Realistic Detoxing Methods for Real People

Do you ever feel jealous or even intimidated when you hear about some of these celebrities who pay large sums of money to spend a couple of weeks detoxing in a luxurious health spa?

Or maybe you’ve been put off by hearing tales of the do-it-yourself colonics that people do when they go to some of the detox retreats on Koh Samui.

Most of us can’t just stop our lives in order to do a hard-core detox. If you want to detoxify while still getting on with your life, here are some gentle, but effective methods.

1. Raw fruit and vegetable detox

For this kind of detox, you eat only raw fruits and raw or lightly steamed vegetables for 2 or 3 days. It’s an ideal detox to do over a weekend. It can help kickstart healthy eating if you’ve fallen off the wagon or you’ve never really got to grips with a healthy eating plan.

It’s important that you don’t rush headlong into this fruit and veg detox, or any detox in fact, without some preparation or you will most likely have some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms especially if you normally drink a lot of tea or coffee and you have quite a lot of sugar in your diet. It can be surprising how much hidden sugar you consume even if you don’t add it to your food or drinks.

It’s best to eat organic food while you are on a fruit and vegetable detox. Much of the principle behind detoxification is to reduce the intake of toxins as well as flushing them from your system.

2. Green Smoothie Detox

This can be a very tasty detox! You have the choice here of living on green smoothies for 2 days with no other food or simply drinking several a day while you eat healthy meals. You could even combine green smoothies with the fruit and veg detox.

You will find many recipes for green and other smoothies on the internet as well as in magazines as they have become so popular. Some recipes I’ve seen are loaded with all sorts of unhealthy ingredients like ice cream, chocolate, sugar and syrups but that is not the sort you want for detoxing or for health.

Green smoothies are made with green leaves and fruit. If you don’t normally eat a lot of green leafy veg then this is brilliant way of increasing your intake. If the smoothie is made properly you won’t even taste the “green” especially if you start with mild greens like Romaine or little gem lettuce or baby spinach and include enough fruit.

You can start with a ratio of 60% fruit and 40% greens then gradually increase the greens until you are having 60% or more green leaves and 40% or less fruit. Some of the best fruits to use are apples, peaches, pears, mango and berries especially blueberries.

Apples, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, grapes, spinach, kale and celery are some of the most heavily pesticide contaminated fruits and vegetables so it’s best to buy them organic if you can.

You can add some seeds like chia or flax for more fiber and to fill you up more if you like but it’s best to soak the chia seeds in a little pure water for 10 – 15 minutes first. Use 1 tablespoon for an 8 oz smoothie.

3. Overall Lifestyle Detox Boosts

Instead of following a specific detox diet plan you can simply make changes to your diet and lifestyle that will help to support the detox system. Some ways to do that are:

• Switch to organic, grass-fed or free-range meats. Grass-fed products are rich in all the fats now proven to be needed for health but low in the fats that have been linked with disease. Grass -fed meat contains more omega-3 fatty acids to omega 6 and more CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid). Most people eat too many omega-6 fats and not enough omega-3. CLA is a fat that reduces the risk of cancer, obesity, diabetes, and a number of immune disorders.
• Avoid refined sugar and reduce foods containing it. If you really need to use a sweetener use a little raw, unfiltered honey, real maple syrup, dates, or stevia instead.
• Switch to organic, whole, fresh foods rather than conventionally grown, processed or prepackaged foods.
• Reduce dairy products and eat only organic products.
• Use only natural personal care products like soap, shower gel, shampoo, deodorant, skin products and cosmetics. Hard to believe but the average American is exposed to more than a hundred chemicals from products they use every day.Many of them are unregulated and can cause cancer, disrupt hormones and affect your nervous system. They can accumulate in your body and scientists now believe that a cocktail of these toxic chemicals is far more harmful than each individual chemical.
• Drink plenty of pure water (not tap water) and use a shower filter. If you don’t like plain water try these detox waters.
• Exercise regularly. It keeps the blood and lymph circulation moving and induces sweating both of which help with detoxing the body.

4. Meditation and relaxation

Your body can’t detox when you are stressed. The stress hormone cortisol, if raised, can supress thyroid function which in turn impaires liver detoxification.

Feelings of anger, jealousy, fear, sadness, grief, can also impact detoxification

Meditation relaxes the body and enables you to let go of these feelings. Some therapists use meditation, visualization and energy channeling to help move toxins out of the body.

If you want a more structured plan then my new ebook 9 Simple Steps To Slenderness can guide you.

Did you  think that detoxing could be so easy? Let me know what you think in the comments. 🙂