Kourtney Kardashian is as committed to a healthy diet as her sisters are—she's said she mostly avoids gluten, dairy, sugar, and red meat, among other things. With so few indulgences, she should have a pretty healthy system, right? Well, apparently the eldest Kardashian sister still feels a need to detox sometimes. And she recently shared her go-to cleanse on her app and website, and whoa, this is no joke.

In the post Kardashian says she’s been detoxing “on and off” for a few months after her doctor found high levels of mercury and lead in her system. (Say what!? We should point out this is is possible, but pretty rare.) Because of this, the reality star says she wants to put her body in a state of ketosis, which, she explains, is when ”the glycogen in your liver is depleted and the body burns fatty acids for energy.” To do this, she follows a super-strict eating plan.

The detox consists of three meals a day that are low in carbs and high in protein and fatty acids. For breakfast Kardashian says she can eat “minimal amounts of fruit,” so she usually has an avocado smoothie. For lunch and dinner, she can have fish or chicken, and some cauliflower rice or broccoli. After dinner she’s not supposed to eat breakfast for 14 to 16 hours. She also does a 24-hour fast once a week during which she has only water and bone broth. “On fasting days, I try to stay busy, and, if I’m home, I’ll avoid going into the kitchen,” she says.

Kardashian plans to stay on the detox for three months, so there’s a lot of really boring meals, water, and bone broth in her future. And, even though it’s self-inflicted, she doesn't seem thrilled about it. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this detox is difficult,” she says.

The detox definitely does sound incredibly hard and unpleasant. But there's another, more important thing to consider here—it probably isn't even working. “Detox when used in the concept of a diet is all wrong,” says Gina Keatley, a C.D.N. practicing in New York City. Sure, there are toxins in the air, water, and food, but they can only be removed by your body by cleaning your blood, which is handled by your liver, “not a crazy diet,” she says. Beth Warren, R.D.N., founder of Beth Warren Nutrition and author of Living a Real Life With Real Food, agrees and says the word detox is overused. “Your body has an amazing ability to detoxify itself namely by the liver, kidneys, and skin,” she says.

Detox programs and diets do sometimes make people feel better, but that happens more often if you're eating and/or drinking things that make you feel like crap (something it doesn't sound like Kardashian was doing in the first place). And if, somehow, you discover that you have elevated levels of mercury or lead in your body like Kardashian said she had, it’s important to figure out why, says women's health expert Jennifer Wider, M.D. “Finding the source is extremely important for any heavy metal, so you can lower your exposure over time,” she says. Meaning, a detox diet probably isn’t going to help you as much as, say, reducing your intake of foods that are high in mercury (like swordfish and mackerel) and having your water tested for lead.

So yes, this "detox" eliminates high-mercury foods (assuming Kardashian chooses fish that are low in mercury) and, uh, lead, but again, it's highly unlikely this is the kind of thing most people would ever medically need. File under: just another crazy Hollywood diet.