It seems like everyone I know is detoxing. Cara just finished Clean, Sandra tried the Zuddha Girls' cleanse and last I checked Anthony had logged ten plus days on a juice fast (while working over fourteen hours a day and raising two kids, thank you very much!). Part of me wants to do a cleanse, too. The other part wants to sit on my couch and drink hot chocolate. Since I figure I can't be the only one with dueling impulses, here are five super easy changes that will yield big honking, healthy results. They are changes that you can make even when you don't really feel like changing anything...
1. Give up dairy.
Dairy does nothing for you. Give dairy the heave-ho and your world will be a happier place. I could appeal to your sense of health and tell you all the ways in which dairy robs the life force energy from your once pristine body, but I find that to be a time consuming and often fruitless endeavor. I am going to appeal to your sense of vanity. Dairy gives you under eye circles, a double chin, zits and a layer of pudgy mucus underneath your skin that makes you appear puffier than you actually are. Giving up dairy is a cleanse unto itself. If you only did that one thing, you would feel a monumental shift in your health.
2. Cut your meat intake by half.
Actually, I would prefer that you cut meat out of your diet all together. I would also prefer world peace, a villa in Tuscany and these shoes. Some dreams take time. Until then, reducing the amount of meat you eat by half seems like fair compromise. Meat is very taxing on your body and extremely hard to digest. Any decrease in consumption gives your body more energy to heal and renew itself. If you eat meat once a day, try every other day. Twice a day, switch to once a day. If you eat it at every meal…then try to….wait….every meal?! Really?!? Ok. Put down the spare rib that you are presumably sucking on and go eat an apple for the love of Buddha.
3. Eat a salad for lunch.
Having a hearty, colorful cornucopia of leafy goodness everyday for lunch is an easy way to feel virtuous without having to actually exert much effort. Salads are cheap, portable and sold nearly everywhere. They can be specially modified to suit your every whim and fancy. If you eat a salad for lunch, no matter what debauchery the rest of the day may bring you can can always say, "Eh...At least I had a salad for lunch."
4. Stop drinking alcohol.
I love a vodka smoothie as much as the next girl, but if you want to cleanse the alcohol has to go. You see, when all the organs were divvying up tasks the liver drew the short straw and was put in charge of metabolizing alcohol AND fat. That would be fine except when you ingest a lot of alcohol with a lot of fat your liver tends to the alcohol first so that you won't…you know…die and it deals with the fat when and IF it feels like it. Sometimes it will just put the fat on your butt for safe keeping until it finishes up processing all that alcohol. If you leave the alcohol out of the equation, your liver is so grateful for the easy work load that it will happily process all the fat you have eaten that day. Also, I don't know about you but I am way more likely to inhale a box of these after I've had a few. Sober people eat vegetables.
5. No eating after 7:30p.m.
I don't normally subscribe to this rule, but as far as detox shortcuts go this one is a no brainer. An eating cut-off time not only means that you will most likely eat less over all, but it also ensures that your body will get a solid chunk of time to tend to digestion and bodily repairs. Also, like drinking alcohol, late night eating can bring with it a lapse in judgement. You start off "just having a pear" and in a blink you've burned through half the contents of your fridge. Or maybe that's just me...
-♥ J :)
