Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Here's Why You Should Stop Trying to Detox Your Body (and What to Do Instead)

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

If you’re having trouble losing weight and keeping it off… If you’re battling hunger and cravings… If you want to “reset” your system after a period of poor health habits… Or if you generally just feel like crap… You might find yourself seriously considering some sort of “detox diet.” The yoga girl swears by a 3-day water cleanse. The smiley doctor guy says a juice diet can give you a shiny new liver. The raw food weirdo gushes about the wonders of eating everything uncooked. And don’t get me started about the Instagram “models” smugly posing with their green smoothies and kale chips. The more you look, the more cleanses and detox programs you find, with each one apparently better than the last. The problem, however, is all of them are missing the forest for the trees. While it’s true your body is regularly exposed to a wide variety of toxic substances, and while some of them are particularly nasty and can accumulate in body fat, there’s no evidence that trendy “cleanses” and “detox diets” help mitigate the damage or rid the body of toxins. That is, yes, your body has a certain amount of harmful chemicals deposited in its fat stores, but no, drinking a bunch of lemonade for a week isn’t going to do anything about it. If you want to feel and look great for the rest of your life, you need to commit to several things: - Exercising your body several hours per week (resistance training is particularly important). - Eating a lot of high-quality food with special emphasis on plenty of fruits and vegetables. - Not smoking. - Consuming alcohol in moderation. - Avoiding dependencies on drugs and medicines. - Maintaining good sleep hygiene. So, if you want to know why you should stop trying to detox your body, listen to this episode! --- Timestamps 6:15 - Do toxins cause weight gain? What causes weight gain? 22:52 - What are toxins and how does the body process them? 28:23- Do detox diets help with rapid weight loss? --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life, a new episode. I'm Mike Matthews, and I'm here to talk about how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, happier, just better, right? That's what we want. We just want to get better. And so today's discussion is going to be about detoxing, something that is particularly popular among people who are having trouble losing weight or keeping the weight off, who are struggling with hunger and cravings, or who want to just reset their system maybe after a period of poor health habits, or people who just kind of feel like crap, right? Many of these people find their way to some sort of detox diet, often via social media, via some influencer, some fitfluencer who is selling some pill powder or tea that supposedly cleanses your body, purges toxins from your body and gives you a shiny new

liver or shiny new kidneys. And there are many different protocols out there for accomplishing this, purportedly accomplishing this. You have water fasting, water cleansing, right? That's popular. You have juice diets where you're only supposed to drink like grapefruit juice for a number of days. And that usually also entails supplementation. Sometimes it's just supplementation. You're supposed to take a handful of pills every day, and then you're supposed to poop out a lot of black goop, and that's supposed to be your body detoxing. And then of course there are teas where it's supposed to be as simple as just drinking a tea every day. And the problem with all of these products and all of these methods is they're

missing the forest for the trees. Because while it's true that your body is regularly exposed to a variety of toxic substances, and while it's true that some of them are actually pretty nasty and they can accumulate in body fat that's been shown in research and that's not good research also shows that there's no evidence that you can cleanse these things away or that you can just follow a little detox diet and mitigate the damage of these toxins that we're exposed to and these toxins that can accumulate in our body and we can't just get rid of them we can't just purge them out of the body by drinking grapefruit juice every day for a week. And so what that means then is that yes, your body does have

harmful chemicals in it right now, particularly lodged in fat stores, and it would be better for your health and for your longevity if that were not the case, but you can't just drink a bunch of lemonade for a week to get rid of it or drink a bunch of skinny gerbil tea or whatever to get rid of it. And so that's the bad news, right? There is no quick fix, shocker. There is no miracle pill powder or potion, but there is good news. You can support your body's natural detoxification systems. You can boost their function, so to speak, just like how you can boost your immune system, despite what many even quote unquote experts claim. If you, for example, and I recorded an episode specifically on this. So if you want to learn about that in detail,

just search for immune system in my podcast feed or on my YouTube channel, and you'll find it. But just for example, if you restrict your sleep to five hours a night, you are going to impair your immune system. And then if you increase it to eight hours a night, you are going to enhance your immune system. You're going to boost your immune system. That's one way you can boost your immune system. You can exercise every day. That will boost your immune system. And so similarly with detoxing, if you have good habits, you can boost your body's ability to deal with toxins and to detox itself. But the key here is that you are supporting your body's natural systems. What you can't do though is neglect the fundamentals, the basic strategies that you can follow and that you should follow

to support your body's detoxification systems. And I'll talk about those in this podcast. So you can't neglect those and then make up for it with exotic supplements or teas or dietary strategies or anything else. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, And everything is naturally sweetened and flavored.

So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe. But there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein

powders and protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y Legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. All right. So before we get into the details and the science of toxins and detoxification, let's start with some good news. So one is if you are struggling to lose weight or to maintain

an ideal weight or body composition, you are not dealing with toxins. Your problems have nothing to do with toxins. There are really only a handful of reasons that you are wrestling with your weight and the solutions are quite simple. If you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com and search for not losing weight. And you'll find an article that I wrote on that topic. And I may have recorded a podcast, probably did record a podcast as well on the topic. So if you search for not losing weight in my podcast feed or on YouTube, you'll probably find that as well. Another bit of good news is if you feel like your hunger or your appetite or your cravings are out of control. It's probably just because you are under eating or eating the wrong

types of foods for your goals or overexercising. Those are the most likely reasons. Again, it almost certainly has nothing to do with toxins in your body or in your environment. It's really just a function of energy balance, macronutrient balance, and food choices. And what many people do when they want to lose weight is they, of course, they starve themselves. So they restrict their calories very heavily and they don't pay attention to their protein intake. They don't pay attention to their fiber intake. And they eat foods that provide a lot of calories, but not a lot of volume. And therefore they don't provide much in the way of satiety or fullness where, you know, you could eat 500 calories of

very energy dense food that isn't very voluminous, doesn't fill up much space in your stomach. And you could be hungry an hour or two later, but if you took those 500 calories and put them into higher volume foods, it might keep you full for four or five, even six hours. And one of the reasons for that is that the amount of food in terms of just absolute volume impacts how full we feel after a meal more so than the calories contained in the meal. And so that's why while there is no such thing as a weight loss food per se, some foods are better for losing weight than others. And that comes down to their nutritional value and their energy density and how much fullness that they trigger when you eat them.

And if you want to learn more about that, just head over to legionathletics.com, search for weight loss foods, and you'll find an article I wrote on that. Another bit of good news is if you are feeling guilty about binging or undersleeping or overstressing or any other unhealthy escapades that you may have been engaged in, maybe while under quarantine, there are much better ways to feel better than doing a crash diet or a cleanse. So, okay, fine. You overate for a bit. You gain some fat. Your diet hasn't been as nutritious as it could have been or maybe should have been. Let's just get back on track and let's undo any of the quote unquote damage that might have been done and let's move on. And the same thing goes

for sleeping too little. Maybe you've been burning the candle at both ends for too long. Maybe you are a small business owner and you've been struggling to keep your business afloat given the situation. Totally understandable. Let's look at taking some simple steps to improve your sleep hygiene. And let's look at how we can de-stress you a little bit and your body will bounce back. You can abuse your body for quite some time before it really starts to break down. And then once that does start to occur, it often doesn't take nearly as much time. And I would say almost always doesn't take nearly as much time. And I would say almost always doesn't take nearly as much time to get back to battery, meaning that you can eat like shit and not exercise much, if any at all, and not sleep well and have too much stress for years and years and

years. And yes, eventually it catches up with you and the wheels start to fall off. But then if you make major changes to how you are living, you might feel fantastic within just six months. And that's a pretty good bargain, actually, if you ask me. The key, though, is it takes more than a fad diet or a cleanse because those things are not panaceas. They might give you a fuzzy feeling. They might make you feel like you're doing something. You're making amends for your transgressions, but they're not really doing much physiologically. The real changes that need to be made are often the changes that people don't want to make. And it means not just changing things in the short term, but being consistent, changing things in

the long term. Another bit of good news for people is if you have been interested in a detox diet or product or a cleanse or something, because you just kind of feel crappy, like physically you don't sleep well, even if you do try to get to bed on time and you wake up feeling tired and you're just generally tired throughout the day and you have low energy and stuff hurts all the time. There are plenty of things you can do, but it's going to require a serious look at your lifestyle. It's going to take more than just cutting back on sugar maybe for a week or cutting back on caffeine for a week because let's zoom out and just look at the bigger picture

here in the West, particularly in America, right? Americans were fatter, sicker, and unhappier than ever before. And those trends are only getting worse and worse. I mean, even if you take the COVID-19 crisis out of the equation, that was still the case. The trajectory was downward and it is now accelerating because of what's going on around the world. And some people would look at that and say that it is probably not by accident, that it is probably at least partly by design. They would say that the increasing prevalence of disease and poor physical and mental health is an attack of sorts. It's the result of an unholy alliance between corrupt elements of medical associations and food and biotech giants and regulatory agencies and government administrators that either directly

profit from our malaise or who believe that it's a necessary means to a desirable end, right? So that'd be the conspiratorial take on it. And then the anti-conspiratorial take would be that we're really just seeing widespread ignorance of how to take care of our bodies, coupled with maybe some bureaucratic dysfunction and incompetence that lays us open to good old-fashioned greed, right? So if there are corners that megacorporations can cut for more profits, then there are plenty of unscrupulous CEOs out there and unscrupulous marketers out there who won't hesitate to exploit those opportunities, right? Hey, this is what people want. We're just giving them what they want, even if it kills them. And

we're also indoctrinating them into wanting it, but let's not think about it too much, right? So regardless of where the truth falls on that spectrum, we can bank on one fact. It takes many years for things, whether it's food additives or radiation or genetic modification of foods, to be scientifically proven as harmful and then eliminated through regulation. I'm not saying that all food additives are harmful, of course. I'm not saying that irradiating food is always harmful or that genetically modifying food is always harmful. I'm just talking about some hot button topics that are debated as to how prevalent they should be and how much we should embrace these technologies globally based on our current understanding of them, right? So a good example of this is the health risks of polychlorinated biphenols. So these were

chemicals that were once used in manufacturing, a wide variety of products ranging from adhesives to surgical implants to electrical transformers and other stuff. And the risks of these chemicals were actually first highlighted in research that was published in 1937. Production of the chemicals continued for decades, however, with Monsanto successfully hiding the dangers of these chemicals, just generally referred to as PCBs, you might've heard of that, while also dumping thousands of tons of them into streams and garbage dumps. And if you just Google this, this is like Wikipedia information, by the way, This is 100% confirmed. Anyway, so37, and then the ban didn't come until 1979. And a lot of people were harmed and killed by these chemicals in the interval, in the interim

there. The insect spray DDT has a similar story. It was used to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops during World War II. And then in 1944, Monsanto, again, made it available as an agricultural insecticide. And again, it wasn't until the 70s that developed countries started banning it with the United States and the United Kingdom coming in last, 1972 and 1984, respectively. Now, why was DDT banned? Well, it turns out that exposure to this chemical increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, premature birth, and miscarriage, Parkinson's disease, and reduced fertility and thyroid function. Basically, this stuff wrecks you. And in both cases, PCBs and DDT, it took several decades for highly dangerous chemicals to be conclusively proven, for the weight of the

evidence to become so clear that these things are bad that they had to be removed from the marketplace. And you got to wonder though how many lives were ruined and lost while the wheels of science turned and while they had to grind through a lot of red tape and a lot of obfuscation and corruption along the way. So just keep that in mind when you are considering the current quote-unquote scientific consensus of any chemicals, whether it's chemicals that you're exposed to in your food or just your environment, that are controversial. Sometimes the controversy is not warranted and the chemicals actually are safe, but sometimes it's very much warranted and the chemicals are not safe and it can take a long time for that to become accepted. And my point with that isn't to scare you into

thinking that, oh, there are deadly chemicals everywhere and the FDA is trying to kill you. No, not at all. I'm just pointing out the fact that if we're going to be proactive about protecting our health, we can't just trust the mega corporations. We can't just trust Monsanto to look out for us because they care about us so much. Oh, they changed so much from their past and their track record does not reflect their current practices. Yeah, that might be true, but do we really know that? How much evidence do you have for that belief? And I also think it's smart for us to not just wait for the government to tell us what is and isn't harmful to our health. Why should we place that responsibility at the door of government? That's our own personal responsibility. It takes a long time

for conclusive scientific judgments to be formed and then for governments to accept them and create effective regulations and so on. And so what we can do is embrace that personal responsibility and really do everything we can to take our health into our own hands and to do the things that we know we should be doing to stay healthy and to live a long, vital life. And so coming back on topic then, if you are wanting to detoxify your body, if that's why you're here, or if you've ever considered it, or maybe even done something like a cleanse or a detox tea or whatever, I think it's good. I think it's good that you want to do that. You have good reason to care about the toxins that you're exposed to every day. I mean, I myself, I err on the side of playing it safe when it comes to limiting my intake of artificial ingredients

and chemicals of any kind. I'm not afraid of them. Of course, take artificial sweeteners. I have basically none. If there's gum lying around here and there, maybe I'll have some. I'm not afraid of them. I don't go out of my way to stay away from them, but I don't have any foods in my diet that contain them. And the same goes for various types of food preservatives and other chemicals that you'll find in highly processed foods because I don't eat highly processed foods because I know that a diet that is comprised of a lot of highly processed foods is unhealthy for several reasons. And the chemicals that go into the food might be the least of the reasons. But regardless, there is more than enough scientific evidence at this

point to know that it is a good decision to eat a lot of relatively unprocessed foods, a lot of stuff that you prepare yourself, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds, lean protein, and to minimize the intake of the highly processed stuff. That is going to go a long way toward promoting a long, healthy, happy life that ends peacefully and naturally. That's what I want. I don't want my life to end in an untimely protracted or painful way, a bout of disease and misery, for example. Now, the problem with that, of course, is the most important good decisions that you can make are the ones that people avoid the most. Exercising regularly, eating a lot of nutritious foods, not smoking or drinking too much alcohol, maintaining a healthy body composition, minimizing drug and medication use. That's a big one. Maintaining good sleep hygiene, managing stress levels and so forth. You get the idea. I'm talking

about long-term habits, right? That's the only way out of the shit and into the sun, not weird tricks. And so what that means is if you want to feel great and if you want to look great for the rest of your life, or at least if you want to give yourself the best chances, you need to commit to several things. You have to commit to doing several hours of exercise per week and resistance training is particularly important in this regard. And you have to eat a lot of high quality food and you have to place a special emphasis on fruits and vegetables. You have to not smoke, period. You have to consume alcohol in moderation. You have to stay away from drugs of all kinds. We could exclude maybe caffeine, that's okay. And sinephrine, that's okay if you want to

cut with it. But I'm talking about street drugs as well as even over-the-counter drugs and medicines. And you have to maintain good sleep hygiene. You have to consistently get seven to eight hours of sleep per night. And you have to manage your stress levels. You have to make sure that you're not at like a six or seven or out of 10 or higher in terms of stress and anxiety consistently. You have to make sure that you are prioritizing rest and relaxation just as much as you prioritize your working and your working out and whatever else you're doing that raises stress levels. And as far as detoxing goes, if you don't do those things, if you sit still for the majority of your waking hours, and if you eat like crap,

and if you smoke a drink regularly, and you have to take a bunch of pills every day just to keep your blood pressure where it needs to be and to keep your cholesterol where it needs to be and so forth, and if you don't get enough sleep, no amount of detoxes are going to save you. And if you don't get enough sleep, no amount of detoxes are going to save you. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. supplements in the world. Okay, let's shift gears from sermon mode to educate you about detoxing mode. Let's start with toxins, right? So what are toxins and how does the body process them? Well, a toxin is just a poisonous substance that you ingest or you inhale. And most people

think of just man-made chemicals as toxins, but they are very abundant in nature as well. For example, caffeine and alcohol are toxins, and so are metabolic waste products that are produced by your cells. The atmosphere, for example, contains toxins like ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Natural sources of water contain a whole host of dangerous contaminants like arsenic, fluoride, mercury, and cyanide. And my point here is that our bodies bombarded with toxins every day. And if it didn't have an effective way to dispose of them, we wouldn't last very long. We wouldn't be here. And we're lucky then that our body is equipped to defend our health against poisons of all kinds that are going to make their way into our system, regardless of how healthy we

live. And the first line of that defense is the liver, which is the largest organ in the body. And its job is multifaceted. It creates and stores and controls the systemic levels of various proteins and nutrients that are vital to life. And it also helps clear toxic and unwanted substances out of the blood. Now, many detox products claim to clean the liver out as if it were a dirty sponge. That visual has even been used in ads for these types of products. Like here's your liver on your current lifestyle and it's a muddy sponge. And here's your liver on the super detox 3000T. And this is false because the liver does not store toxins, at least a healthy liver does not store toxins. What it does is it transforms them. It transforms these healthy

chemicals into molecules that can then be ejected from the body through different channels like sweat, urine, feces. And while there are certainly molecules in nature that support liver health, like niacin, vitamin B3, right? Zinc, spirulina, N-acetyl L-cysteine is another one. They don't detox the liver. All they do is they just help keep the liver working the way it should. Now, people make similar claims about cleansing your kidneys. It's just misinformation. It's minimally misguided. Many times it's just misinformation because the kidneys, yes, they have a similar role to the liver. They help remove toxins and waste products from the blood, but again, they don't store them. Yet another form of detox that is popular is the colon cleanse and the liver cleanse and the kidney cleanse.

And this is basically just quackery. So colon cleansing has been with us for a very long time, at least as far back as ancient Egypt. cleansing has been with us for a very long time, at least as far back as ancient Egypt. And that's a fact that is often used to sell people on colon cleansing. Because if you can show a person that anything, an idea, a product, a service has history on its side, if you can persuade them, even if it doesn't, but if you can just persuade them that it has history on its side, they are much more likely to buy into it. And the idea behind colon cleansing was to rid the body of intestinal waste, waste that was left over that wasn't pooped out as it should be, right? And the idea is that that could cause disease if you had

this waste buildup. And that was the prevailing theory for thousands of years, actually. In the late 19th century, it spawned an industry of spas, right, where people could go and shoot all kinds of strange concoctions, strange brews up their butts. And then as science began to flourish, the scientific method began to flourish, the party got rained on when theories about auto-intoxication, as it was called, were scientifically debunked. There is no physiological mechanism for toxins to pass through the colon and into the blood. And surgeons, for example, they found no fecal accumulations that colonics purported to treat. But old habits die hard, right? And it's hard, if not impossible, to teach an old marketer new tricks. And thanks to the internet, colonic

hydrotherapy has found a whole new generation of supporters. And unfortunately, we now know more about colonic irrigation, as it's called. And more and more research is showing that it's not only without benefit, it actually can be dangerous. I mean, there are some common serious side effects like vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, and there's even a risk of more serious complications like kidney and liver failure, blood infections, and even death from dysentery. And as if all of that weren't bad enough, if you get your colon cleansed frequently, it actually can lead to bowel dysfunction and it can make you dependent on enemas. So you can rest easy. You can leave your colon unmolested, safe in the knowledge that it is not full of mucoid plaque or other forms of toxic sludge that are

threatening your health. And if you're having trouble with regular bowel movements, why not look into your fiber intake? Let's start there, particularly your soluble fiber intake. And if you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com, search for fiber, and you'll find an article I wrote on that. All right, So now let's talk about detox diets and weight loss, because this is the strongest selling point for a lot of the detox regimens out there, especially the supplements and the teas. Rapid weight loss, right? And there are many people who would do just about anything short of amputation to lose 20 plus pounds in a month. And the reality though is of course a juice cleanse or a very low calorie raw food diet or some other highly restrictive form of eating is just that. It's just a very low calorie diet, very highly restricted form of eating. It is starvation dieting, which yes,

induces weight loss. And if you're very overweight, you can lose a lot of weight pretty quickly, but you're going to pay up rice. It's going to come with quite a few negative side effects that are not necessary if you were to just do things correctly. You're not going to lose weight as quickly, but you are going to do it in a healthy, sustainable, and enjoyable fashion. And also keep in mind when you hear stories of people losing 10, 20, 30 pounds in a matter of weeks or maybe up to a month. That's not fat because most of the weight that you initially lose when you starve yourself, when you eat very little is water and glycogen, a form of carbohydrate stored in your muscles and in your liver, not fat. You're going to lose some fat, but the majority of the weight is water and

glycogen. And that's weight that will return once you start eating normally again. Something else to keep in mind is if you severely restrict your calories, and especially if you don't eat enough protein, you are going to lose muscle as well. That's going to be part of the weight loss. And that's weight you certainly do not want to lose because muscle is not only good for your health, being muscular and different people have different ideas about what being muscular means, but I would say just having above average muscularity, whether you're a guy or a girl is not only aesthetic and not only makes you look better and gives you muscle definition and tone and shape, you know, the terms that many women

like to think in, and in terms of guys, it's just being as big and jacked as possible, right? But it's also very good for your health. Your total levels of lean mass, for example, and research shows this, that simple number is associated with all cause mortality, meaning that the more muscle you have, the less likely you are to die from all causes. And so you really want to make sure you're not losing muscle when you're dieting, because by the end of the diet, you're going to look worse, one, because even if you lose a fair amount of fat, if you also lose a fair amount of muscle, and if you didn't have that much to start with, you're going to end up looking kind of skinny fat, and that's definitely not the goal. And you're going to be unhealthier, full stop. So remember,

when you're dieting, the goal is to lose fat, not muscle, to lose fat as quickly as you can without losing muscle and without suffering high levels of hunger and cravings and sleep disruption and so forth. And you can't do that when you're eating 500 calories a day. There's just no way to do it. Even if it's like a protein sparing modified fast of 500 calories of just protein every day, yeah, that's going to be better than 500 calories of carbs and fat with very little protein, but it's still not recommended. Protein sparing modified fasting has its uses. I would say it's mostly among bodybuilders and in particularly bodybuilders who are using drugs. And something

else to keep in mind with these detox diets is the longer you starve your body. So you go into that heavy calorie deficit and you are going to start feeling the effects quickly. Within the first week or so, you're going to feel worse, noticeably worse. And the longer you do it, the worse and worse you feel to where it can become completely unsustainable. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of people have fallen into yo-yo dieting is there is a point where you just can't do it anymore. Your energy levels have crashed and they're bottomed out and you're hungry all day and you're daydreaming about food and you're feeling depressed and it's just not worth it anymore, right? So the point here is don't resort to any of these weight loss extremes.

Do your body a favor and lose weight the right way. Lose fat the right way. Use a moderate calorie deficit, something that's aggressive but not reckless, maybe around 20%, eat plenty of protein, plenty of nutritious foods, use exercise, moderate amounts of exercise to help increase fat loss and preserve muscle. And if you want to learn more about that and you want to know exactly how to do that,

head over to legionathletics.com search for losing weight fast. And you'll find an article called the complete guide to safely and healthily losing weight fast. And I believe there's a podcast by the same name as well. If you'd rather listen to it, you can just search the feed for Losing Weight Fast or my YouTube channel for the same. Okie dokie, let's quickly summarize everything we've covered here. So first is many people assume that consumer markets in general are far more regulated than they actually are. For example, you might be surprised to learn that the supplement industry is completely unregulated. What I mean by that is supplement companies can produce and sell

anything and make any claims they want without any approval from the FDA or anyone else. And yes, there are rules and you can get caught and you can get in trouble and even shut down and sent to prison. It happens. But it also takes time and enforcement can't catch everyone. And so the point is buyer beware. If you're buying supplements, make sure you trust the company you're buying from. Make sure you trust the people that you are buying from. And it's a good sign, for example, if they have third-party objective evidence that their products are clean and they are what they say they are. They're well aware of how completely unregulated it is. And these people take full advantage of it because their products certainly are not going to cleanse your body, but they can definitely cleanse your wallets. And that's why the marketing claims for these products are so vague and expansive. Like the signs for needing a detox could be fatigue, depression, trouble losing weight, food cravings, hunger, bloating, gassiness, you know, things that we all experience from time to time and not because we need to do a tea talks, right? I mean, just to give you another little example of how much of a scam many of these

supplements are, some colon cleanse supplements, they'll contain ingredients that plasticize your poop. And that gives you a very rubbery reason to believe in your purchase. Oh, it's working. Look, detox foot pads. You've probably seen ads for this on the internet, either little pads or sometimes it's machines, right? They claim to suck gunk out of your blood. Well, in the case of the pads, all that's happening is your sweat is mixing with a substance in the pads that turns them brown. So my point is just steer clear of all of this nonsense, no matter how sexy or sometimes shocking the marketing claims are, and you will be better for it. Instead, opt for the only detox methods supported by good science. And those are the

methods of healthy living, the fundamentals of healthy living. And you're not going to ever get that by just swallowing bottles of herbs and shooting bags of coffee up your ass and doing all the other wacky things that Instagram health gurus recommend. Instead, I'm going to give you the real master cleanse. Here it is. Are you ready? Eat a lot of nutritious food, move your body a lot, get plenty of rest, plenty of quality sleep. Do not smoke. Limit your alcohol consumption, maintain a healthy body composition, stay away from drugs as much as possible, and manage your stress levels. That's the secret. All right, well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in.

Because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with,

definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmusclefullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.