The old adage is true, garbage in, garbage out. As a health care provider, I know better than most that the nutrition (or lack thereof) you eat will either properly fuel your body or cause you significant ups and downs in your energy & mood. I started experiencing the latter pretty frequently, and felt that I shouldn't have to rely soley on my BFF coffee to get me through the day, everyday. Something in my routine felt off, and I was literally and figuratively tired of it.
A couple months ago I learned about a program (not a diet, a fad, or a quick fix, but more of a reset button on your health) called 21 Day Purification. It is made by a highly respected and reputable company (Standard Process). The goal is to remove the processed foods, refined sugars, and anything that may cause sensitivities or allergies and let your body clean out the toxins. I thought, hey, it may be crazy to do something like this right in the middle of holiday season, but there's no better time to focus on my health, especially when a little voice inside of me is saying DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT ALREADY CAUSE COFFEE AIN'T CUTTING IT! And neither is this stuff...
(Here's what my office has looked like since before Thanksgiving. Everyone sends cookies, candies, baked goods, and more to say THANKS for giving me back my health. A sweet gesture... but really?!)
My husband and I discussed doing this cleanse together and agreed it would be easier to have each other's support. I decided to wait until after Thanksgiving and my brother-in-law and now sister-in-law's wedding, and we started December 1st.
Day one sucked. I'm not going to lie. By lunch time I already had a headache from caffeine withdrawal. I had only been awake for about 6 hours and I already felt this way?! Shit. The rest of my workday got progressively worse until I was sent home with a borderline migraine and nausea. I went to sleep at 9:10pm, exactly ten minutes after I put my son down for the night. Tossed and turned and had the sweats, too. Lovely.
Day two I had a headache hangover, and thankfully I was off of work so I kept the day easy and after a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, I felt like a normal human being again. No coffee, meat, dairy, or grains took a little getting used to. It's not easy but it's not hard either. We cut up lots of fruits and veggies to snack on, salads or a bit of quinoa for lunch, and made a couple of tasty smoothies with dairy-free protein. We survived the first few days and by day 4 I felt pretty good and was ready to work out again.
The next few days came and went without much difficulty. On day 6 we had a date night and treated ourselves to the Whole Foods salad bar & bubbly water. Fancy. We started getting the hang of preparing our lunches in advance and being more creative in the kitchen. Spaghetti (squash) with homemade sauce and cauliflower "fried rice" were big hits that we kept going back to. It's like an old flame was rekindled. We used to do this. We liked this. We got lazy for a while. But we're good in the kitchen! We got this!
Day 11 we added meat back into the diet. The recommendation is 2-4 servings of organic, lean poultry, grass-fed beef, or wild fish. It was nice to add protein back into a dinner of steamed veggies or salad! The rest of the cleanse was great, and we avoided tempation a number of times as we ate what we could at the array of birthday parties and holiday parties we attended. We were thankful for veggie trays and salads!
We ended up finishing the cleanse a day early but the overall effects of this journey will last far beyond the three weeks where we had to "go without" certain foods we enjoy. What I took away from this experience is that we didn't have to give up anything, we chose to change our habits and our minds about the food we eat. My husband has a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that is triggered by stress and certain processed and prepared foods. We ignored that possibility for a long time, risking a chance of him having a flare up again. The knowledge that I have about nutrition was sitting on the back burner, as I made excuses for why I only had to eat healthy sometimes. The positives from this experience include feeling full & satisfied after eating fruits, veggies & protein, feeling more naturally-derived energy, sleeping better, improved skin, and a renewed vigor for physical activity which lead me to taking up hot yoga again after a 6 year hiatus. Ultimately being a good role model for my 2 year old son is probably most rewarding. And an added bonus... I lost ten pounds! My hubby and I have decided to continue this journey, and allow ourselves one day per week to indulge in something we love so that we aren't "restricting" ourselves and end up feeling like we're dieting. This isn't a diet, it's a lifestyle change that we've been needing to make for a long time. There is will-power and motivation within everyone. It took something like this for us to find ours again.
The moral of the story... I encourage you to do something that makes you uncomforable. Whether it's signing up for a 5K, an exercise class, eating a salad with every meal, saying no on occasion to the birthday cake at your kids friend's birthday parties, or taking the plunge and doing a cleanse... do something that will positively benefit your life. If you are a parent, the choices you make aren't just about you anymore. Your whole family will be impacted by your good OR poor health.
If you have any specific questions about the cleanse, healthy eating, yummy recipes, or even hot yoga, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Sometimes all it takes is that one leap of faith. The timing doesn't have to be perfect, the outcome doesn't have to be monumental, but you deserve to be happy, and above all else, healthy, don't you think?
Xo
