How is your 2013 going so far? Great I hope!
Mine is off to a great start – I’m happy to be back at work after a long
vacation, and ready to embrace all the excitement that this year has to
offer. I’m working on new ideas for blog
posts too. Like I said in my last post,
please leave me a comment or send me an email or Facebook message if you have
any suggestions for future posts or questions about previous ones!
I don’t have a recipe this time. :(
Please refer to my Recipe Index for past recipes if you’re looking for
something healthy to make. I am
currently detoxing. I figured I’d tell
you about the benefits of a detox today rather than torture myself with the
thought of food while what I can consume is veeerrrryyyy selective… Don’t worry, I’ll tell you about the detox
when I’m finished with it next week, but until then you’ll have to wait to find
out what exactly I’m doing. I’m feeling
awesome though! Great way to kick off
the new year!
Detoxing is, as the name implies, ridding your body of
toxins. Toxins can build up from many
different sources such as lifestyle choices like smoking or drinking, the kinds
of food you eat, or in ways that are difficult to avoid like from the air you
breathe or the water you drink. Last
year around March/April Justin and I began to cut back on our carb intake and
noticed incredible health benefits as well as weight loss. June rolled around and we went on vacation
and started eating carbs again and noticed an immediate difference. I wanted to go back to the way I was feeling
before! It was a great journey and
learning experience for me. I was led to
the Paleo lifestyle and learned more about that, and come Holiday season I had
learned a lot about substituting “bad” ingredients for more nutritious and
healthy alternatives to still be able to enjoy all my former “guilty”
pleasures. Have you tried my chocolatechip cookie recipe? If not, you should –
you’ll totally see what I mean.
From March to December is a good stretch of time to make
gradual changes to our lifestyle and learn more about healthy eating habits and
choices. It’s also a good stretch of
time to ease our mindsets into WANTING to make these choices. It was intimidating at first – who wants to
give up yummy pasta or pizza crust or pastries?
Not me! So I didn’t – I found
alternatives to them. And I’ve been very
happy with those alternatives!
By August I had made up my mind that we were going to
convert our lifestyle for 2013. At HOME –
I’m going to do my best to stay on track even when we’re out and about, but I
didn’t want Justin to feel too restricted.
Diets are hard to stick to when you feel restricted and deprived. That’s why a lot of them fail. But this isn’t a diet for us – this is a
lifestyle change, and lifestyle changes can’t just happen cold turkey. I know I’ll have days where I’ll carb it up
every now and then, but I’m going to keep them to a minimum, and I’m definitely
not going to let that happen at home where I have complete control over what we
eat.
Also in August I decided I’d do this detox the first week of
January to kick off the new year and to set the stage for our new way of
life. It wasn’t until late December that
Justin decided he’d join me – so long as it was only for 7 days! I’m SO happy he did, using the buddy system
for a detox makes it SO much easier!
Ridding your body of toxins by doing a detox diet is a great way to
alter your body in healthy ways – it helps rid yourself of cravings for
unhealthy foods like sugar or bad carbs, or substances if you’re trying to quit
smoking. I know I caved quite a bit over
Christmas and had a few too many cookies, and I could feel my sugar cravings
coming back hard and strong. I was
putting weight back on too, little by little.
Whew, New Year’s came in the nick of time!!
Detoxing is great for your organs like your liver and
stomach, since toxins store themselves there.
Once you flush these toxins out, those organs work much better. That, and ridding your body of free radicals,
does wonders for your immune system too (and we do have quite a bit of winter
to get through yet!). You’ll literally
clean house – flushing your colon for better digestion and elimination,
cleaning your blood for better circulation, and clearing your mind too since
toxins and free radicals can affect and hinder proper brain function. You’ll be able to sleep better, think better,
and stay in a better mood!
Toxins do like to store themselves in your fat cells
too. So guess what else a detox diet
helps with? Weight loss! I’m already noticing big changes there, but I’ll
be totally honest, I wanted to do this primarily for health reasons, to help
kick off a healthier lifestyle… and secondarily to lose some weight – I can’t
rule that out completely :).
Sorry about the lack of guilt-free recipe today. I’ll have something for you next week, I
promise! Hopefully you learned a little
something from today’s post though. Try
a detox for yourself! Just Google “detox
diets”, there are so many variations to suit your lifestyle. The best and easiest way, though, is to just
cut out anything that’s been processed or contains artificial ingredients or preservatives
or chemicals. Stick to eating foods that
are in or are as close to their original natural state – whole fruits and
vegetables, nuts and berries, meats from animals that weren’t given artificial
growth hormones or steroids or any inhumane treatment, and stay away from bad
carbohydrates. Try this for a month and
see how you feel!
Oooorrrrrr stay tuned for next week and find out what Justin and I did :). See you all next week!
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