Cleansing is a way to detoxify the body from chemicals we are exposed to in our everyday lives. We are exposed to chemicals and toxins in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the products we use to wash our clothes, homes and bodies. Cleansing or detoxing is a way for me to use natural herbal supplements to help remove these toxins from my cells.
A lot of people are skeptical about cleansing, and there are a lot of wacky cleansing/detox programs out there. If you are looking at doing a cleanse you can do a quick Google search on the word “cleanse” and come up with 10,300,000 results in 0.17 seconds. That is a lot of cleansing! It seems that every health food store, drugstore, and celebrity has their own version of cleanse or detox available.
Many people have heard of the Master Cleanse, which is a very restrictive cleansing program. I know it entails lemons, cayenne pepper, maple syrup and not a lot (if any?) food. This is not an acceptable way to cleanse. Personally, cleansing is about nourishing and restoring health and vitality to the body, not creating more stress to the system by starvation and burning your colon!
As I said earlier, I am using the Supreme Cleanse by Gaia, as it was recommended to me by a naturopath physician. I have had great success with this product in the past. The fact that it allows me to eat real food on a regular basis and does not have the side effects of other cleanses is a major plus. (Some cleanses are pretty harsh on the system and they cause a significant increase in elimination of wastes from the body-read: lots of time in the bathroom.)
The Gaia package supports two full weeks of cleansing, but there is enough left over to do almost another two full weeks. Almost. The cleanse package that I am using this time is my second time using this package. So, as I’m getting to the later stages of my 14 day cleanse, it appears that I am getting low on a couple of the drops. As I went to the internet to purchase more (there are no local suppliers to purchase from) I see that Gaia has done us all a favor! They have changed their program to be liquid capsules instead of various drops, and they have changed the regimen so that the capsules only need to be taken twice a day, rather than the drops which were taken multiple times a day! YAY! This will be so much more convenient! I ordered from drugstore.com because they had a very reasonable price of about $29.99. I hope it gets here before I run out so I can finish my full 14 days.
What else is going on? Well the cleanse itself has been going well. By day 8, I was getting tired of eating the same stuff (veggies, salads, fish), and was fantasizing about what I was going to have for dinner this coming Friday, when I am no longer cleansing! And let me tell you, the things I was thinking of were NOT healthy! But by day 9 I was over that, and going along on track.
I have been exercising regularly, sleeping very well, and feel just generally “lighter” in my insides. It’s a hard thing to describe, but I can certainly tell that the cleanse is working and that I am less bloated, and again, my insides just feel “lighter”.
I had a smoothy of frozen blackberries, organic strawberries and a banana for lunch the other day. I just add a little water to the fruit to get the right consistency.
You can see how much this made.
I also have been making my green juice. I start out with something like this:
and end up with something like this:
This usually makes about 2 ½ glasses of this size
So today is day 10, I have to finish today and have 4 more to go. I have been dairy, wheat, sugar, alcohol, coffee, caffeine, meat, nut, and processed food free for 10 days (13 days for the coffee). I find it to be interesting how easy it is to avoid these foods when I have the added incentive of being on the cleanse, but if I were not on the cleanse, avoiding all these foods would seem very difficult. Interesting how our brains work, eh?
Chris has been a trooper. He has been getting lots of fish and veggie dinners through this process. It’s a good thing he likes fish! I have made him other things and I have just had salad and veg on those nights. It’s a good compromise.
Plus, he is the bestest boyfriend in the world because today he made ME breakfast!
Orange, pineapple, banana smoothy with ice. YUM!!
No comments:
Post a Comment