Emma Miller
New Year’s feasts, mayonnaise salads, junk food, and alcohol – all this has a bad effect on our bodies. During the New Year and Christmas holidays and many people feel sick and gain excess weight.
Various “unloading days” are popular on the Internet, which supposedly helps to cleanse the body in one day.
Unloading day – what it is and how it works
Day off – it’s a one-day diet when a person eats a whole day with one product in small portions, drinks a lot of water, and eats a few calories. On the Internet, you can find different variants of such diets, such as a day of unloading on kefir or cucumbers.
The opinion of experts on such one-day diets is ambiguous. Dietician Lyudmila Goncharova states that if one eats a balanced diet and consumes enough water correctly, then there is no point in “unloading” days.
According to her, the concept of “unloading day” when a person eats less of certain foods is, in the main, our fantasy about “what we assimilate, what we do not assimilate, why I feel so bad.
Being overweight, having rashes, general deterioration, lack of energy, and feeling unwell force a person to decide for himself to limit himself to one food and to eat only one product. And in general he kind of gets better.
Feeling better after a day of unloading may indeed improve because a person has removed from the diet harmful products or incompatible combinations of products. But often such a diet works on a “finger in the sky” principle. “You never know what your metabolic processes are in general, what the laws of your body are. Because initially, you should, in principle, find out which foods you have enzymes for and which you do not”, – emphasized the expert.
Dietitian says that with a balanced diet, you do not need to arrange a rainy day. Even single meals do not cause such a need.
“The conversation about “unloading” days is worth it when a person does not know how it is arranged, what the principles of work are, how the gastrointestinal tract is arranged, about its features. Anatomical features of even the gallbladder”, – emphasized the expert.
When asked where a person should address and what they should know about themselves, so as not to harm themselves, if they still want to spend a “day of rest”, Goncharova said that the first place to turn to a specialist in gastroenterology, preferably with a specialization in nutrition and knowledge of genetics. The specialist will prescribe an ultrasound of the gastrointestinal tract, co-program, and blood tests.
How to spend an unloading day
If you still want to unload the day yourself, you can do it without harm to your health. First of all, you need to pay attention to the daily drinking of water. According to Goncharova, if you are overweight, the norm of water is 50 milliliters per kilogram of body weight. If you have a normal weight, it is 40 milliliters per kilogram.
It is also important to drink water evenly. “Thirty minutes before a meal, two glasses of water. Then 30 minutes later, eat a meal. Don’t wash down your food for an hour and a half or so. So that everything is broken down as much as possible. And then drink water in sips until the next meal”, – says the nutritionist and adds that the next meal should be in four hours.
On a day of dieting one is allowed to eat any food, but it should be as natural and properly cooked as possible. The food can be fried without oil in a non-stick pan, cooked, or baked.
The expert also advised to keep in mind the amount of salt consumed, the daily allowance of which is up to 4 grams – a little less than one teaspoon without topping. Even a little less salt is useful. It is also better to give up sugar altogether on the unloading day.
If you can’t give up sugar altogether, replace some of it with fruit. Or put in your tea one spoonful of sugar instead of the usual two. Then unloading days will not cause you negative emotions, says the nutritionist.
