Spring Cleaning With Food And Drink
March 3, 2008 :: by Ingrid
Photography: Detox Lunch by Nitrobacter
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.” - Thoreau
Imagine not cleaning your house for one year! You’d probably have rooms full of stagnate, unnecessary junk, accumulated debris and dust – what a mess! That doesn’t sound like a healthy environment.
Like cleaning the rooms of a house, the human body needs to be cleaned too. If the body is overburdened with accumulated toxic waste, the internal environment mostly likely will be an unhealthy one.
The difference between the house and the body parallel is you can have the house cleaned in a day but to rid the body of toxins may take much longer. You can walk out of the house but you can’t walk out of your body. You carry what is stored inside with you everywhere you go, everyday!
There is a solution, a simple and healthy one. Eat and drink the healthiest foods you can to nourish the body and help it detox.
Why Detox
The human body is brilliantly designed with its own built-in healing abilities, but due in part to our modern diet, the body is in constant flux of detoxing. Detoxification supports cleaning, healing, renewing, and nourishing the body from the inside out. It also aids in the body’s ability to releasing toxins from its system and from its cells. When this happens the body will function more efficiently giving it a chance to repair and heal itself, if necessary.
Great Incentives
Detoxing offers multiple benefits, physically, mentally and spiritually. By detoxing you’ll likely experiences some if not all of these benefits:
Greater levels of energy
Stronger immune system
Increased mental clarity
Weight loss [if the body has need to loss any excess]
Clearer eyes and skin
Enhanced self-confidence
Now those are great incentives and just some of the possible gains!
DETOXING WITH FOOD AND DRINK
First I would like to point out, from this concise list, what types of unnatural food and drink to avoid and ideally eliminate altogether from your diet. These are little troublemakers that usually cause big trouble sooner or later. Avoiding them helps your body function at its best. Try to stir clear of:
~ Unnatural foods
Cut out these foods and substances that don’t promote optimal health –
White sugar and flour
Iodized table salt
Artificial sweeteners
Hydrogenated fats
Fried foods
All artificial and processed foods
~ Unnatural and caffeinated drinks
Stay away from -
Soda
Caffeined drinks
All artificially flavored and sweetened drinks
When planning to detox, if you have avoided these foods you’ll most likely experience less discomfort, side effects, and symptoms, like headaches, skin eruptions or a full-blown “detox crisis”.
CLEAN UP YOUR DIET
When unnatural foods are eliminated from your diet what is left to chose is the best foods you could ever eat, all sorts of delicious fruits and vegetables.
As you may already know, I’m a raw vegan foodist and I eat as much fresh fruits and veggies as I can daily. I’ve been eating primarily raw food for one year now. It has been fairly easy for me to stick to this diet. There have been some up and down but nothing too drastic. My experience has been positive overall and I’ve found that eating in such a way has been a form of slow and steady detoxing.
Some might find detoxing difficult to stick with for an extended period of time while other may find it easy. The point is not to drastically change your entire diet at once. Generally this doesn’t work for most people, is hard to sustain and the next thing you are back to the drawing board.
Take baby steps. Start by incorporating as much fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet as you can. Adjust to this new diet slow and steady. For those who find they can jump right in or go cold turkey, go right ahead. There are no hard and fast rules. Make the dietary changes based on these suggested foods and drinks, tailored to suit your needs and circumstances. This is not by any means a complete list of foods, just general suggestions to get you started.
~ Organic natural foods
If you don’t already, try consuming more foods that are natural, wholesome, unprocessed, and rich in fiber. Increase your intake of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs, and eat as many gorgeous chlorophyll-rich dark greens as possible.
~ Pure Drinks
Drink lots of filtered water, fresh juices, especially vegetables and green drinks, and herbal teas are drinks that help speed up the removal of toxins and flush them out from the system. For example, when I fast, I like to drink DeTox Tea
And whenever possible buy organic produce to avoid ingesting traces of herbicides, fungicides and pesticides.
A clean diet translates into a clean well-functioning body. If you chose to implement organic fresh foods and drinks as part of a well-designed detox program, not only will you assist your body with its’ internal cleanse but you will eat healthier than you ever have before. The whole idea is to replace bad food with healthy food and hopefully this becomes a life long habit.
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