Cleanse and Detox. The words cleanse, detox, diet, for some can be quite emotive, even scary, or a potential joy for remedying digestive issues. What you eat, drink and inhale, literally forms the building blocks of your body, therefore, it’s important to know how to help your body to swap some of the shady, polluted or diseased blocks with healthy ones to keep the body functioning optimally. Not a lot of people are aware of how joined up our emotional states are to what we eat; it still surprises me when I talk to people who aren’t nutrition aware about how powerless they believe they are for their own state of health through what they eat and drink, think diabetes, cancer, skin conditions, arthritis to name but a few conditions which can be both caused and remedied using food. Your body is super intelligent, give it good fuel and it’ll work the rest out!
I’ve tried pretty much every diet going, from the ketogenic to the vegan, paleo, low fat, low sugar, ayurvedic, no carbs, juice, G.A.P.S. (Gut And Psychology Syndrome); I’ve attempted intermittent fasting and dreamt about doing the lemonade, juice, water and a whole host of others cleanses too. With fasting, I’ve never gotten too far as my BMI is always generally healthy but on the low side and to be honest, with past eating disorders, I don’t think this is something I want to put myself through (again, lol). Dieting, wow, trying to heal my gut of Crohn’s, IBS, incessant bloating and skin conditions, that’s why I’ve tried a lot of them. Before I go any further I’d like to acknowledge that we’re all so different and thus if you find something which works for you, go with that, go with your gut. It’s only when things aren’t working out and your digestive, mental, emotional, skin and joint health aren’t feeling so good that you can be aware it’s time to change what you’re doing around your diet. Google define for:
diet noun
the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats. e.g. “a vegetarian diet”
So by me talking about diet, I don’t mean you go on it only to lose weight or with a short term goal, as even if you’re starting out at 20 Stone, there’s going to be a point at which losing weight is no longer a goal. Therefore, diet in that case isn’t looking long term and is probably unsustainable as starving yourself to get a goal can only lead to HAnger (Hunger Anger) and falling off the wagon due to being hungry, then eating, punishing yourself, crying, trying again, failing and falling into a trap of disempowerment and buggering yourself up. With any food, aim to get it as close to it’s natural state as possible, and it’ll have less rubbish in which stresses out your body. Whole grains, real food, produced by decent farms, being wary of big brands where mass production can dramatically decrease the quality of your ingested building blocks. Just because an ad or packaging tells you something it’s healthy doesn’t mean it is; there’s a lot of advertising loop holes and if it needs someone to advertise it then clearly it’s not selling itself.. Most diet foods are full of chemicals and synthetic fillers, derived of nutrition and shoddy building blocks for your human organism! So, have a good diet, and the cleanse and detox are a part of it, with less need to starve yourself or drink psyllium husks for a week.
The cleanse and detox I’m on at the moment involves:
- Cutting the crap. Phase it out to start, then simply, cutting foods which are processed, containing refined sugar, fake table salt and E numbers. Also, alcohol, caffeine except a treat green tea if going out.
- Switching to Fish, Olive, Coconut and flaxseed oils, reducing vegetable, sunflower, canola oils and animal fats.
- Eating FRESH food everyday, cut up real veggies; make soups, salads, steam things, stirfries. For animal protein (if you eat it) then eat fresh fish, lean poultry, eggs (if you can tolerate them), minimally so as to not over load your system during this time. Make soup out of chicken with the bones in.
- Having a large vegetable juice every day, on an empty stomach, adding wheatgrass powder, incrementing how much each week (up to 20g).
- Being mindful of portion size, stop eating when full and save left overs for later. Not being worried to clear the plate.
- Probiotics, probiotics, probiotics! In capsule, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, natto, miso, which ever but take a little bit with each meal to aid friendly bacteria and digestion.
- Drink plenty of water or herbal teas.
So my cleanse and detox is pretty much the diet I hope to continue on, but the forward diet being one which has space for the odd night out with my friend gin, or going out for a curry or tea and cake; it just won’t be every week as the healthier I get, the less I want to go back to eating how I know doesn’t make me feel my best.
The more simple the better with diet and cleansing, in my opinion, you just need to know why you’re doing it and the consequences later on. Trust your gut and think about your whole picture, not just how you want to look on your next beach holiday.
