Spring Cleanse
May 18th, 2011 by Roxanne | Filed under Holistic Lifestyle, Nutrition.
People like “stuff.” We accumulate a lot of things from year to year and most of it is unnecessary. A lot of it we never even use! Spring is a time of year for renewal and a fresh start so it’s the perfect time the clean up your home, your body, and your soul.
Spring cleaning is a great way to get “un-stuck” in life. Throwing out some of your stuff puts the past behind you and makes room for new and exciting things to come into your life. Welcome the new energy of your happy healthy future. Starting with spring cleaning your physical home starts the motion and helps us to focus on cleaning up the other things in life like diet. Once your home is clear of clutter you can focus on cleaning up your other most important home, your physical body.
To spring clean your body, give it a break from rich and complicated foods. This simple statement can be extremely hard if you don’t know what else to eat aside from what you are currently eating. When starting a spring cleanse, I focus on first adding in the healthy nutritious foods and then eliminating foods that are cluttering up your body and mind.
Drink more water. Most people are dehydrated and need to drink more water. If you replace all beverages with water it will dramatically reduce your calorie and sugar in take which will help the body to clean itself out. Water helps to flush the system of toxins and eliminate properly. Water makes the body more light and airy. If you feel tight, dry, suffer from headaches and body tension you will need to significantly increase your water intake to relieve the body of these symptoms.
Eat Greens. Green vegetables are the foods most missing in modern diets. Learning to cook and eat greens is essential to creating health. When you nourish yourself with greens, you will naturally crowd out the foods that make you sick. Greens help to purify the blood, improve circulation, improve liver function, and many more benefits. There are so many greens to choose from. Find greens that you love and eat them often. When you get bored with your favorites, be adventurous and try greens that you’ve never heard of before. Rotate between bok choy, napa cabbage, kale, collards, watercress, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, dandelion and other leafy greens.
Eat Whole Grains. Whole grains are an excellent source of nutrition – they contain essential enzymes, iron, dietary fiber, vitamin E and the B-complex vitamins. Because the body absorbs grain slowly, they provide sustained and high-quality energy. Some whole grains to try are quinoa, millet, barley, brown rice, and oats.
Reduce Refined Carbs & Processed Foods. Crackers, cookies, cakes, bread, and cereal are all part of a group of foods called refined carbohydrates. They were once whole grains and have now been processed and refined into a food product. Refined carbohydrates turn into sugar and enter into the bloodstream very quickly. Because of this, you will feel the same type of highs and lows as you do when eating sweets or drinking soda. This drains the body of energy because it is constantly working to find balance.
Reduce Meat, Dairy, and Sugar. This can be the hardest part for most people but it is also the part that helps so many people. The standard American diet is very high in all of these areas and if you haven’t noticed we have high rates of disease and obesity in this country. For the purposes of a spring cleaning it would even be helpful to refrain from eating these foods at all for a certain amount of time to allow your body time to fully cleanse. Meat, dairy, and sugar have extreme effects on the body and they throw off the natural balance of our bodies. Meat and dairy are extreme contracting foods, eating a lot of these foods will make us feel bloated, heavy, sluggish, and mentally slow. As a result of eating extreme contracting foods, the body will crave extreme expanding foods. Sugar is an extreme expanding food. Eating sugar will give us a quick rise in serotonin followed by rapid declines. As you can see, eating extreme foods will never allow your body to be in balance, it’s a constant battle between the two extremes.
Eliminate Negative Thought. While you’re cleaning out your body and home, don’t forget to spring-clean your heart. Throw away negative thoughts and habits you’ve been harboring that no longer serve you. A clean, open heart will allow you to receive all the good that awaits you each and every day. If your heart and mind are cluttered, there is no room for life’s gifts and surprises to enter.
Spring cleaning can be a way to clean up your diet for the rest of your life. Once you try this way of eating and see the positive changes in the way that you feel and look you may never go back to eating the way you were before. A helpful tip to doing a spring cleanse is to do it with the help of a friend, co-worker, or health counselor. Support is really important and can help you stay on track when you want to turn back to old habits.
