Why does the body go through withdrawals when going onto a clean food diet?

Does it? If you stop eating ramen and frozen pizza and switch to fresh veggies, fruits, lentils, grains and beans, why would you have withdrawal symptoms? Such as? Sweats? Shaking? Anxiety? Restlessness? Nausea?

Psychological cravings, absolutely. Physical withdrawal symptoms? I’m not sure. You may see drastic changes in your defacation and urination, water retention and alertness levels, but I’m not sure that would classify as withdrawal.

The effects can be profound – headaches, dizziness, cravings, anxiety, sadness, general crankiness, and changes in bodily functions – but they usually disappear within a week or two.

Processed food is packed with multiple forms of sodium, which causes the body to retain fluids. Go cold-turkey on all that salt, and you’ll urinate profusely and feel (literally) drained. When you start eating fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain carbohydrates, all that fiber will affect your digestive system in unpleasant ways. Also, I don’t know if there’s any science behind this, but I’ve read that fat and sugar cause chemical effects in the brain that suddenly stop when such foods are eliminated.

As soon as a person adjusts, however, he/she will likely feel wonderful and energized.

I have never heard of this happening.

I went on Dr. Feingeld’s diet when I was a teen. I wish I had the control to do that again. I went through some of that stuff, mostly headaches, abdominal cramps and light headedness.
I felt SO MUCH better once the garbage was out of me. I could FEEL it. I felt like I’d had a shower which cleaned me right through.
I boo bood a couple of times, and I could feel a gray silt work its way through my bloodstream, honestly.

The junk in junk food can really show up as if you were addicted to the stuff. Sugar of course is addictive, but besides that, there are vast numbers of chemicals (dyes, preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, preservatives, you name it). Absolutely you can feel cruddy as this garbage works its way out of your system, and some of it you probably have become dependent (addicted) to.

The short story about sugar:
Sugar will be the hardest addiction to break because sugar feeds an overgrowth of candida which proliferates in your body. You crave sugar because the candida eats it up, and your cells still need sugar (glucose) to continue the process of life, so you eat more sugar. This creates a never ending cycle that saps your health.

It’s your body getting rid of the massive amounts of Sugar and Sodium that we normally go over board on.