Do You Feel Hungry on a Detox Diet?

A “detox diet” is one that is supposed to make your body cleaner and healthier by basically forcing it to release toxins by stopping the intake of harmful substances and by ingesting other substances that are supposed to help the toxins leave. The phrase usually means the food portion of the detoxing only and not intestinal cleanses or other external practices that could be considered part of detoxing as a whole. A typical pattern involves reducing what you eat and gradually adding foods back in. The restrictive nature of a detox diet may be off-putting because it implies you will lack enough to eat, but whether you feel hungry while on it really depends on the specific diet itself.

Identification

Detox diets don’t follow one official structure and range from gentle to severe. One person on a detox diet may be merely replacing processed foods with whole foods cooked from scratch, while another person may forgo all food and ingest nothing but one type of juice for a week. Whether or not detox diets do any good is controversial; institutions like Harvard Medical School and the University of Southern California claim they are unnecessary, while Whole Health MD notes that there are doctors who advocate detox diets and claims patients feel better after undergoing them, even if the effect is merely psychological.

Lack of Satisfaction

No matter what you do, if you are not giving your body enough calories to meet its energy needs, you are going to get hungry. If the detox diet doesn’t provide the calories, your body will set off growling in your stomach until it decides you’re in the middle of a famine. Keep in mind that this is physical, actual hunger, and not just wanting to eat of boredom.

Considerations

Placing yourself on a very restricted -- or basically nonexistent -- diet that is not medically required and supervised can upset your body’s ability to tell if you actually need food. This can make things worse after the detox diet is over for reasons that have nothing to do with toxins. You may feel cleaner, but the lack of food can set off a famine reaction that has you eating whatever you can once the diet is over, even if you’re not physically hungry. Most detox diets don’t last very long, but depending on your personal diet history and how your body reacts to a lack of food, even one week can set you off. If you decide to follow the diet for a long time, as USC Adjunct Professor Roger Clemens says people sometimes decide to do, you risk conditions like malnutrition.

Cautions

There’s nothing wrong with cleaning up what you eat and switching from sugary, fatty foods that have healtno real nutritive value to a much more balanced, nutritious diet. Don’t go overboard, however. All that cutting back on what you eat does -- even for a week -- is place stress on your body and organs. Always check with a registered dietitian first to get an eating plan in place that allows you to transition as smoothly as possible from your previous habits to new menus if you think your diet should be healthier. If you decide a detox diet is something you still want to try, find a doctor who can provide and monitor a diet for you.