Millions of people around the world will try every new fad to improve their health and lose weight. Juicing, or juice cleanses, is one of the latest health trends that is beloved both by regular people and celebrities. Find out everything about juicing pros and cons right now!
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1. What is juicing?
Every day we hear so much about the health benefits of celery juice or carrot juice benefits that we can’t help but think that juice is one of the healthiest food products out there. This is exactly what the belief in juicing is based on!
Juicing refers to the process of extracting juices from fruits and vegetables and consuming them immediately. In some ways, juicing is similar to drinking smoothies, but with one major difference: when making juice, the pulp does not go into the final product, while smoothies are made from whole fruits and vegetables with pulp.
When people talk about the positive effect of juicing on your health and fitness, they only mean freshly extracted juice. It’s impossible to get the same apple juice benefits from packaged juice as you’d do from a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice.
2. Why is juicing good for you?
Due to a variety of reasons, from pollution to the longer shelf life of the products, fruits and vegetables today contain fewer nutrients than they did centuries or even decades ago. As a result, we consume the same amount of fresh produce but receive a lower number of minerals and vitamins than we did before.
This is where one of the biggest scientific benefits of juicing is found. Juicing is an easy way to transfer an increased amount of nutrients into your body. It works simply because it takes much less effort for our bodies to consume juice than it is to consume fresh fruits.
Just imagine eating 10 apples in one sitting! It likely seems impossible to you. Now imagine drinking a tall glass of freshly extracted apple juice. Seems much more manageable, doesn’t it? For this reason, busy people prefer juicing as a quick way to get the necessary nutrients in a convenient form.
Still, juicing has its share of skeptics. First, fans of juicing claim that juice is able to remove the toxins from your body, but the truth is that your body is perfectly capable of removing those toxins without any help. Moreover, fruit juices contain large amounts of fructose, which can over time lead to type 2 diabetes. Finally, clear juices contain little to no fiber, which is an essential agent for your digestive system.
The bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with drinking a glass or two of fresh juice every day, but building your whole diet around juicing is not the best idea for your health.
3. Juicing for weight loss
As juicing is getting more and more popular, people are wondering: does juicing help lose weight? It’s worth noting that there is no scientific research supporting this idea, but those who try juicing claim that it’s a fast and effective way to shed excess weight.
So how does juicing help for weight loss? The most common way to practice juicing for weight loss is a juice fast, when you consume nothing but fresh vegetable and fruit juice for several days or even several weeks. The reason why this diet works is that it’s very low in calories: it’s nearly impossible to consume more than 1000 calories per day while only drinking juice.
However, you should also know that consuming a low number of calories for a long period of time may bring quick results, but once you go back to your normal amount of calories, you will likely gain at least some of the weight back. It means that instead of betting everything on juicing, you can get steadier results with a balanced diet and at least some form of exercise.
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