Episode 65: No, You Don’t Need to Do a Detox Diet
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Episode Description
In this episode of The Up-Beet Dietitians podcast, Emily and Hannah are talking all about detox diets and supplements. From fruity juice cleanses to celebrity-endorsed detox teas, these fads are everywhere. But do they actually work? Or will they just do more harm than good? Be sure to tune in to get the scoop and find out the best way to keep your body toxin-free!
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Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Upbeat Dietitians podcast. Hello, guys. Welcome back to a brand new episode. Today we are talking all about Detoxes cleanses. Basically pooping your pants. It's going to be stuff like that. It's great. And we know that this is a very popular topic. It's been around for a bit of time. So we wanted to make sure we touched on it because we had lots of questions about what the best Detox is or should I do this cleanse program. Or even we just see social media trends that are I feel like celebrities are the biggest culprits of this. When I was making outline for this, I was thinking like the Kardashians and Jenners and Gwen Paltrow. Like they're big cleansers detoxers. Yes, they're everywhere. And we're going to go over today how these can actually do more harm than good. So we're going to break down why you don't need to detox because there's a lot of reasons why you don't need to. And then we're going to go into what to do instead. So instead of just saying, no, don't do it, we're going to also give you some takeaway things you can focus on to adequately remove the toxins from your body without doing a weird detox juice cleanse or something like that. Yes, it would be great. Yeah, it would be great. We're going to love it. It's going to be a great time. So let's start off right off the bat. So a common theme of what we talked about in previous, let's just hammer it out right now with these cleanse detox programs. Is any type of or any time really a program calls for cutting out foodsfood. Groups specifically like sugar and carbs oftentimes get hit with these Detox program. It sets you up to that binge style eating restriction patterns. So oftentimes we'll take out a food group where our body starts to crave it so much more oftentimes. Also, if it's a sugar or carb in general food group, her body runs on carbs primarily. So we're going to feel extremely fatigued. We're going to have very strong cravings for carbs or sugar. And then we'll probably restrict and avoid for a while for the Detox. And then once you're off the program, we'll kind of flip to that alternative side, binge overeat, feel awful because we just ate so much of that at once when we're restricting before and then it's just like, oh, no, I did this. I got to restrict again to Detox. It's just a very vicious cycle. Yes, that's some type of cycle. Well, yeah. And even like before you do the Detox, like even thinking about having that detox, like, in your mind, you know you're going to do it next week or Monday, whatever. Just by having that upcoming, you're likely going to experience what's called Last Supper eating, which is like a play on words of the Last Supper in the Bible where they're like, it's the Last Supper, so they overeat. Your brain knows when it's, like, even going to have future restriction, and that can lead to you overeating in the time being. Whereas if you just don't ever plan to go on a diet or do a detox or whatever, hopefully you won't have any of that Last supper eating anymore. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Oftentimes that like, diet starts on Monday mentality where you kind of know it's coming and then you're like, I'm going to eat all the pizza and ice cream and donuts and candy before I have to get onto it. Just like, how do I do every day? If you want to not every day. Right. The example I often give is like, one of my coworkers, she has a mini Mounds bar every day after her lunch. It's like her way of, like, testing her sweet tooth. She has one mini Mounds bar, maybe two. If she's feeling it, she feels good. She's, like, happy with that, and she just moved on from it. She doesn't ever have to binge an entire bag of many Mountains bars or only have them on the weekends because she's on a diet the rest of the week. But she just, like, has many Mounds bar. Having those fun foods once in a while strategically can actually help you to prevent that binge type eating. Exactly. Yeah. Which will be great for your long term relationship with food. The next thing we'll know is when it comes down to it, there's not really anything great or healthy or scientifically backed about starving yourself, which is a detox. Is it's starving? Shit, yeah. You're going to go on this cleanse or this detox that really perpetuates a lot of negativity around food, especially that relationship with food is going to get distorted or going to start viewing like, these foods is bad that we want to take out. And these are good. And food does not hold a moral value, which you guys know, preach that very strongly. So please don't starve yourself. You're going to feel miserable. You're not going to have a fun time. And kind of leading to our next point, you don't need to specifically, like, if you have a functioning liver, kidney system, and lungs, your body naturally will detox in different ways. How do you think that our body digests all those diet, culture and products that throws at us, especially the unregulated ones? That often times I'm, like, realizing I'm going to too many bullet points at once, but we're just going to go over the place. Now. Oftentimes these detox programs like the pills and juices and cleanses are not regulated. Go check out our supplement episode. We will link that in the description. But our body is actually very good at what it does. It's very smart, it's very intuitive. It has these programs set up, these like, checks and balances. Checks and balances of the body. Ecommerce we're looking for is homeostasis. But yeah, let's do checks and balances. We took one class, I'm going to use that. And it was a traumatic experience for a lot of reasons. That's what we get. All I don't know why we needed to take that class. It was a requirement for a degree. Everyone said that, I'm pretty sure. And I said that. Yes. Interesting. Well, checks and balance. That's all we learned was the end of a man. My econ major husband is like, punching the air right now. He was like, oh, my gosh, please just stick to nutrition and do not talk about business at all. Like Hannah said, the key word is homeostasis. Our body likes to keep our state in us healthy and stable condition and does not want to do anything while they're crazy that these detoxes might throw at us. And you're probably like, how are my liver, kidney and lungs detoxing? Breathing, peeing, pooping. We are naturally detoxing our body and removing toxic byproducts and waste and it's free. Our bodies have been doing this forever. Like, we've been breathing and peeing and pooping since the beginning of time. So do you think they just had this toxic build up before they had these detox teas you could buy on the market? No, they just created those detox teas to make you feel bad about yourself and your weight and your health and your body and made you buy those so you would spend money on whatever and you'd be a victim of diet culture. We've been pooping and peeing literally forever. You don't need a detoxy. No, they didn't just like, die of toxic build up a lot more before that culture created detox supplements versus now. No, especially the whole stats. I don't know the stats of that, but I'm assuming the rates of ammonia build up from not urinating properly is not statistically higher than it was back in the day. What freaks me out the most is the unregulated portion where they could be lying to you about what's in those products and we just want to know. Kind of reminds me of speaking of pop culture references that we can always bring in here. The pink sauce. Have you been following that? All I know is what? Food science, babe. That's all I've seen is food science, babe. Yeah, I'm not on pink sauce TikTok, but all I know is people are getting sent sauce things with milk in them that aren't refrigerated and that's all I know about it and that they don't know what's in it because it's not regulated right. That's how these supplements are. If they're supplements, we're talking about, like, detoxing in general today. If we haven't really made that clear. It's like a juice cleanse or, like, detox teas and supplements that was also under this, like, umbrella. My gosh. Excuse me. Umbrella that we're talking about today. But yeah, supplements, as you guys know, are not regulated for the most part. We have a whole episode on that we even discussed a few weeks ago on our Collagen episode. But yeah, now that okay. I'm back tracking because someone's going to, like, point this out. I'm realizing the pink sauce might be classified as a food. Yeah. I think it has a nutrition Facts label, and that's supposed to be regulated. Food Size was saying that even, like, those are not always super accurate when it comes to small businesses. I'm sure it's more kept up on when it's, like, a big cup. See, if they made something, I'm sure there's a lot more messily. Hands in the pot. Yeah, I think pink sauce I think she had done one of her videos. They probably just got online and found, like, a template where you could make your own Fact label and they just slapped it on their product. Interesting. And so it's probably one of those things where, like, no one is regulating that until something happens. Something bad happens. Yeah. This spooky scary. If we were those crazy conspiracy theorists who would say that America is trying to kill us with our food and they put the pink sauce lady behind us, she's a spy. I don't know anything about her. Like, I just think it's wild. A wild world we're living in where people are buying something called pink sauce and it has dairy in it. It's not refrigerated. That's what I'm, like, fixating on. Yeah. I need to get more into this. I don't know a whole lot about it. I feel kind of old. Usually I'm pretty good at the trends. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like it's just I've seen things about it just for some reason. Doesn't peak me. I think it looks like peptobismal to me, so I'm like, she should have thought of that when she made this. It resembles a very popular, very peak product. Yeah. It is known for not tasting that great. Although I kind of like tom's. Is that weird? I kind of like the chunky fruity. That's what I don't like. I know toms are a popular tablet. Yes. A lot of people actually do like the flavor of them. I know. Yeah. So I would say you're not in the minority. Okay, maybe in the minority, but there's others with me, I think the same. It's not, like, as weird of a minority. It's like there's definitely an audience. Yeah. What's the other similar? Oh, smarties. I feel like they're similar to smarties, but, like, worse. I love Smarties, but I don't like toms. Do you think you don't like toms because you think they're tums? Like, if I were to give you a smarty and a tom's, and black. Okay. Smarties are so much higher in sugar. I can tell. That's why I like them. Yeah, but they are a similar texture which like just eat so many don't do that. This is not medical advice. This is not medical advice. Do not please read our disclaimer. Yes. Alright, let's talk about what to do instead of a detox or cleanse or detox diet or detox program. So, first and foremost, one of our favorite toxins when it comes to the world is eliminating alcohol intake. Because when it comes down to it and this is something I could dive a lot into Hannah, but I don't think we have the time. This is not what they came for is like alcohol is a toxin to the body but it's not really treated like that at all, which just packs there, especially with binge drinking and whatnot. But I will save my rant for another time. We've discussed it on our episode on alcohol, which will link below. I don't know how passionate we were about that topic, but we discussed it a little bit. Okay, I will say one thing and then I will leave you with your thoughts. Before I continue to talk about why we want to limit alcohol is why do we not treat binge shrinking the same as overdosing on drugs? Yeah, it's very normalized. That's all we're going to say. Yeah, that's it. But yeah, limit alcohol intake. Your body doesn't have to digest and process as many toxins to fill it out. Give your liver a break. It's working hard. Yeah. We are not one to say that anything is a toxin that we put into our body, but alcohol is like one of the very few things that's normalized. Yes, we both still drink alcohol. Yeah. Because our bodies are not these fragile machines. So like, if you like to drink once in a while, have a drink once in a while, it's going to be able to get rid of those toxins. But it's that it's normalized to over consume. Yes. Society norms, societal norms, peer pressure. Even though I was never fear pressured, but I don't think I was either. Really? No. I had a good group of friends. Okay, our next thing to do instead of doing a detox, which by the way, we're saying these things like if you feel the need to go on a detox just typically because you like maybe over eight, like a holiday or vacation, maybe you think that you should want to detox, but instead do these things in place of that. The next one is to find joyful movement to help with blood flow and regulating bowel movements. Because like we said, pooping is a great way to detox. Why we poop is to get rid of like what a buyer does not need. Just get things out of there and finding movement that you enjoy and being consistent with that can help you to have those more regular BMS. We love regular BMC. I love Cooptalk. Patients are always like, this is TMI. I know, but they talk about their poop. I literally am thriving right now. Let's keep talking about we talk about pooped every single person. Yeah. I'd like to think we hold a safe space where they're like, I can say anything about my poop in the color. Intensity. Intensity. I've heard it all. Yes, exactly. I'm always like, I've heard it all on these four walls. You can't surprise me. Just let me know what's going on. Yeah, exactly. That another great way to say to detox. I don't know. I was thinking of like a social media detox with this one, but this is just in general, maybe like a die culture detox type spin to it is getting rid of the guilt. Overeating is going to happen and stressing about it is actually worse than the food itself that you are eating. I promise you that. Stress affects so much. Unfortunately, so many people stress about their dietary habits when there are a lot bigger issues in the world. So it's going to happen. Just let it happen and move on with your regular life. Right. They're not going to have the same amount every day. Yeah. And like the stress from eating a cookie is going to be worse for your body than the darn cookie, which I know is like a very cliche to say these days, but it's true. Yes, exactly that. Okay, our next thing to do, if you say you over ate, it's Christmas, you're doing all these holiday gatherings, you're eating more than usual. You want to go on a detox, don't do that. Instead, try at the panic. Your body knows what to do. Like if you over eight, your body is not going to just crumble. You're not going to gain £80. Like, your body knows exactly what to do. It happens all the time. Our bodies are like very resilient. They're not fragile. And your body can endure periods of time with less sleep, for example. It can endure times of like less movement. So you have like an injury, you can't move as much. And so it can also endure times of less nutritious foods. Like, again, like holidays, vacation, busy seasons where you're getting out more, for example. I think it's good to just normalize that. Even as a dietitian, I have periods of time where I'm eating salads and I'm cooking dinner every night. I have three meals a day. I got protein every meal. Then I have here at the time where it's the past few weeks, actually, I've been so crazy. I'm dining out more than I usually do. I'm drinking less water. So I'm still thinking about it. My body is like, it's fine. I just know I have to get back to my routine whenever I can and not stress about it. But I'll feel better. I think that's the big thing, too, is you just know you'll feel better if you're able to get back to normal habits sooner rather than later. Exactly that. Nothing wild, no over compensation or whatnot will be good. Next thing we'll note is kind of along the lines of that joyful movement but moving your body if it feels good. And this is more so from the standpoint of not using exercise punishment after you ate, quote unquote bad. So maybe like Thanksgiving dinner and you ate a lot of stuffing and potatoes and cranberry sauce and turkey and sweet mashed potatoes, all that fun food and then you're feeling a little bit more bloated the next day or you're feeling a little bit more fold than you normally. You don't want to eat like that for every single meal. Trying to find some movement in like walking after meals can help. Or even just like an easy walk the next day can help. But you shouldn't go and do a three hour intense weight lifting work out to burn off the calories from the previous day. That's not how it works. Your eyes burn the calories from yesterday's meal. No, you can't like pinpoint which calories you burn. Exactly that, it's not that simple. Yeah, so only do it if it feels good. If it helps you to like stretch trickle for a walk, it kind of alleviate some of that uncomfortable feeling from being too full and kind of along those lines. The next one is to not restrict or skip meals. If you overeat and want to go on a detox, just get back to normal, whatever normal really is for you. That can of course be very different from person to person. But if we restrict or skip meals, we kind of already mentioned that this can lead to that binge style eating. I had a patient today, for example, who was like I skip lunch every day because if I eat less lunch I'll lose weight faster. And I'm like, how does the evening go for you? And they're like, I binge eat every night. I had like six sausages last night and I was still hungry. Yeah, let's try to get some lunch in there. Skipping meals never pays off the way you think it will. No, it's also not sustainable. Yeah, exactly. The last one we'll note is going back to your usual self care habits like honoring your hunger cues and feeling your phone list which we always preach is good to kind of get back into that routine because you know what works for you. Your body will know what's normal for you at least. But like going back and doing like grocery shopping like you normally would or planning for meals or incorporating that fun joyful movement and prioritizing sleep. Kind of good solid habits from all aspects of health that will work. But making sure that we're not doing anything wild or crazy to over compensate with it. Just kind of getting back into what was working for you before. Yeah, not all or nothing. It's not like you're on one day off the next. It's just getting back together. What makes you feel good? Because you probably aren't going to feel good eating Thanksgiving quantities of food every single day. You'll feel better if you can get back to your routine of grocery shopping and eating dinners that you enjoy breakfast you enjoy, things like that. Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's really all we got for you guys. So our final thoughts if you haven't gathered, skip the detox, skip the cleanse, skip the juicing. These things are often expensive. They almost always do not work. Almost always don't work. They almost never work. That's the right grammar. And they can foster an unhealthy relationship with food, which we know is our biggest thing around here, that we want to work on actually improving, not worsening. We can embrace and apply gentle nutrition instead. So go listen to our Gentle nutrition episode with Colleen Christiansen. Also, if you're kind of like, what the heck is gentle nutrition? We have a course out. Almost out. Almost out. It's in the works. You can learn more at our website and join our wait list. It's about all things intuitive eating. We're going to kind of take you hand in hand, go through all the principles. We have all these fun resources for you. I'm not going to go super into it because we tend to overtake the on honoring and respecting your time. So go check out the course. We're going to link it in the podcast description. Or if you just go to the upbeatdatians.com, you can find it there as well. Yeah, check it out. Okay, bonus question. Let's wrap this baby up. I'm excited for this one. Which restaurant has the best fast food breakfast? Civically Breakfast.
Participant #1:
Trying to think of how many different fast food breakfasts I've had. I mean, should we take them off? McDonald's is like the obvious one. McDonald's burger. Burger King. Duncan. I think of Duncan. Wendy's has breakfast now. Yeah. Pretty good. It's not my answer, but it's pretty good. Yeah. What I was going to say was Starbucks. I really enjoy their breakfast sandwiches because they're a little bit more like out there, I feel like, than the traditional, like sausage and egg or sausage. That's true. They do like fun, funky cheeses. Yeah. I always get like let me say this wrong to someone. I say chorizo. Yeah, chorizo. I don't know if some people like, say Torreso. No, it's Spanish. It's like a Mexican I've heard it so many different ways. I don't know. I'm like 90% sure it's Theresa. I took Spanish for four years. And that's like how you pronounce those letters. I'm pretty okay. Cool. Well, I like that one of theirs, but I also like they're like egg bites a lot. I've heard that. I need to try those. They'd be so easy to make at home, but it's convenient. I've seen a lot of copycat recipes. Yeah. I feel like they have more like fun and spicy sandwiches, which I'm a big fan. I do love McDonald's. McGriddle. Those are really good. Not my answer, though. My answer is going to be surprising because to give it away I worked there. It's going to be my husband there. Yes. And so you think I would like hate their food, but taco Bell Breakfast crunch wrap. I don't think I've ever had breakfast from Taco Bell. Oh my gosh. The breakfast crunch wrap is so good. It has eggs, a hash brown. You could do bacon or sausage, a spicy sauce. What else is on? There? Not nacho cheese, cheddar cheese or they're like blend cheese, whatever it is. And it's like a crunch wrap form. I do love their crunch wrap supreme normally. So I feel like they can't go wrong with the breakfast one. I will say as a former employee, the eggs are pretty gross. But if you don't know, there's a lot of fast food. Eggs are kind of suspicious. They would like turn neon green if they sat out too long. Yeah. Oh my gosh. What we did to cook them was they were in this plastic bag and it was like a yellow liquid and you put it in like we call the steamer, just like hot water. And it like cooks them and they get all like eggy texture. And then you put them in a pan and serve them. But they sat on the line too long. They would turn like a neon green sound. Like some type of oxidation. What is going on? I don't know what ingredient made it turn that color, but eggs should not do that. No, probably not. But would I call that a toxin that you should do a detox club if you have it. No, your body is fine. If you have some bright green eggs, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Like Dr. Seuss said. Well, green eggs. Where are you going with this, Sam? I am I don't know. There we go. Maybe Taco Bell is just inspired by Doctor Seuss. It's a party trick, actually. Except for I feel like customers don't know that the employees yeah, scary. But also eat them. They're great. You got snappage jermy. No, they have a breakfast burrito. That's pretty good. Oh my gosh. I should know. This is called I'm so embarrassed. It has PECO and sour cream on it. Oh my gosh. Ross with no, it's one of the breakfast spreads. It's so good. I'm going to have to check out Taco Bell breakfast. You should have. You had their cinnabon delights. Yes. Those are good. Those are good. I will say their coffee is trash. I used to try to choke that down when I worked there. It's not good. People aren't going there for the coffee. No. Going for the Baja blast. You got to try, Wendy's. Yeah. The Baja blast is so good, which I have in like a diet version now, which I love. I still feel good if I have like, regular soda. Have you had Wendy's breakfast? I have not. Pretty good. They have a breakfast bacon eater that sounds so good. And they have like a chicken biscuit thing. It's really good too. I love anything like chicken biscuit, chicken waffles, chicken biscuits, yeah. What are your thoughts on Burger King? I guess breakfast in general, but I'm thinking of their French toast sticks is like what I used to get there when I was younger. I haven't had Burger King. I have not had a lot of these, like, breakfast, only because of the time limits. I'm normally getting it late at night just because of it's more of like a fun, like, hanging out with friends type situation. They don't have breakfast. I would love to eat breakfast at 09:30 p.m.. Okay, absolutely do that. Yeah. I guess one perk of me being a morning person is I'm awake during fast and dressing showers almost always. Yeah. I love the idea though. French toast. So good. Okay, so my answer is Taco Bell. Here's the Starbucks. Okay, let us know, guys, what your favorites are. Tag us. Tag us in the pictures, please, so I can see we can see what you're eating. I would love that. I would love to see any of your food pictures. Honestly, whatever you're eating, just have a regular old chicken dinner. I want to see it. Some steak and taters. We'll repost you so everyone else can see it. Yeah, we just want to share, like, not a good picture. Like just basic, like a bagel. I had a bagel before we started this podcast. Bagels are so good. Divine. What's your favorite kind of bagel? Probably Asiago. I love the cheese component. Or like, Asiago jalapeno. Oh, so you're more savory. I think I'm more sweet with bagels. I mean, I will eat in everything I'll eat. Naziago. I love those too, but this is very basic of me. But I love the crunchy salmon ones from I love those two. I love the middle when it cinnamon accumulates. I love eating that stuff. I'm like, this is so good. You're crusty bunch of cinnamon sugar when you put in the toaster and it gets all kind of melty and sugary and sticky. It's so good. Yes, so good. But I do love like a savory, like, bagel, like, breakfast sandwich kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. Both great options. You got two bonus questions in this episode today. Yay. We need to go off two off topic. I feel like a bonus question is usually the biggest portion of the episode, but it's fine. They come for the science content. Stay for the bonus questions. I think people have heard that before in some comments. Oh, really? Yes. I think I saw a YouTube comment where someone said that. Well, that makes me feel better. I'm not just making this up. Yeah, they really do love it. They love it. Cool. So we're we will post this
Participant #1:
I was going to say we will post this episode next Wednesday. They don't need to know that. You come out on a Wednesday. You'll see it when you see it. They're not listening live. Yeah. Thank you for listening today's episode. We hope you enjoyed us talking about Detoxing and whatnot I'm sure there's other Detox products and whatnot we have not touched on. We can probably do a whole episode online. I'm like, what if we did a whole episode on pink sauce? That would be helpful. We could yeah, that would be fun. I think we've got, like, an RBon review coming up. Or shakeology one of those guys. Oh, yeah, that'll be good. But as always, let us know what else you want us to talk about. Yes. Via social media comments or DMs or email. But we appreciate you so much for listening, and we appreciate all of you for sticking around till the end of the episode, not the end of time. Hopefully you do that too. Just talking about nutrition, probably at that point, I feel like we'll just venture out. We'll be talking about, like, bees or yeah, we'll probably talk about something outrageous. Whatever. Or we'll have, like, chicken feet. We've already covered that. We'll morph into, like, 18 different podcasts. We'll have, like yeah, I don't know if we could do vegetable reviews. I was listening to another podcast, and they were saying that they heard a different podcast where they talked about just pens. Like, just Pens all the time. And they had, like, 500 episodes about pens. It's amazing. I know. So we could really niche. We could just talk about what episode is broccoli, what episode is cucumbers. Like, the origin type? The origin. That would be kind of fun. Like the different, like, species. Let us know if you're sick of us talking about diet culture and we'll send us I see the question to sit there. Let us know.
Participant #1:
Gross. Yes. Or maybe if there's something else you want us to talk about. I don't know. Yeah. Send us a message, and we will listen to you. Make it seem like I don't want to send you a message. Send Hannah a message if I freak you out.
Participant #1:
I kept saying, let us know. I wanted to stop saying the lettuce pun. Send us a message. Even better. Write it on a letter. Mail it to look at it in about five business days.
Participant #1:
Okay. But no, send us a GM or a comment, please. Yes, a message.
Participant #1:
Yeah. Okay. If you have an Aunt Karen who is telling you you should Detox, send them the link to this episode. Please share it with your friends. Join the course. Check out all the links episodes we have in the description about alcohol, supplements, grocery shopping, and gentle nutrition. Check out our email. Check out our Instagram. They're long gone. At this point, they probably left the chicken feet.
Participant #1:
Okay. This is like the longest outro in the entire world. We will see you next week. Okay? Bye. And we'll talk about something else. Okay, bye bye.
