Cucumber cleansing diet is advertised as a quick and effective method of reducing excess weight. Due to its short duration and very restrictive menu, it should not be treated as a reasonable and adequate slimming diet. It is worth considering whether the use of a cucumber diet can bring the expected results in the appearance of the figure and whether it is correlated with possible negative consequences for health.
Principles of Cucumber diet
A 7-day or 14-day cucumber diet is a proposal for people struggling with overweight and obesity. It is to be a fast and effective way to reduce body weight. It is especially prevalent in the pre-vacation period when many women are looking for methods that quickly lead to the loss of useless kilograms.
The cucumber diet bases its menu, as the name suggests, mainly on cucumbers. These are vegetables with low calories, high water content, and a certain amount of dietary fiber. Their high consumption is to ensure satiety, adequate hydration, and reduce the amount of energy expended. Over 90% of cucumber is water.
Its flesh also contains small amounts of vitamins, including C, A, group B, and mineral salts, potassium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, and calcium. It also contains phenolic antioxidant compounds and organic acids.
How many calories a green cucumber has?
It is also worth knowing that how many calories a green cucumber has – 100 g of this vegetable provides only 14 kcal. The rules of this method of weight loss are relatively simple. They are used for 7 or 14 days. As you can read on many internet portals, it is advised not to run it for a long time because of the risk of shortages. The cucumber diet requires:
- drinking at least 1.5 liters of mineral water a day,
- giving up alcohol, salt, and sugar,
- eating three main meals every day,
- placing cucumbers (preferably raw) in almost all meals.
During this time, you can drink unsweetened tea and coffee. Each breakfast should consist of natural yogurt with the addition of fresh cucumbers and one medium fruit. In addition to the essential vegetable, you can also serve two medium potatoes or two slices of whole-grain bread and 100 g of lean meat or two eggs. Alternatively, the protein can also be provided by consuming 150 g of tuna. The dinner consists of fruit and natural yogurt again. Between meals, it is allowed to drink a cocktail based on cucumbers with nuts, apple, spinach, or other green vegetable and ginger.
What foods to choose with a cucumber diet?
What is allowed to eat if you favor a cucumber diet? The following products will be the best choice:
- Vegetables and greens. It is best to eat them in raw form. There are virtually no restrictions, but bypass the potatoes and sweet potatoes.
- Fruits. You can eat fruit pulp or make juices. An excellent choice would be apples, avocados, mangoes, pears; you can include a few grapes, peaches, cherries.
- Dairy products. Take low fat. Hard cheeses can sometimes be allowed.
- The eggs. Both chicken and quail are suitable. We use them in boiled form or in the way of an omelet on water, but fried eggs are not the best option for a diet.
- Meat. Rabbit, chicken, turkey, low-fat fish, and veal – this is what we are looking for on store shelves.
- Porridge. Rice, buckwheat, less often – oat or pearl barley, but certainly boil in the water.
- Flour products. You can eat some rye bread, black or whole-grain meal in the morning.
- The drinks. Without limitations, it is allowed to drink green and herbal teas, as well as two glasses of mineral water.
We already wrote that, ideally, everything that can be eaten without the heat method is eaten raw. Well, if you decide to cook the first or second dish, then:
- Boil in water or steamed.
- Stew.
- Bake in the oven or on the grill.
It is quite possible to cook all kinds of dishes from cucumbers, for example, cold soups, smoothies, salads. As the most straightforward salad dressing, you can choose olive or unrefined sunflower oil, but in small quantities.
Cucumber diet – effects
The weekly cucumber diet produces a visible impact on the scale during the first few days. It should be noted that it is very low calorie, which inevitably causes the loss of several kilograms during its use. It’s difficult to estimate the exact weight loss because it remains an individual matter, depending on many factors.
Must Read:Potato Diet and Weight Loss
It is worth noting, however, that, as with any short-term radical diet, these effects relate only to a small degree of fat burning. To a large extent, they are associated with water loss and improved bowel habits due to a more significant amount of fiber and fluids.
It is essential to know that for people who are overweight and obese, the goal of a slimming diet is not just weighted reduction alone. In this context, the most important is fat loss, and thus the improvement of metabolic parameters. This goal also allows you to get an improvement in the proportion of your figure, which is an important argument for people who are slimming. In the case of the cucumber diet, there is no lasting and therefore satisfying effect.
Menu:
Cucumber diet recipes based mainly on cucumbers, fruits, and a small number of protein products and containing complex carbohydrates. Its sample one-day menu may look like the one below.
- Breakfast: cucumber 200 g, natural yogurt 150 g, apple 180 g, unsweetened green tea.
- Snack: green kale cocktail (handful), two green cucumbers, pear 130 g, still mineral water, 20 g walnuts, and a piece of ginger (about 1 cm).
- Lunch: 100 g steamed turkey breast, two slices 70g whole wheat bread, any amount of raw green cucumber.
- Supper: strawberries 300 g, plain yogurt 150 g.
During the day, it is necessary to drink a minimum of 1.5 liters of still mineral water.
Cucumber diet – an opinion of a dietitian
The caloric value of a cucumber diet does not exceed 1000 kcal per day. This means that it is a deficient energy diet. According to the current state of knowledge, this type of solution is not used in the treatment of obesity. There are exceptions to this rule that relate to well-defined clinical conditions in which the VLCD menu is introduced. However, this always happens under medical guidance.
For most people with excessive body weight, such a low-calorie diet, although initially causing some visible effects, will not be long-term effects. We are staying on an extremely negative balance for a more extended period than specified can also lead to a loss of muscle mass, which results in a decrease in the metabolic rate. So this is a diet with a high risk of the yo-yo effect.
It is also worth adding that it is also deficient in terms of macronutrients (especially fat) as well as vitamins and mineral salts. So there is no point in using a weekly, fortnightly, or one-day cucumber diet. In some cases, its use can also be hazardous to health.
Cucumber diet during pregnancy or while breastfeeding is strongly contraindicated.
It cannot be used by children, teenagers, or the elderly. It is worth recognizing that an effective diet is one that mobilizes you to change your eating habits permanently. Only then can you reduce the risk of returning to your starting weight. Given this argument, it can be assumed that a cucumber diet should not be used as a method of weight reduction.
Important point:
If you choose to go on a cucumber diet, you need to be sure that you are not at risk for whom this diet is not suitable. Before starting a diet, go to a cardiologist. He must confirm the safety of the diuretic diet for your heart and prescribe medications. This type of weight loss plan ought to be abandoned to human beings with chronic kidney ailment. Cucumbers have a stated diuretic impact. Human beings with persistent diseases need to apply the sort of weight loss plan with caution due to the shortage of protein inside the weight loss program.
Due to its high fibre content, cucumber diet is contraindicated in people with gastritis or colitis.Adhere to this diet for more than one week is not worth it. The food is very scarce, and the body, on the contrary, begins to shelve. Cheating your body for longer than seven days will not work.
Also Read:
- Water diet – rules, effects, what to eat during the diet?
- Carb Cycling Works for Weight Loss?
- How Bone Broth Diet is Improving Your Overall Health?
