism or set off a starvation response. In fact, every ingredient of the One-Day Juice Detox continues to be specially chosen to stave off hunger, balance your blood sugar, rev up your metabolism, and keep you feeling fit, energized and trim throughout your fasting day.
Here’s the basic protocol you should follow for your One-Day Juice Fast, and some concept of what you might experience during the detox process. (Keep in mind that the effects and results will be different from person to person.)
Before you conduct your One-Day Juice Fast, make sure you have completed the Seven-Day Prequel. Then, follow this four-step program:
1. Prepare the Miracle Juice (for complete recipe and preparation instructions, see my book The Fast Track Detox Diet):
- Cranberry water: unsweetened cranberry juice or unsweetened cranberry juice concentrate diluted with filtered water (be sure to use 100 percent pure, unsweetened cranberry juice that has no sugar, corn syrup or any other juices added)
- Ground cinnamon
- Ground ginger
- Ground nutmeg
- Freshly squeezed orange juice
- Freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Stevia (a sweet-tasting herb that's widely available at natural foods stores) to taste
Directions:
- Bring cranberry water to some light boil; reduce heat to low.
- Place cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg right into a tea ball; add to the cranberry water. (For a tangier juice, add the spices straight to the liquid.)
- Simmer 15 to 20 minutes; cool to 70 degrees.
- Stir in the orange and lemon juices. Add stevia at the moment, if desired.
1. Alternate drinking 1 cup (8 ounces) of filtered water and 1 cup (8 ounces) of Miracle Juice during the day. Drink at least 72 ounces of filtered water throughout the day, in addition to the Miracle Juice. Make sure you drink at least a cup of liquid — either the Miracle Juice or water — every hour. Begin the protocol whenever you wake up in the morning. You don’t need to begin at a specific time, but be sure to have eight glasses of Miracle Juice in addition to the 72 ounces of water by day’s end.
2. Upon rising and at the end of the day, take one serving of the colon-caring supplement, chosen from among the following:
- Powdered psyllium husks (1 to 2 teaspoons mixed in 8 ounces of water or Miracle Juice)
- Ground or milled flaxseeds (2 to 3 tablespoons mixed in 10 to 12 ounces water or 8 ounces Miracle Juice)
3. Engage in only light exercise — such as a 20-minute walk, mellow yoga or Ten minutes on an elliptical machine.
The Three-Day Sequel
Illustrations by Stephanie Wunderlich
Following your One-Day Juice Fast, it’s essential that you follow this sequel program for three days straight. Otherwise, your reentry into normal eating may leave you feeling bloated, constipated and much more toxic than before.
Fasting without follow-up support implies that toxins released into your bloodstream throughout the fast may remain in the body, making you feel tired, anxious, headachy and fatigued. Skipping the Three-Day Sequel also sets you up to regain lost weight. So support your body’s natural detox process and seal in the results of your One-Day Juice Fast by following these simple steps:
1. Each day, choose a minumum of one of the following probiotic food sources to restore “friendly bacteria”:
- Sauerkraut (1/2 cup). You can either help make your own or buy an organic, raw variety. Most store-bought sauerkraut is processed with heat, which kills the naturally sourced enzymes and microflora, so check the label carefully.
- Yogurt (1 cup). Whole-milk yogurt is fine (you can choose low-fat if you prefer), but search for plain, unsweetened yogurt with a label that reads “live, active cultures.”
2. Before each meal, take one or more tablets of hydrochloric acid inside a formula that contains at least 500 to 540 milligrams of betaine hydrochloride with a minimum of 100 to 150 milligrams of pepsin, and a minimum of 50 milligrams of ox bile extract (such formulas are widely available at most health and nutrition stores and at many natural groceries).
3. As well as the above, observe the steps from the Seven-Day Prequel.
Where to Go From Here
Once you’ve completed the Fast Track Detox as outlined here, I would recommend that you ease back into normal eating by selecting nutritious, cooked foods which are easy to digest. Pay attention to the positive, dramatic impact that supporting your body’s natural detoxification systems can have on your overall health and well-being. Follow these basic detox suggestions, and I trust that you will feel lighter, happier and more excited about your body’s healthy potential than you have in years.
Adjustment Phase
For most of my clients, detoxing is generally an extremely positive experience. But for some, particularly those who feel dependent on caffeinated drinks, the initial experience could be somewhat uncomfortable. Although many participants within our trials reported increased energy, mental clarity and improved well-being, some did experience other symptoms, including headaches, fatigue, irritability, foggy thinking and mild depression.
The explanation is straightforward: As you burn stored excess fat for fuel, the oil-soluble toxins you've kept in your fat are released, sometimes causing distress as they recirculate through the system. If you've been diligent about following a Seven-Day Prequel, you may not experience any symptoms. But when you do feel tired, grouchy or headachy, don't lose heart. Drink more water, have some downtime, and understand that these symptoms are a sign that both the fast and also the detox process are working. Because these toxins clear your system, you'll soon feel much better.
Not So Fast!
There are some times when you should not fast:
- If you are pregnant, nursing, malnourished, or recovering from an illness or injury
- If you have cardiac arrhythmia, type 1 diabetes, congestive heart failure, ulcers, or liver or kidney disease
- If you're struggling with mental illness (including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder)
- If you are more than 10 pounds underweight or prone to eating disorders
Also, consult your physician prior to fasting if you're diabetic, hypoglycemic or prone to migraines, or take regular medications, including antidepressants, blood pressure level medications and birth control pills.
Fast Track Detox Shopping List
In accessory for a selection of proteins, fruits and veggies you like, you'll need the following:
Beverages:
- Filtered or purified water
- Unsweetened cranberry juice
Liver-loving foods (your choices in each of the following categories):
- Crucifers: cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, broccoli sprouts
- Green, leafy vegetables and herbs: parsley, kale, watercress, chard, cilantro, beet greens, collards, escarole, dandelion greens and mustard greens
- Citrus fruits: oranges, lemons and limes (no grapefruit)
- Sulfur-rich foods: garlic, onions, eggs and daikon radish
Liver healers:
- Artichoke, asparagus, beets, celery, dandelion-root tea, whey and nutritional yeast flakes
Probiotic-rich foods:
- Sauerkraut and/or unsweetened yogurt
Herbs and spices:
- Ground cinnamon
- Ground ginger and nutmeg
- Stevia (powder or extract)
Supplements and nutritionals:
- Powdered psyllium husks and/or ground flaxseeds
- Olive oil or flaxseed oil
- Hydrochloric acid with betaine hydrochloride, pepsin and ox bile extract
Fast Track Detox Kit
While you can assemble everything you need to detox from your local natural market, I've found that many of my clients want or need a little extra help. So I come up with a kit of detox helpers, which I personally hand-selected for their quality, purity and efficacy. The short Detox Diet Kit includes a 30-day supply of the following supplements:
- Super-GI Cleanse, a fiber supplement that contains five sources of both soluble and insoluble fibers (rice bran, oat, apple pectin, psyllium and flax) to support elimination
- Liver-Lovin' Formula, a blend of artichoke, chlorophyll, and the protein taurine to help heal and cleanse the liver
- Flora-Key, a probiotic formula teeming with beneficial bacteria, for example acidophilus and bifudus, that can help restore gut health
This article was update in January 2021. It originally appeared within the May 2005 issue of Experience Life.
