When Beyoncé needed to lose weight for her role in Dreamgirls, she turned to the lemonade diet for answers. During an appearance on Oprah Winfrey Show, she spoke about her miraculous weight loss of 20 pounds in a matter of weeks!
Sound like a quick fix, right? But how safe it this diet from a nutritional standpoint? Let’s take a peek into the good and the bad lemon concoction.
Ten days is the minimum time the diet requires in order to achieve the best results. You start the day with a saltwater flush that consists of drinking 32 ounces of room temperature water with 2 teaspoons of non-iodized sea salt on an empty stomach. You are then required to drink 6 or more glasses of the lemonade concoction throughout the day that contains a mixture of 2 tablespoons of organic freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice, 2 tablespoons of organic maple syrup, and 1/10 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in a 10 ounces of medium hot or cold water. At the end of the day, you must drink an herbal laxative tea. The only other liquids you’re allowed to have in addition to saltwater, lemonade, and laxative tea are plain water and peppermint tea.
This diet claims that it can be used for detoxification, weight loss, or both. If weight loss is your goal, then the diet recommends going down to 1 tablespoon of the organic maple syrup.
When the ingredients are entered into the USDA Super Tracker based on a 2000-calorie daily allowance, the results illustrate that the diet does not meet any of the daily food group targets or the calorie requirements. It only provides the fruit group with a measly 28 percent of the target and 174 grams of carbohydrates. None of the whole grains, vegetables, dairy, or protein group targets is provided at all. The overall calories are a little bit under 700 with almost all coming from the maple syrup. This caloric intake is halved if a person decides to go down to 1 tablespoon of maple syrup for weight loss. Limiting yourself to consuming barely 350 calories in one day is dangerous, especially if you’re sticking to this diet to 10 days or more. Except for the carbohydrate, salt, and zinc, none of the target values for key nutrients, minerals and vitamins are met. The saltwater flush actually provides about 14,000 milligrams of sodium intake – that’s over 11,700 the recommended amount! Furthermore, people are advised to stay home for about an hour after the saltwater flush since multiple trips to the bathroom will ensue in the next hour after consumption.
The only good thing about this diet is the amount of water it requires people to drink, and that’s really it! Overall, this diet seems to be very dangerous when looking at it from a nutritional standpoint. You’re basically depriving your body everything it needs to function properly. There’s no good news here – just more bad news.
