The Master Cleanse

Beyonce credited her weight loss to cut the cast of Dreamgirls back in 2007 to the master cleanse diet/detox program. Like other diet fads, it claims to have some miraculous benefits and instant weight loss after just 10 days of drinking just lemonade. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty cynical about it myself.

The diet calls for a spicy lemonade concoction:
2 Tbsp. of freshly squeezed lemons
2 Tbsp. of B grade maple syrup
1/8 tsp. cayenne (red) pepper
8 oz. of water

The lemonade is to be drank at least 6 times a day, chilled or warm like a tea, coupled with consumption of a senna (detox) tea as the last thing you drink at night and a salt water bath (40 oz. lukewarm water and 2 tsp. sea salt) drank on an empty stomach in the morning. The originator of the diet, Stanley Burroughs, claimed that the ingredients listed above provides sufficient sustenance for the short period of 10-40 days that this diet is designed for. That proves a question on its own as to how skilled a nutritionist Burroughs really is.

Looking at the master cleanse from a weight loss perspective, we're faced with the yo-yo effect. Fact: Losing weight real fast using any diet program = gaining back the pounds once you're off the diet. Even with continued maintenance of the diet, your body will adapt to it to a certain degree, much like why we need to modify our work out program as to not get used too it.

Through the detox point of view... hold on to that thought, I am well aware that no detox claim, eg. clearing the hardened waste products from your system, at the time of writing, has been backed up by a scientifically solid, peer-reviewed literature.

Funny enough, the only reason that I know the tiniest morsel about nutrition (Yahoo health doesn't count) and the importance of empirical studies is thanks to my education in Psychology. And that is exactly why I decided to embark on this journey.

While there hasn't been enough research conducted to prove that the master cleanse really works, there is also insufficient evidence to disprove it. It's a matter of one logic against another. One side believes that toxins need to be eliminated from the body via a strict fast-like diet and the other stands that fasting of any kind would jeopardize your metabolism. That's the one possible side effect that I don't wanna mess around with and I will certainly quit the moment I feel that my long-term metabolism is being compromised. I'm writing my own law here, but I think that by continuing my daily jog, it would spur my metabolism still. The cayenne pepper is a plus too.

Placebo or not, the notion of giving up all the junk food I live by is sure to spark some ideas in one's head. Sure, the added benefits would be great, but I'm in this mainly to gain the experience of going 10 days without food. Imagine how much willpower you'd have to combat that oh-so-tempting snickers bar.

Based on Bem's cognitive dissonance theory, Festinger and Carlsmith crafted a classic experiment (1956) where undergraduate students of an Introductory Psychology class at Stanford University were asked to take part in a "Measure of Performance" experiment, and a follow up interview to improve future studies. During the experiment, the subjects (one at a time, of course) were required to perform repetitive tasks (eg. putting 12 spools into a tray, emptying the tray, refilling it, and so on) that seem boring and pointless. At the end of the experiment, the subjecst were be debriefed that they are part of the control group, and persuaded to tell another student that was coming (who is, you guessed it, a confederate) that the experiment is fun and exciting. Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to a compensation of $20 and others $1.

Now the post-experiment interview is when things get interesting. If you were to guess which group would give a higher rating how how much they enjoyed the experiment, which would you choose? Surprise, surprise, it was the $1 group. The theory goes that the people from the $20 group would have little dissonance inside their head: the experiment was boring and they only said that it was engaging because of the $20 (an external source). The other group, however, would have conflicting cognition, "I didn't say that it was fun because of a dollar... I must have actually enjoyed the experiment!"

Applying the last couple of paragraphs to the context of the master cleanse regime, by denying the thousands of temptations I would face each day, I hope to induce the notion and drill into my head that I'm not eating these junk food because I don't like them that much, especially after weighing it against the costs of an unhealthy lifestyle.

So here's my journey. I'm on day 2, and I will post my progress thus far in the next post.