The Post-4th of July Cleanse

How was your holiday! I hope it was relaxing and wonderful, and that you had a great time recharging. Well perhaps you did not eat um…optimally, shall we say? Which is totally okay when you are on a break! It happens to all of us, and the key is just to get back on track. Perhaps you are feeling a bit heavy from a barbeque (or two!), some poor food combining (watermelon after cooked food!!! Eek), a little too many alcoholic beverages and not consuming toooo many foods that are the color green??? :)

So many of you have written me that you want to start to cleanse “after the 4th of July.” Well I get it: The holiday was a time for letting loose and hanging out with your fam and friends. But holy smokes, summer is really here and yes, you will have to contend with wearing a bathing suit and less clothing in general in the coming months (admittedly the more surface reasons to cleanse, but yes we all care about those as well!). Also, yes, now is a great time to cleanse in the warmer months as there is so much great produce and exotic fruits available, and we can spend more time outside walking, meditating, reflecting and hopefully getting closer back to our real, balanced inner self. Sounds great right!!! Well, step by step.

The first thing to discuss, as I sort of alluded to in the Hitting the Wall blog a few blogs ago is that it is possible to hit walls of detoxing as we are going through, and now one point I must bring up is do NOT do something drastic!! You might “overcleanse” too fast meaning you will wake up too many toxins at once and totally overwhelm our detoxing, eliminative organs. This could prove problematic as you will inevitably feel crappy and could have too many breakouts and headaches, and you will further put your body out of balance. There is too much for the body to extract at once, so you are just recirculating the poisons without really pulling them out, which we need to accomplish in the true definition of cleansing. You could end up waking up way too much, too fast, so much that the poisons get reabsorbed into the body and the blood and tissue. Remember that cleansing is a gradual, long-term process and starting some new shifts after a holiday is a great motivation. But nothing crazy! So in other words, what I’m trying to say is make good progressive changes, don’t rush to do something drastic like try to be a 100% raw foodist or ….start the dreaded Master Cleanse (of which I am SO not a fan, and think is a short-term gimmicky, quick-fix, does no good in the long run, way to reabsorb and self-poison drink of BULL- shiggity!! Excuse me but I had to say it. :) ).

So let’s make some great changes for the week ahead (and some of them you may decide to keep after this, which would be great!). Most people will have consumed a hefty scale of acidic food and beverage items this weekend (meat, alcohol, coffee, chips, pasta salad, etc. etc. ). So let’s try to restore balance by bringing in more alkalinity now. An acidic body is a heavy body, starting in the bowel and making us heavier than our ideal weight. An acidic body has less energy, less than glowing skin, and a preponderance to getting anxiety attacks and getting stressed out more easily.

So here are some great goals for you this week, say until next Sunday, July 12th. You can do it!

–    Completely abstain from alcohol.

–    Start your day with your hot water and lemon (read my post, “Good Morning, How is Your Colon Today?) to stoke the digestive fires.

– Don’t let coffee be the first thing to hit the body. If you can skip the coffee this week that would be great- or at most one if you feel that you need to be weaned off slowly!

–    After this and before your Green Smoothie take a high quality probiotic supplement.

–    Be sure to make eat the Green Smoothie every day as your first meal of the day (you can 2 days’ worth at a time to save time). THIS IS ONE OF THE KEYS!!

–    For lunch have a big salad and be sure to squeeze plenty of lemon on it. No creamy dressings. You can throw some apple cider vinegar on there, and a small amount of olive oil. You can put on any veggies you like and a whole avocado for good, long-burning fuel. Don’t eat any bread products, pasta or crackers at lunch.

–    Drink Detox Tea in the middle of the afternoon as a “snack” when you get hungry. It is freshly sliced ginger and lemon, and if you like it a bit sweet Stevia. This will give the digestion a nice boost again.

– If you need other snacks before dinner, you can have some raw veggies, the other half of your salad lunch if you only ate half of it (a smart move sometimes!), or a low glycemic fruit like some berries. Or more filling, yummy, chilled Green Smoothie!!

–    Completely abstain from red meat.

– Completely abstain from any packaged food bars, protein bars or anything containing soy protein isolates.

–    Completely abstain from any cooked oils (even olive oil!). That means if you want to eat some cooked veggies for dinner, etc. you can get steamed veggies, and if you order fish or something like that get it steamed too. Trust me, if you want to cleanse efficiently, the cooked oils will really delay the process!!

–    Dinner will be started by a green salad, again with lots of lemon and raw apple cider vinegar, and a tad of olive oil. After then make sensible choices and no red meat. But if you’ve eaten well up until now, you can have more leeway here.

– Desert should be a piece of an at least 72% cacao dark chocolate bar. But only like 3 truffles, not  12 of them!! :)

This is a great plan to start the ongoing cleansing process. Remember, we don’t do “A cleanse”. We cleanse!! Cleansing is work and we need to get back on track sensibly while not shocking the system at the same time. You are going to be be right on track for feeling and looking fabulous. Yay! :)

I hope you do well with this and make good choices!
Let me know how you do and feel.

Lots of love,
Kimberly