Liver Detox Diet

And then…. one sleepless night I fell down another rabbit hole. Stressing about insomnia is self defeating, you exacerbate the sleeplessnes with frustration and annoyance, so I do exactly what the experts will tell you not to do, I pick up the iPad in the middle of the night and explore whatever subject is stuck in my brain until I bore myself back to sleep again. So on this night I decided to find out exactly what a liver does. I knew that it is a filter, it doesn’t like alcohol, and I had an idea of overall health and detoxification, but if asked I could have only recounted a few vague bullet points of information.

What a revelation! Our livers do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to metabolic health. (I won’t bore you with the details, but if you’re interested click here.) A metabolically healthy person has great energy, normal blood pressure, great blood sugar dynamics, and no evidence of inflammation caused by cholesterol. I looked healthy enough but I discovered I was not a metabolically healthy person. Not only had I put on weight, but my energy sucked – while insomnia tortured me at night, narcolepsy plagued me during the day. Although the test results 6 months earlier had been an early warning, I hadn’t taken it seriously. I’d always been healthy, so I figured that if I cut back on the sugar and ate better foods it would all pan out. I had no diet plan and no target outcomes. It was understanding how the liver functions that made me realise that I was on a journey to poor health and I needed to do something to turn it around.

During one of my ‘why am I putting on weight,’ moan-fests, a close friend had recommended a book titled something like The Metabolism Diet, it was by a female author. So that night I decided I should read it. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it was the wee hours of the morning and I was tired, so when I searched for the book I found the wrong one and bought it. The book I bought is titled “The Metabolism Reset Diet” and it’s by Alan Christianson (clearly not a woman’s name). I read the book from cover to cover and I liked the author’s approach. His explanation of what was happening to my metabolism and what I needed to do to correct it made sense to me, so here we are.

The book recommends a strict eating plan for a one month period only, and then the Mediterranean diet for maintenance. I thought, why not? I ‘ve got nothing to lose but weight and the book claimed that I would improve my cholesterol and liver function. I asked husband, David, if he was interested and he said ‘yes’. Kudos to David for being wonderfully supportive, but I think the deciding factor was that he is happy to eat whatever I put in front of him.

So we went on the Metabolic Reset diet for one month. In the first 2 weeks, weight was dropping every day, my energy levels increased (I wasn’t suffering from post lunch slump), and my sleep was better. In the last 2 weeks energy was great, sleep was still good, weight didn’t shed as quickly for me but it did continue to drop, and our appetites adjusted to the new diet. The afternoon hunger pangs weren’t as bad. Unlike me, David consistently lost weight for the full month – his calorie deficit was probably greater. Having said that, this is not a calorie counting diet. The shakes are not slimming, with the protein, starch, and fruit there is a fair wack of necessary calories. Dinner is only slimming in as much as you are avoiding fats, saturated fats, high GI foods, and too much protein from meat sources, but you don’t need to count calories, if you’re hungry eat!

From the onset of this diet, I had planned to redo my blood work on the last day and see if there were any measurable changes to my metabolic health. When the results came in the doctor was amazed (new doctor). He asked if I had been taking medication because it is very rare that he sees this turn around in serum levels without drugs! I am thrilled with the results, everything that was broken has now been fixed. I am no longer a complacent agent of my own ageing, I feel that I have taken back control of my health. I want all of my friends to take a look at this diet for themselves. But for Gods sake don’t take my word for it, read the book, go to your doctor and find out if you should or could go on a liver detox. I really recommend doing the blood work before starting on this diet so that you have some measurable data to work with.

At the end of the month my total cholesterol had dropped from a high 6.2 to a normal 4.4, (a healthy range is 3.9 to 5.5), my AST had dropped from a yikes 45 to a healthy 19. The normal range is 8 to 33. An AST test looks for blood levels of aspartate aminotransferase, an enzyme found mostly in the liver. Higher-than-average AST levels may be a sign of liver damage or liver disease. There were other bloodwork improvements but the icing on the diet cake was I’d lost more than 4kgs in weight, gone down a dress size and a bra size. I felt great and a whole section of my wardrobe had become accessible again!

David’s blood pressure, which has always been high-normal, for no medical reason that the doctor could find, dropped from 137/85 to a nice normal 124/79. And he lost more than 5 kilograms in weight. Husband is looking good and we now know what to do to keep his blood pressure in check!

This diet is not sustainable on a permanent basis (not enough food variety), but I can see the benefit of doing this annually. Moreover, I learnt a lot about my nutritional needs, in as much as my dietary problem wasn’t that I was eating too much of anything, I just wasn’t eating what my body needed. I was not eating breakfast, not enough non-meat protein, not enough water, and too many high starch carbs. Noodles are my go-to food, and rice, pasta, potatoes were always on menu rotation (they are nice and filling for growing boys). It was easy enough to substitute the starches for legumes and healthy grains, and turn the High GI carbs into resistant starches. It’s not a huge change to my diet but hopefully it should make a difference – I’ll let you know!