Thursday, April 05, 2007

Joshi Detox: Day 1

Inspired by DanK's success with the 21 day detox diet, I picked up the book and read half of it on the plane ride back to L.A. Not surprisingly, many of the justifications the author uses in the book are complete nonsense. The declared purpose of this diet, according to the author, is to restore the body's pH from acidic to slightly alkaline. To that end, he lists a whole lot of foods that you can't eat during the 21 day diet, and some of them are pretty surprising like peppers and mushrooms. You can read more about alkaline diets here, although to be honest I'm not going to bother.

I see this as a low-carb diet in disguise. Joshi says not to drink orange juice because it's acid, but to drink water with lemon because in some convoluted way he thinks lemon is alkaline. The way I see it, OJ is full of sugar and people tend to drink it in large quantities, whereas lemon doesn't and is consumed in small quantities. Many of the no-no's on Joshi's list are simply foods that are high in carbs. Chicken, fish, and vegetables are the key staples of the detox diet and are all coincidentally low fat, low carb foods.

So, despite being dubious on Joshi's "Joshtifications", I am still going to follow his diet plan very closely because I have no doubt that it will lead to weight loss and improved health.

This is officially day 1, although yesterday was kind of a diet warm up day in which I ate salad and stir fry. I am starting during passover on purpose, since it'll get me through the first week more easily knowing I can't eat breads anyway.

Initial Weight: 185lbs
Composition: Mostly Nacho

Today's food plan:
Small yogurt for breakfast, salad for lunch, stir fry leftovers for dinner.
Water and Green Tea to drink.

Things I miss already:
Pizza, Chips, Booze.

Song of the day:
Rock You Like a Hurricane

2 comments:

bombadill said...

I am planning to start the Joshi detox and I was looking for a site of someone who has started it and I found yours.
What I need is a meal plan to help get started.
Does Joshi have a book with a straight forward meal plan for the detox?
Any help you can offer will be gratefully appreciated.
PS. I love the pictures of your meals.
Reno

Gillios said...

Sorry I didn't catch your comment until now, but hopefully the meal outlines I've posted will give you some ideas.

The weekly chapters in the Joshi book really don't offer much in the way of ideas. I think there are a couple (literally 3 or 4) recipes in the back of the book that aren't much use.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to pick up a vegan cookbook along with the Joshi text. Let me know if you want some suggestions, and I'll try to do a post about it in the near future.