Wellness Wednesday - Post holiday detoxing

I had a feeling that title would get people's attention;) After a holiday filled with overindulging in every way, everyone is now looking for the quick fix. I imagine it as a car that's been 4x4ing in a rainforest for 2 weeks and has dirt in every orifice. Now you want to simply put it through a wash and clean out all the dirt. But what if you still continued to drive that car on a muddy dirt road every day? Let me tell you that you will STILL be finding dirt on that car pretty much for the rest of your days, no matter how many times you wash it!

I don't place much faith in detoxes for the same reason I don't believe that that car will ever come clean. As long as you keep adding to the "dirt", you are fighting a losing battle.

I had a couple of friends who decided to do the Master Cleanse. You know the one where Beyonce lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks? (You live on a ridiculous diet of water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper and nothing else.)

Within 24 hours of starting the detox, they had the most horrific headaches and they felt horribly nauseous. By day 2 other symptoms included fatigue, dizziness, irritability, mood swings, intense cravings, sinus drainage, diarrhea/constipation, flu-like symptoms, brain fog, increased urination, increased appetite and a raging thirst. Needless to say, no-one lasted past day 3 on that detox! Let's face it, it would take extreme dedication to push through all of that to the other side.

Here's the thing that people don't take into account when it comes to detoxing. Your body has had open season with every manner of chemical, toxin and stimulant for YEARS. Forget about the 2 week holiday you've just had. The only difference between the holidays and daily life is that it's more concentrated. The fact is that, for most, if not ALL of your life, you have eaten and drunk pretty much whatever you want. Even when you were trying to be healthy, you were still probably eating conventional meat, fruit and vegetables, coffee or tea and sugar-free soft drinks. Now, all of a sudden, all of that is coming to a screeching halt. No warning, no easing gently onto the brakes. Just SCREEEEEECH!

So basically, with immediate effect, you deprived your body of caffeine, sugar, alcohol, sweets (which are the same as, but also different to, sugar because they contain so much other rubbish) gluten and MSG to name a few. What did you expect your body to do? Unfortunately it is not going to thank you. It is going to go into a state of absolute shock and withdrawal. Imagine you were a cocaine addict and you stopped cold turkey. You've seen it in movies. It's not easy at all. In fact, it's far from pretty. This is really no different.

If you are 30 years old and you decided it's time to a detox, you are making changes to a body that has been in pretty much the same routine for the last 30 years. It's a sure bet that you are going to feel sick as your body tries to adjust to the changes! The question is, why would you only do this after a holiday?

We are all aware that we indulge ourselves on holidays and I guess that's what makes us feel the need to do a clean out. We feel a bit guilty. The thing with the detox is not just the horribly withdrawal you experience, its the fact that it only lasts a couple of weeks at most and then it's over and we go back to the way we were before and within a couple of weeks we are right back where we started. What a waste of time and effort.

Our bodies naturally detox every day. Considering the amount of rubbish we put in them, it's pretty scary the amount of pressure we are putting them under but it rallies and it cleans out the rubbish, daily. The problem is that, over time, our bodies collect SO MANY toxins from beauty products, food and the environment, that it doesn't know what to do with them and so it stores them outside of the regular elimination system, in the body fat, to prevent them poisoning the body. These build up over time and they are going to make you feel pretty awful and eventually make you very ill, probably terminally.

You're thinking that a detox is probably the best solution then, right? I agree, but not in the way you think. I don't think a 2 week detox crash diet is going to be the solution. I DO think that you need to clean your body up, however.

You probably won't like what I'm going to say next, because no-one likes to do the hard work or take the road less travelled but that's pretty much what you are going to have to do. You are also probably going to want to do it nice and slowly. It's going to involve change and that change needs to be a longterm thing, not just a 2 week thing. The best way to detox your body is to make a permanent lifestyle change.

Let's talk about the part where I said you are going to want to do it slowly. When I cut chemicals out of my life, I made the mistake of pretty much changing over to natural and organic in EVERYTHING, with immediate effect. I hit a major healing crisis. My body went into withdrawal and I got very, very sick. I wasn't doing a 2 week detox diet. I was making a permanent change so, once my body had adjusted, I was fine. But it was a few months of hell. Yup, these things don't happen in 2 weeks. It can take months for your body to slowly get rid of all the rubbish. I lost about 4kgs of body fat and I wasn't exactly overweight. But the good thing about losing that fat is that it contained a lot of the toxins that my body wasn't sure what to do with.

A year and a half later and I am the healthiest and happiest I've ever been. My body is the cleanest it's ever been and I intend to keep it that way. I don't need to do any crash detox diets because my body detoxes itself every day, naturally and, because I don't have much rubbish in me to get rid of, it's an easy, painless process.

Over christmas I ate more than usual, as you do! But 90% of it was organic and free-range (eating out makes it hard to stick to it 100%) and, at all times, I only use organic and natural beauty and household products. That applies all the time so my body gets a permanent break from having to deal with more toxins there. The only bad indulgence over the holidays, for me, was alcohol. Not that I can drink much! While everyone around me is on their 5th drink, I'm struggling with number 2;) I get a hangover with one glass of wine! Sad because I love a glass of expensive red wine now and then:( By the way, this happened BEFORE I went organic. It's just a bit worse now!

My way of dealing with it is making sure that, in between alcoholic drinks, I sip on a mug of milkthistle and stinging nettle tea which really helps the liver and kidneys to get rid of the alcohol and other toxins. I drink it all of the next day too. I take longer to recover than most people because my body is so unaccustomed to any toxins and I sometimes wonder why I do it;) Well, why does anyone indulge over the holidays? Because you want to relax in every possible way.

The way I see it, I live 99% of my life clean. If I want to unwind with a glass of wine, I am going to do it. Life is all about balance. You have to enjoy it too. For me, it has become such a way of life to live and eat cleanly, it doesn't enter my head to do anything different. It doesn't get in the way of my life and, honestly, I PREFER food that is organic. It tastes so much nicer! So that isn't a hardship for me at all.  But it's not fun being the only one at the dinner table sipping a glass of water simply because alcohol is bad for me. So I roll with the punches, drink my wine, and eat my free-range, organic dinner:) And my body doesn't punish me because it's a healthy body 99% of the time.

So, my recommendation is that you make yourself a list of the things you need to cut out and start one at a time. As I said, it's not a fast process. Start with caffeine. That alone takes about 3 weeks to get out of your system and the symptoms are all the awful ones I listed earlier. It's not pleasant which is why you should rather tackle it alone before you move on to sugar. Give yourself a couple of months to slowly clean up your life. The challenge is keeping it that way. The trick is not to see giving in to a cup of coffee as failure. You simply go back to where you were before as if it didn't happen. You aren't going to suffer withdrawals after 1 cup of coffee or one block of chocolate. You will if you go back to drinking a cup a day again.

Focus on living your life 80% organic and 20% conventional for the first few months. You'll know when you're ready to change over and make it 100%. You'll start to feel the energy in your body and you'll enjoy it. Believe me, you'll want more of it.

Let me know how it goes!