Lemon Cleansing Ground Rules: Keep it Real as You Cleanse

By the third day of your lemon cleanse, you will begin feeling genuinely better, because the powerful antioxidants and purgatives in your detoxification drink will have washed away dead cells, free radicals, poisons and potent micro-organisms.  Your metabolism will have grown more efficient, your digestion more productive, and your circulation less labored.  You will feel more alert and energetic, and the serotonin producing action from the organic maple syrup in your healthy beverage will produce a feeling of overall well-being.  All of this good feeling, ironically or paradoxically, may put you at risk of damaging your health by trying too hard to improve it.  In the same way that you devoted time to figuring out how you put-on weight and what you must change to preserve your ideal weight, you must monitor, measure, and regulate your progress toward your goals.  Remember that you are playing by the rules of homeopathy, so that what makes a sluggish person fit will make a fit person sick.  Use your will power as much to prevent excess as to persist with your lemon cleansing.

As you continue your cleansing regime, drinking your cleansing beverage, supplementing it with plenty of water, and enhancing its benefits with a program of regular exercise, take time to review your motivation.  Make sure your goals are as clear and healthy as your mind and body have become.  The majority of first-time detoxifiers start the program with mixed motives, eager to lose weight and feel better not for the sake of lifelong health but for the sake of a big occasion—weddings and high school reunions lead the list.  Whereas proper attention to your vanity’s demands will help sustain your motivation, vanity should not supply the majority of the energy behind your initiative.  Although men remain far more reluctant to discuss it, body image matters just as much to them as it matters to women, so that all detox dieters must address fundamental issues of body image, stealing some cues from the makers of Dove products and the fashion experts at Seventeen magazine.  Even as you work on purifying, vitalizing, and strengthening your body, you must become comfortable with the skin you are in.  If you are petite but pear-shaped, no amount of lemon detox drink will stretch you to Elle MacPherson’s proportions; if you are athletic—“big boned” as they say, and muscular—you can guzzle gallons of guaranteed good antioxidant juice and still never look even remotely like Kate Moss.  In order for your detox and subsequent homeopathic diet to succeed, you must make a commitment to becoming healthy, not to becoming Nicole Richie’s body double.

Even the most ardent lemon cleansing advocates sternly will warn you about the dangers of excess: Over-hydration, for example, poses at least as many health risks as dehydration.  Exceeding the recommended daily measure of your detox beverage actually can compromise your digestive and immune systems.  And losing too much weight too soon can send your body into shock, or it can prompt metabolism of muscle cells along with fat.  Monitoring and measuring your progress through cleansing and rejuvenation, set numerical benchmarks and exercise some caution about exceeding them.  When the lemon cleanse works as it should, you should lose two or three pounds each day until you reach your ideal weight; if you drop more than just a couple of pounds below your ideal weight and Body Mass Index, you may have damaged your system and probably should consult your healthcare team.  Similarly, you cannot go from zero to marathon in a week, so that you should set your exercise goals according to time rather than distance or weight.  You need at least twenty minutes of daily exercise, and an hour’s properly paced workout will yield greatest benefit.  If you attempt more, you risk muscle, ligament, and joint damage.

Most of all, however, traditional and alternative healthcare professionals agree: You always should focus on what your body can do, never on how it looks.  And you always should derive satisfaction, self-esteem, and fresh motivation from how far you have advanced rather than looking at how far your still want to go.  Even if you walked for only a minute on your first day of detox, that minute represents 100% more than you walked the day before.