What’s the Lemon Juice Diet and How Does it Relate to Juicing?

Juicing, fasting, cleansing and various programs that aim to do one or all of those things are often hard to keep separate.

One of the most popular cleansing methods is called the Master Cleanse, otherwise known as the lemon juice diet or lemon detox diet.

Now, the Master Cleanse has very little to do with the juice diet. The only juice it involves is the juice of a few lemons per day, and you don’t need a juicer to make lemon juice.

The Master Cleanse is based on the work of Stanley Burroughs, a rather controversial figure who wrote a book called The Master Cleanser that has been in print since the 1940s.

Although there is no official evidence supporting the claims made by Burroughs about the Master Cleanse being a helpful means of ridding the body of toxins, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who have done the cleanse and experienced its effects both good and bad.

I encourage you to do your research thoroughly before adopting any new dietary regimen and especially any type of cleansing or fasting program.

What the Lemon Juice Diet Is

When you follow the Lemon Juice Diet, you commit to drinking a special lemonade concoction made of water, lemon juice, grade B maple syrup and cayenne pepper. This is the source of all the calories you receive during the cleanse.

In addition to your daily regimen of lemonade (you can drink as much or as little as you want), you are also supposed to do some kind of flush to keep things moving through your digestive tract throughout the cleanse. The recommended cleanse is a salt water flush, which I personally don’t tolerate particularly well. But you can substitute any other types of flushes like a laxative tea, senna, etc.

What the Lemon Juice Diet is Supposed to Do

I’ve found the Master Cleanse to be a reasonably easy introduction to fasting. However, I definitely prefer a broader juice fast or a stricter water fast when I cleanse. My most successful cleanses have mixed those two methods.

The Master Cleanse is designed to give your digestive system a rest while you maintain most of your usual daily responsibilities. The lemonade gives you energy and allows you to remain upright and functional despite the fact that you’re not consuming solid food.

When your body doesn’t have to spend its energy digesting food, so the theory goes, it can focus instead of cleaning and releasing toxins.

Medical science seems to be dragging behind the spiritual masters when it comes to the health benefits of cleansing and fasting. I’ve never heard of a patient in a hospital being encouraged to fast, but I have noticed that patients in hospitals are fed artificially-colored (and flavored) jello alongside their processed dinners with sides of obliterated veggies.

Rather than rely on the mainstream medical establishment to prove the efficacy of fasting in general or the Master Cleanse in specific, I encourage you to carefully run your own experiments on your body and carefully keep track of the results.

On top of the physical benefits that may or may not accompany the Master Cleanse (depending on who you listen to), there are also lots of benefits that accrue to a person emotionally, psychologically and spiritually during a fast.

For our purposes here, just know that the Master Cleanse is one possible fasting regimen among many. I recommend a full juice fast rather than the more limited Master Cleanse, and if you want to intensify your fasting, I recommend you supplement days on just water or water with a little lemon. But the Master Cleanse is a fascinating ride to take, and I definitely have benefited from the several times I’ve done it.