When life gives you lemons...

2 tbsp lemon juice

1-2 tbsp pure grade B maple syrup (1 tbsp recommended for weight loss)

1/10 tsp red cayenne pepper

8 oz purified water

Ah the lemonade diet. “It’s a cleanse!” “Beyonce did it.” “I lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks.” It seems easy enough. Too easy maybe. All you have to do is drink this simple mix of homemade lemonade for ‘10-40 days’ and you can declare yourself zen and cleansed. Read: my body is a temple.

At best, the lemonade diet is a misguided fad with questionable intentions. At worst, it's a dangerous perpetuation of the insatiable desire to be exaggeratedly skinny, as well as a danger to the physical and mental healths of people everywhere.

I first heard about it myself from a friend in high school who had been struggling with her body image since I had first met her. The scene took place on the kind of day that makes you want to drink in the summer sun and, with it, perhaps a tall glass of lemonade. Another friend who was with us commented on her noticeable weight loss from the last time we had seen her a few weeks ago.

“Oh yeah, I’m trying this thing called the lemonade diet. You just drink this special mix of lemonade instead of eating for a few weeks. I mostly sleep all day so that I don’t have to worry about eating.”

It seemed a bit drastic, but it also sounded like the golden ticket to my Charlie Bucket, the deus ex machina to my tragedy. A “lifestyle change” that didn’t require eating healthy and exercising regularly, god forbid.

Drinking lemonade as a trade for shedding some of that stubborn and despised weight couldn’t be that difficult, I reasoned. Looking back, I realize that that wasn’t the point. But my high school-self had already decided.

That same day, I went to the supermarket with my mom, after having convinced her that the lemonade diet was exactly the sort of detoxifying jumpstart I needed in my life. With bottles of lemon juice in my hand and naïve hope in my heart, I promptly got to mixing the ambrosia that would supposedly change everything.

I lasted about 1 day. Between the sickly sweet flavor of the maple syrup infused lemonade and the strict ban on any solid food, I didn’t stand a chance (I love food way too much, as well as my health for that matter). In the moment, I was more than a little disappointed with myself. Now, I'm disappointed in the toxic beauty standards that led me astray to that very junction in my life.

We can’t ignore the fact that these magical diets and quick fixes are sought after, fetishized even, in American culture, as well as countless other cultures. Not to mention that so many of these fads are marketed as ways to “detoxify the body” when in fact they are intoxicating our minds with shame and the desperation to be absurdly skinny. The idea that bony is beautiful and fat is fugly was carved into my self-esteem. The days spent frantically preparing for a “summer beach bod” and then sulking beneath loose shorts and layers of clothing when said beach body didn’t happen were not far behind me; in fact, they had only just begun.

That friend has long since moved away, but I still follow her on various social media accounts as one does. She is thinner than ever and a fragile icon of many beauty constructs. Still, I wonder if she’s happy and how little it would take to break that picture perfect image.

Moral of the story, I guess when life gives you lemons, you shouldn’t always make lemonade.