Fear Not! We’ve Got Foods that Cleanse the Body and More!
Are you feeling bloated after your holiday eating? Sometimes I feel I have gained 20 lbs in just a week or two!
If your healthy holiday eating plan did not turn out how you hoped, read on because I’m offering several easy, all-natural ideas to lose the sluggishness, stomach upset, and sugar addiction that can follow after a high-flying season of holiday meals.
Why You Feel So Gross After the Holidays
You are likely the healthy type: you cook and try to eat organic, you make smoothies and work out. But you are human. You likely love cookies, red wine and cheesy potatoes.
The nostalgia, stress, and excitement of the holidays can leave you indulging in your vices more often than you meant to do.
But what is exactly happening in your body that leaves you feeling so miserable? Here are few line items!
Food sensitivities: You are choosing foods that you normally avoid that cause inflammation.
Mast cell activation: You may eat more foods that raise histamines like cheese, wheat & wine. Histamine intolerance can be more prevalent when there is hormonal imbalance (1).
Lack of time-restricted eating: You may be eating late at night or snacking all day.
Overeating: Your body can’t make enough acids and enzymes for the amount you’ve eaten.
Sugar addiction: If you usually avoid sugar and alcohol but are now indulging, you may find you are craving sugar every few hours.
Food additive flare-ups: The MSG, Roundup and more in that food you eat at restaurants and parties is increasing your toxic load, which can result in short-term puffiness or headaches, and longer-term toxic burden.
Is This Extra Weight Going to Stick Around?
The older you get, the harder it becomes to lose weight after you put it on, BUT it’s not impossible to lose it again! However, you may need more than a few extra sessions at the gym if you are over 40 and reading this!
If liver function goes down over time, weight can go up, along with insulin resistance and high blood pressure (2). We are all susceptible to a faulty liver due to poor nutrition or digestion and due to the high amount of toxins in the environment.
Here are a few examples of toxins and their impact on human health:
Effect of Perchlorate (a dry cleaning chemical) on thyroid function (3)
Formaldehyde (commonly found in our flooring and furniture) is classified as a known human carcinogen (4)
Phthalates (found in plastics and fragrances) can cause chemically-induced weight gain (5)
How Full Is Your “Toxic Cup”?
Have you ever heard about the analogy about your health and a cup?? You’re right, it sounds like a very simple concept, but bear with me!
Let’s say when you were 20 you had a pretty empty cup. You had some toxins in your body (because we all do), but you were otherwise pretty fit and could bounce back from anything.
But then you got exposed to toxins at work in a jewelry studio, and at home when you put in new carpet. You also took who-knows-how-many antibiotics for all those sinus infections you got. Were those due to toxic mold? You still wonder.
And then your mom died, and that was incredibly hard and you ate horribly. But then you fell in love and got married but it was stressful and then the kids came and you ended up having two C-sections and your hair fell out.
Then you got your gallbladder removed after that horrible pain and infection. And then you realized your dental fillings were probably leaking mercury and you don’t know what to do about it...
I think you get the idea. Life builds up its insults against your body and the amount of scar tissue and toxins accumulate. Your body systems may be hampered and not totally doing their jobs as well as they used to do.
This is why, my friend, it’s time to detox harder.
Three Ways to Detox Harder
1. Diet
When you think about cleaning up your act, you may think about foods that cleanse the liver, and rightly so! The liver does a lot of the detox work in the body.
After indulging in sweet food, give your liver some bitter and sour love! We need all ‘tastes’ to balance our diet.
Bitter greens like arugula salad, cooked chard and fresh-juiced parsley are great additions to the diet right now. You can also drink your bitters by squeezing a half lemon or 1 tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar into a glass of water.
Other foods that cleanse the body include healthy fats. That’s right, you don’t have to starve yourself on salad to detox! Use ghee to stir fry. Add fresh pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds into your smoothie recipe. Fats compose the membranes of the cell, nucleus and mitochondria, and healthy fats keep our cells functioning and communicating correctly.
You also need plenty of pure water, so remember to drink ½ your body weight in ounces of water right now. Count it out in a water bottle or measuring container to make sure you are!
Steer clear of those processed, rich and sweet foods you grew fond of over the holidays. This may mean throwing some things out to avoid temptation, and vowing to eat in all week.
2. Lifestyle
There are so many fun ways to detox through your lifestyle!
Movement and sunlight are two great ways. There may be less sunlight where you live right now, but try to get what you can. And when you exercise, try to work up at sweat at least some of the time. A heated yoga class can really facilitate this!
A 2015 study concluded that vitamin D (obtained from sunlight or supplements) in conjunction with sufficient beneficial minerals can prevent excess absorption of toxic minerals like cadmium and mercury (6).
Speaking of heat, do you sauna? Saunas are really incredible for detox on some many fronts. They move you out of fight-or-flight mode, they liberate heavy metals (7), chemicals (8), and mold toxins, and they increase your metabolism for weight loss.
You can invest in a personal sauna, but you can also use the one at your health club for now.
If you’ve followed me over the past couple years you know I became addicted to dry brushing as I went through recovery from toxic mold. Dry brushing moves the lymph to clear toxins from the body, and also can help reduce cellulite build up! It’s a win-win! We sell dry brushes at our shop.
Lastly I’ll mention epsom salt baths. Two cups of salt in your hot bath not only provides magnesium but also sulfate, which absorbs easily to support the detox process of sulfation.
3. Supplements
With the heavy toxic assault we all now face in everyday life, I believe supplements have become essential to successful detoxification.
Earlier we talked about supporting the liver with food. Let’s now turn to how you can support the liver through supplementation.
The liver needs several amino acids (building blocks of protein) to perform its duties. One way that it clears toxins is by attaching them to amino acids in phase 2 of detoxification. Amino acids that are essential for this process include: methionine, cysteine, glycine, taurine, glutamine, and choline.
Getting all your amino acids through diets takes eating a variety of proteins regularly and strong digestion. As this is lacking in many of us, amino acid supplementation is a great idea.
Have you heard of glutathione? It is often called ‘the master antioxidant,’ but it’s actually composed of some of the amino acids listed above.
As toxin levels rise in the body, free radicals increase and oxidation occurs. Glutathione counters this oxidation, but if toxin levels are overwhelming, glutathione levels drop, leaving you with weakened immunity and deficient detoxification. So supplementing to support glutathione is helpful as well.
Other antioxidants include vitamins C and E, biotin, NAC (N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine), grape seed, turmeric, green tea and more. Antioxidants don’t get the praise they deserve! Antioxidants are very important in phase 1 detox, when toxins are transformed into water-soluble compounds or metabolites that can move on to phase 2 detox.
Again, you may not get enough antioxidants in your daily diet to counteract the onslaught of toxins, like gasoline fumes or pesticide residues or off-gassing curtains, carpets and furniture.
If you are looking for the best toxin cleanse or detoxes that work to lose weight that utilize antioxidants, amino acids, glutathione and more, keep reading!
Join Us to Detox!
As I added new products to our shop this past fall, I got the question, “What’s a good general detox?” We actually didn’t really yet have one, at least not in the way people were wanting.
I found that most people don’t know what toxins they have, but they know detoxing is a good idea and they want to feel more energetic, think more clearly and maybe lose a few pounds.
This is why we are now offering the 14-Day Paleo Detox. Even though the cart has closed on our special New Year’s offer, you’re still welcome to check out our 14-Day Detox and the other detox products at our shop.
5 Easy Detox Swaps for Women’s Health
Are you doing all the ‘right things’ but still feeling blah?
Get my list of 5 Easy Detox Swaps for Women’s Health to start clearing out the toxins and reset your system to feel better today!
Click here to learn more...