Get Movin' Monday: The Safe Way To Detox

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Detox diets are a popular way to cleanse your system or lose weight. Beyoncé tried the Master Cleanse to slim down for her role in Dream Girls and lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks. But are detox diets safe?

Nutritionist Sue Moores from Kowalski's says they can be. She Gets Us Movin' with the detox dos and don'ts and what you can eat all year long to help your body's natural detox system.

"It gets people to sit and look at what they eat and people want to change, they want to do better, so from that perspective detox diets are great," Moores said.

The Master Cleanse is one detox diet some people will go on for 10 days or more, Moores said that's a bad idea.

"It's really restrictive," she said. "It's lemons, maple syrup, cayenne pepper mixed with water 6-8 glasses with water capped off with a laxative tea, that's all you have for 10 plus days," she said. "You really are putting your body at risk because your body will start to break down muscle tissue."

A general rule of thumb: don't go past the three-day mark.

"Usually a detox diet is pretty low calorie, 500-700 calories, after more than three days your body starts to break down different part of muscle because by and large most of us need at least 1200-1500 calories to function," she said.

"This one represents the Martha Vineyard detox diet which is a lot of juicing, a lot of fruits and vegetables," Moores said. "It can get really expensive, for many juice cleanses are asking you to have 6-8 glasses of juice a day and for just one glass one cup of a carrot juice it would take a pound or a pound and a half of fruit for just that one cup."

What's also problematic is juicers get rid of the all-important pulp.

"You lose so much of the phytonutrients and so much of the other nutrients besides all the other vitamins and minerals when you take out the pulp," Moores said.

"An orange has 750 phytonutrients that we know of most are in the membrane," Moores said. "If you're having an orange juice, you're not getting all the great nutrients that are super great for your health."

Be careful for detox diets that call for a laxative tea, which can flush out the good with the bad.

"One of the things about these cleanses is ones that call for getting intestines cleaned out is that there are a lot of great toxins in our system," she said.

If you're really concerned about detoxifying, Moores says there is food we can eat 365 days a year to boost our body's natural detox system.

"Our body actually does a remarkable job 24/7 to detox itself and if it didn't we probably wouldn't be around, so it's between our liver, our kidneys, our skin, our digestive track detoxes us all day long," Moores said. "If you were to eat cruciferous vegetables a couple times a week they have a substance that helps boost activity of liver and detoxification. Citrus fruits are another benefit that helps detox the liver."

Fiber is also a great way to naturally flush your system.

"Fiber is nature's broom to help your digestive system move those toxins out," Moores said. "Fiber in beans, potatoes and garlic they actually feed the bacteria, the good bacteria that's in your intestine that nudging out bad bacteria and removing those toxins."

Even though we naturally already have it, you can put in more good bacteria through fermented foods. And don't skip out on healthy fats, like avocado, nuts and olive oil.

"Many nutrients -- especially vitamins -- need fat in order to be absorbed, so you need fat to absorb vitamin K which is great for bones," she said.

Lastly, you won't find many carbs in cleanses, which if whole grain, are good for the brain.

"We sort of have moved into anti-carbs or careful about carbs, but carbs are the preferred source of energy for your brain," Moores said.

Detox diets are not for everyone, even if you do them for less than three days.

The elderly, children, teens, pregnant women and those with health conditions, particularly diabetes, are not encouraged to do any type of detox.