Detox Drinks: The Guide to Better Health and Weight Loss

Detox Drinks: The Guide to Better Health and Weight Loss

Detox drinks have become very popular in recent years thanks to their numerous health benefits.

Many doctors and nutritionists praise detox drinks as one of the easiest ways to rid your body of toxins, flush your liver, boost your energy, give your digestive system a break, and improve your overall health.

Detox Drinks: The Guide to Better Health and Weight Loss

In a 2011 survey of 196 naturopathic doctors, 92% of the doctors reported using clinical detoxification therapy to treat a range of conditions from environmental exposures, general cleansing, digestive disorders, and autoimmune diseases. (1)

If you’re looking to use detox drinks for weight loss and better health, or just want to kick sugary drinks, you don’t need a doctor to help you get started, just keep reading below!

Below you’ll learn the benefits of detox drinks, types of detox drinks, and how to incorporate them into your diet.

What is a Detox Drink?

A detox drink is a drink recipe that helps your body rid itself of toxins, promote weight loss, boost energy, cleanse the liver, or any combination of these. They’re also known as detox cleanse drinks or cleansing drinks. They usually contains some combination of water with fruit, vegetables, herbs or other natural ingredients that boosts your body’s ability to eliminate toxins from your system.

Some of the more popular detox drinks include detox water, detox tea, detox juice, and detox smoothies.

Why Detox?

The world is full of pollutants – from the air we breathe, to the food we eat, and the water we drink. All around us, there are things that we ingest that our bodies can’t use or worse, do harm to our system.

When you detox, you’re giving your body, especially your liver, a chance rid itself of these toxins and get some recovery time in.

If you constantly keep eating, drinking, and breathing these toxic substances without flushing them from your system, they build up over time and you risk health issues including cancer, reproductive, metabolic, and mental health effects. (2)

Other health benefits of detox drinks include:

  • Reduces inflammation (3)
  • Helps weight loss (4)
  • Improves skin health (5)
  • Boosts energy and alertness (6)

Try my FREE  Detox Diet Week: The 7 Day Weight Loss Cleanse for an effective 7 day detox diet plan including detox recipes.

Detox Water

At the top of the detox drinks list is detox water thanks to its simplicity and inexpensive ingredients. It contains very few calories because it is not derived from juice or blending. Detox regimens like “lemon detox” or “master cleanse” are based on detox water recipes.

Research has shown that drinking water is one of the best things you can do for better health. It helps fill your stomach so you don’t feel as hungry, and studies have even shown that just drinking water raises your metabolism! (7)

detox water drinks

A basic detox water recipe consists of fruit, vegetables or herbs mixed with water. It’s literally that simple.

Popular detox water ingredients include:

  • Lemon
  • Lime
  • Orange
  • Strawberries
  • Cucumber
  • Mint
  • Watermelon
  • Mango
  • Berries
  • Grapefruit
  • Cinnamon
  • Rosemary
  • Cilantro

How to Make Detox Water

It’s easy to make delicious detox water, just follow these steps:

  1. Set ingredients into the bottom of a pitcher or infuser bottle.
  2. Cover with ice about 4-5 inches, then fill the rest with water.
  3. Set in the fridge for 1 hour then serve.

You can refill the container 2-3 times before it begins to lose flavor.

For a full list of 25 delicious detox water recipes, check out my Detox Water: The Top 25 Recipes for Fast Weight Loss post!

Detox Tea

The next most popular type of detox drink are detox teas. People have been using detox tea for thousands of years to help detox their bodies and improve their overall health.

Different herbs like ginger, lemongrass, dandelion, and milk thistle contain ingredients said to support a healthy liver, which is one of the main organs in charge of detoxifying your body.

One important note when it comes to detox teas, be sure to get organic ingredients and organic teas.

When non organic tea companies dry and process the herbs they do not typically wash off the pesticides, so yep… you guessed it you are ingesting all those nasty chemicals. And if you are looking to detoxify your body those will only hinder your efforts.

Here are the most popular types of Detox Teas:

Green Tea

This very popular detox drink is believed to have been originated in China over 3000 years ago, and since then has spread to become one of the most popular beverages in the world. It’s especially popular in Asian countries, particularly Japan.

It contains powerful antioxidants that help reduce inflammation, blood pressure, and heart disease. (8)

Benefits of Green Tea include:

  • Boosts your metabolism (9)
  • Helps burn fat, especially belly fat (10)
  • Improves immunity (11)
  • Helps prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia (12)

Dandelion Tea

Dandelions are those little yellow flowers that pop up in your yard that you fight off all year.

detox drinks dandelion tea

Few people realize that these pesky little plants actually contain a lot of health benefits and have been used as a detox drink for centuries.

Benefits of Dandelion Tea include:

  • Helps cleanse the liver (13)
  • High in antioxidants (14)
  • Fights urinary tract infections (15)
  • Natural diuretic (16)

Ginger Tea

Ginger is one of the most nutritious spices in the world. It’s loaded with nutrients and bioactive compounds that have powerful health benefits for your entire body.

detox drinks ginger tea

It has been proven to help alleviate oxidative stress, which helps your liver perform more efficiently as well as improve brain function. (17)

Benefits of Ginger Tea include:

  • Effective against nausea (18)
  • Helps reduce muscle pain and soreness (19)
  • Potent anti inflammatory (20)
  • Helps lower cholesterol (21)

Milk Thistle Tea

Milk thistle has been used for by people in the Mediterranean for over 2000 years. The early Greeks wrote about its healing properties as far back as 40 A.D.

It’s been shown to be a powerful detox ingredient for symptoms and diseases, including cancer, high cholesterol, chemotherapy, diabetes, alcoholism, kidney stones, and more. (22)

Benefits of Milk Thistle Tea include:

  • Powerful antioxidant (23)
  • Natural liver detoxifier and damage healer (24)
  • Helps lower cholesterol (25)
  • Boosts skin health (26)

For more information on the benefits of Detox Tea, see my Detox Tea for Weight Loss and Beautiful Skin post.

If you’re looking for a convenient way to get your detox try WellOff’s Keurig-compatible detox elixirs.

Detox Smoothies

I love detox smoothies. When I feel bloated and need to flush my system out, nothing beats the effectiveness of a smoothie cleanse. They’re not only easy to make, they taste amazing, too!

detox drinks detox smoothies

A typical detox smoothie recipe is full of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber, and other nutritious ingredients that provide your body a detoxifying flush. They also contain large amounts of water, which helps to hydrate your body and boost metabolism. (27)

Top 20 Detox Smoothie Ingredients:

  • Spinach
  • Celery
  • Lemons
  • Limes
  • Ginger
  • Mango
  • Cranberries
  • Cilantro
  • Fennel
  • Watermelon
  • Almonds (or almond butter)
  • Dandelion greens
  • Kale
  • Green tea
  • Watercress
  • Arugula
  • Wheatgrass
  • Avocado
  • Spirulina
  • Beets

I recommend you use fresh ingredients, but you can also use frozen fruits and vegetables if fresh isn’t available.

How to Make a Detox Smoothie

Detox smoothie recipes are simple to make:

Step 1 – add all ingredients to blender

Step 2 – blend until creamy and smooth

Step 3 – drink!

If you want to make the smoothie colder, try these two options:

Option 1 – Freeze the fruit, or buy frozen fruit.

Option 2 – Add 1/2 a cup of ice.

For a list of my favorite Detox Smoothie recipes, check out my 8 Detox Smoothie Recipes for a Fast Weight Loss Cleanse post.

Detox Juicing Recipes

detox drinks detox juicing

DETOX DRINKS (10 Detox Juices)

Lose Weight By Eating
These 10 detox juice recipes are all formulated to help you lose weight and reduce fat and bloat, while flushing toxins from your body.
If you're looking for the best detox juices, look no further, these 10 weight loss juice recipes will help you shed weight fast and feel great!
Be sure to see our favorite (low cost) juicer that works best for these weight loss juicing recipes!
Note: The nutrition is based on the first juice recipe, though most are within a 10 calorie difference (less or more) etc.
5 from 1 vote
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 0 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Course Breakfast, cleanse, meal replacement
Cuisine American
Servings 1 serving
Calories 164 kcal

Equipment

  • Juicer

Ingredients
  

Detox Green Juice Recipe

  • 2 sweet apples
  • 1 cup spinach
  • 8 kale leaves
  • ½ lemon

Carrot Citrus Juice Recipe

  • 2 carrots
  • 2 oranges
  • 1 inch piece of ginger
  • 1 lemon

Sweet Greens Juice Recipe

  • ½ cup pineapple
  • 1 cucumber
  • 1 cup spinach

Red Juice Recipe

  • 2 carrots
  • 2 apples
  • 1 beet
  • 1 lemon

Simple Juice Recipe

  • 2 apples
  • 1 cup spinach
  • 3 stalks celery
  • ½ lemon
  • 1 cucumber

Tropical Juice Recipe

  • ½ cup pineapple
  • 1 inch piece ginger
  • ½ cup coconut water add after juicing

Orange Weight Loss Juice Recipe

  • 1 orange
  • 2 carrots
  • ½ lemon
  • 1 inch piece of ginger

Superfood Juice Recipe

  • 2 sweet apples
  • 8 kale leaves
  • 1 inch piece of ginger
  • ½ lemon

Bloat Reducing Juice Recipe

  • 2 apples
  • 8 kale leaves
  • 1 cucumber
  • 3 stalks celery

Antioxidant Juice Recipe

  • 1 beet
  • 2 apples
  • 8 kale leaves
  • 1 inch piece of ginger

Instructions
 

  • Wash all the weight loss juice ingredients well and pat dry.
  • Cut fruit and vegetables into 1-2 inch chunks. Remove any peels.
  • Place all ingredients in a juicer.
  • Process into juice according to manufacturer’s directions.

Notes

Nutrition

Serving: 1juiceCalories: 164kcalCarbohydrates: 41.6gProtein: 3.8gFat: 0.6gSaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 55mgPotassium: 775mgFiber: 7.9gSugar: 24.1gCalcium: 128mgIron: 3mg
Keyword breakfast, cleanse, detox drinks, Detox Meal, meal replacement
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Final Thoughts on Detox Drinks

No matter what reason for your wanting to detoxify, to lose weight, to clean your liver, to rid your body of toxins, boost energy, reset your digestive system, and improve your overall health, detox drinks can help you.

We recommend you choose the drink that most calls to you, it can be a Detox Water, Detox Smoothie or a Detox Tea.

Pick the one you want to try most and start there, later in the week add in another type of drink and the following week another. Do this until you are drinking detox water all day long in place of other drinks, supplementing a meal with a detox smoothie and swapping out a cup of coffee for detox tea.

Remember to choose all organic food and drinks at this time as you don’t want to be adding pesticides and chemicals to your body as you are trying to remove them.

Lose Weight By Eating cookbooks:

Pin these Recipes to Pinterest:

detox drinks