How many detox diet books are there? A lot. When I think of a detox diet I think a temporary reduction in food, a temporary change to clean and healthy foods and lots of water, it brings to mind a sloth type puddle of a person, full of toxins, steaming their red faced way to the library in the hope of deep cleaning with a break from all the crap and some bottled water.
Yet I live my life in a constant state of detox. Not because I fill my body with crap, but because it’s the way our bodies work. We are always interacting with the world and things around us, and with this, we take in toxins; whether we are eating, breathing, walking, at the beauty salon, at work- we absorb things (we need to or we couldn’t breathe or eat) through our skin, lungs, digestive systems. So it’s lucky that our bodies are in a constant state of detox, from breathing to peeing, there is nothing temporary about detoxification.
I have posted in the past about how dieting doesn’t work, no temporary plan does Its a bottom level, fundamental forever term lifestyle change that needs to be ambraced. I aim not to say, ‘I ate crap today so im going to drink organic juice tomorrow’, but to live in a way that puts as few toxins in, and maximises toxins out.
These are some of my low-toxin tenets:
Juicing
- This hits two spots of being as easy to digest as a liquid/pulp is, but with the added big bebefits of being chock full of raw enzymes, high quality nutrients and water. I could never (and wouldn’t have the inclination) to tuck into a breakfast of spinach, avocado, apples, celery, pineapple and cucumber, but it makes a lovely drink and that I can gulp of sip to my heart’s content.
Live in a relaxed way
- I have seen first hand the toll that stress takes on our physical bodies, manifesting itself in diseases from skin problems, to ulcerative colitis. Stress is not the body’s natural state, and when under stress the body creates cortisol-the stress hormone, something that thosusands of years ago, would have given us the energy to either fight the wooly mammoth or run away. Cortisol affects blood glucose metabolism- if it’s upset, people can either loose or gain weight (I was in the latter group), it also affects immune systems and inflammatory responses of the body, so its no surprise that the skin and digestive systems can suffer.
Eat as low on the food chain as possible
- If foods are processed they are likley to contain toxins, my rule is that if it’s not something that I can identify, justify or understand, I won’t eat it.
Eat organic where possible
- I figure that pesticides and chemical fertilizers are put on plants to do one of two things, either kill bugs or force the plants to grow bigger or faster. Personally I don’t want to consume anything that’s created to kill life (even if I don’t want to eat caterpillars) or anything thats artifically forcing something to grow bigger (at 30 I don’t want to be getting bigger). This goes also for meat, and it’s equally if not more important as the hormones used to increase growth will be al the more reactive with humans, as they are built to grow animal tissue.
Either way, supporting your detox functions every day, it the easy way to detox, you don’t need a book, you don’t need a diet. Just limit your toxins, support your detox….pee and breathe 🙂 it’s not so hard!
In the daily task of detoxing and cleaning, there is help at hand. It’s an unlikley suitor, a dark and gnarly, often hairy, bulbous object, it grows in soft rich earth, and its known by gardeners for being hardy and in fact very hard too! Its flesh is earthy smelling, but its juice is an unnatural flourescent puce. Its is ladies and gentlemen, the BEET!!
Ful of anti oxidants and nutrients such as magnesium, potassium and vitamin C, beetroots have been credited with cancer reducing properties and more recently attributed to increased detoxification and lowering cholesterol.
Try this juice recipe for a sweet beet detox support:
Super sweet beet juice
Ingredients
Handful of spinach
1 large beet (150-200g)
2 oranges
1/3 pinapple, peeled
Method
Blend or puree the spinach, and juice the beet, the organges and pinepple on top. Blend the whole mixture together to give a lovely frothy top, and enjoy…..just watch your mouth afterwards, you might have a nice beet pink mouth 🙂
