purewellnessamy

This awesome weather and the official approach of spring  this weekend has me thinking and craving things green, clean, and fresh. My blog’s theme is appropriate, isn’t it?  I tend to “match” the season (my old theme had a green background. I’m a compulsive theme-changer –pwa).  For instance, we were married in October 2004 and my invitations were brown, the wedding theme was autumn leaves, and I made my  bridesmaids wear dead leaf (aka: poop) -brown satin dresses.  We even gave maple syrup in leaf-shaped glass bottles as wedding favors.  In retrospect, I may have gone a little overboard in the matching department…

Matching one’s wedding to the season may not be a great idea, but matching one’s eating habits to the season is a fantastic idea.  With spring getting all up in our business now, I thought I’d talk about cleansing and clearing out the winter crap that has accumulated in our bodies.  Do you feel a little bloated, clogged, sluggish?  To be honest,  I do. I haven’t been able to exercise as much as usual and over the winter I was a little too flexible with the food I chose to eat.  I’m ready for some lightening up.

I’m sure you’ve heard about “doing a cleanse” and perhaps you have already done one.  (If you did, how was it for you?  I’d love to read about some of your experiences, so feel free to fill up my comments.)  There are many different ways to cleanse, some are hardcore like the master cleanse, but others are more gentle and practical.  I’m not knocking the master cleanse, if it works for you, great, but it just doesn’t speak to me. 

If you Google “spring cleanse,” you will receive no less than 1,600,000 results.  That is a lot of talk about cleansing, and after much reading, I think that these are the key points to a gentle and practical cleanse.  It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but I think these are realistic things that just about everyone can do safely (except for pregnant and nursing women – no cleanse for you). If you want to try some funkier methods you found on your “spring cleanse” search, go for it. But don’t do anything too crazy without consulting your doctor.

Try these things for one week.  I think you will feel amazing on day seven — lighter, cleaner, and more focused. You should sleep better and poop more regularly. You may decide to adopt one or more of these points when you return to your “normal” life to keep that good clean feeling going.  I suggest you get all of your supplies and make your appointments this Saturday, the first official day of spring, get mentally ready on Sunday and then jump right in Monday morning with your first glass of morning water:

• Drink more water.  By “more water” I mean at least 8 8 oz. glasses a day.  The most important glass of the day will be the one you drink first thing in the morning.  Leave a full glass on your nightstand when you go to bed and chug-a-lug when you wake up.  Think about it, you haven’t a had drink in 5-8 hours–your body is thirsty, give it water. Keep in mind that our bodies like room temperature water more than ice-cold water. Do not drink water from a plastic bottle–do yourself and the environment a favor. If you don’t have one already, buy a Brita filter, or another brand of filter, and an eco-friendly water bottle to carry with you throughout the day. 
• Consume less caffeine.  In all its forms – coffee, tea, chocolate, and God-forbid, soda.  Don’t even get me started on soda.  Just don’t drink it. Ever.  Notice that I didn’t say “Consume no caffeine.”  Caffeine is a hard and unpleasant habit to break, especially if you’re a coffee drinker, so you need to do it gently.  During this cleansing period, if you don’t feel that you can go cold turkey, try changing your caffeine source. If you drink coffee, switch to green or white tea, which contain less caffeine (and have other health properties to boot). If that isn’t appealing to you, at least try reducing the number of cups of coffee you have a day. If you usually drink 3, have just 2. If you normally have one venti, switch to the grande. Reduce your intake as much as possible. If you gradually reduce your intake throughout the week, you may end up being caffeine free by the end of the week. 
• Do not drink alcohol.  Sorry, that’s not negotiable. No booze.
• Get a massage.  A massage feels wonderful and it helps to release toxins that are hanging out in your body.
• Start skin brushing.  Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s worth getting up a little bit earlier to do this beneficial self-care routine.
• Eat more green vegetables.  In the Northeast, the first one to poke its head up through the ground is asparagus.   Despite the stinky pee it gives me, I love asparagus.  Arugula, peas, sprouts, artichokes, and maybe some baby lettuces can be found locally (if you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll know that I’m on a local food kick).  For the purpose of this cleanse, you may want to venture outside of local food and eat organic kale, spinach, swiss chard, broccoli.  All of these vegetables can be prepared simply–sautéed, roasted, or tossed raw in a salad–or they can be fancified into a substantial meal or side dish. Why don’t you peruse some food blogs (hint: look at my blogroll) or recipe sites and see what you can find?  Try to eat greens at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• Drink your green vegetables.  I admit that sometimes chewing greens can be tiresome.  You may have seen some of my other posts about green smoothies?  Why don’t you make up your own concoctions.  Smoothies can be a filling and nutritious breakfast, lunch or dinner.  I would also recommend juicing your vegetables, but I know that not everyone has a juicer.  If you do have one, juice away. If you want to invest in a juicer, awesome!  Drinking fresh vegetable juice is very cleansing and just plain good for you.
• Snack on fruit and vegetables.  That’s pretty self-explanatory.
• Eat whole grains. These will replace the refined carbohydrates (see below).  Have you tried quinoa yet? No? Try it. Replace your white pasta with whole wheat pasta, white rice with brown rice.  Fix some oatmeal for breakfast.
• Do not eat refined carbohydrates (aka “white food”). Don’t eat white bread, bagels (even “whole grain” bagels), white pasta, pretzels, popcorn, white rice, and sugary stuff like candy, cereal and ice cream. In a perfect world, you shouldn’t eat these things even if you aren’t doing a cleanse. 
• Limit or exclude dairy products. Dairy is mucous forming and clogs up your body.  If you can handle it, don’t eat dairy for the week.  If you can’t live without cheese on your salad, use it sparingly.  Also, this means that if you choose to make a green smoothie, you should use water instead of yogurt.
• Limit or exclude meat. Both white meat and red meat.  If you eat fish, eat it in moderation.
• Exercise.  Sweat. Release those toxins, drink more water, and sweat again.  You don’t have to run a marathon. Just walk, jog, do yoga, lift some weights, whatever.  Get your body moving and your blood pumping. Ideally you should exercise outside and enjoy the fresh warm(er) air.
• Keep a journal. Before bed, maybe while drinking a cup of warm herbal tea, write down what you ate during the day, how you felt during the day and how you feel now before bed.  Write down everything, good feelings and bad feelings.  You may not feel wonderful on days 1 and 2, but by day 3 your body should start lightening up.  While you’re at it, why don’t you jot down a few things that you are grateful for.  The journal will be a nice thing to have in the future when  you feel like you’re in a sluggish rut again. You can review what worked for you during this cleanse and try it again. 

How do those suggestions sound to you? Doable?  I hope so. I’d love to hear how your cleanse week goes and I’d also be happy to answer any questions you may have.  Remember, the point of the cleanse is to budge the sludge, move out some toxins that may have formed over the cold days of winter.  It’s not about losing weight or being perfect. Enjoy next week. Baby yourself.  Although I say this is a one-week process, it is truly the way we should treat our bodies every day of our lives.