21 Pounds in 21 Days: The Martha's Vineyard Detox Diet

After hearing Robin Quivers, of Howard Stern fame, lost over 70 lbs after being on the Martha's Vineyard Detox Dietfor over one year I had to investigate more closely. One of the authors of the book is "Doctor" Roni DeLuz, whom is not a medical doctor (although she is a registered nurse) but is a naturopathic doctor and a colonic therapist from the Clayton School of Natural Healing and the American Holistic College of Nutrition. Co-author James Hester has no professional background in medicine but he did lose 30 pounds on Dr. DeLuz's plan and works with her presently. In addition to the diet book you may also chose to detox on-site at the Martha's Vineyard Holistic Retreat. According to the website http://www.mvholisticretreat.com/ a typical day here includes meals of fruit smoothies and raw foods, meditation, colonic therapy, and many other typical therapies offered at medical spas. This program has been running since 1997.

If you don't have the time and money to shell out to attend a retreat in Mass. you can purchase the drinks online and detox at home. An entire 21 day detox kit costs approximately 200 dollars and comes in vanilla or chocolate. At 10 dollars a day that isn't very much, provided you can last the 21 days solely on these fruit smoothies. The book also suggests that you complete at least one coffee enema during the 21 days fast. However, drinking coffee is not recommended during the diet only hot herbal teas are allowed. Salt, sugar, milk, eggs, butter and alcoholic beverages, including wine, are excluded while following the detox.

On Amazon.com the diet book has an average of 3 out of 5 stars from a total of 115 reviewers. Common complaints includes the bad taste of the shakes, that the $200 detox kit does not includes the "enzymes" called for in the book, the lack of protein in the diet, and overall that it caters more to the millionaire than the everyday working person. As expected, many people including those who rated the book positively chose to skip out on the enemas and colonics.

People that have completed the 21 days did in fact report to have lost a great deal of weight. The diet has been compared to the raw food movement which is also very popular among the rich and famous. Even people that reportedly loosely followed the diet have lost great amounts of weight. Cutting out solid foods, sugar, salt, and caffeine is this any surprise?