This month… I decide to detox

Some of you may be wondering why a nutritionist needs to go on a detox or even what a nutritionist’s version of a detox is! You see I don’t tend to embark on the traditional annual detox to give my insides a once over. The reason being, I decided a long time ago it was far easier to make daily healthy food choices, take certain supplements and adopt certain lifestyle practices to ensure I function at my best most of the time.

My definition of my body functioning at it’s best goes something like this….

• Having the energy to do what I want in life
• Regular bowel movements – they should be 2 – 3 x’s per day
• Being free from abdominal bloating and flatulence – unless I’ve knowingly eaten something that disagrees with me such as gluten or sugar
• Wake up feeling refreshed and ready to exercise – unless I have been short changed on sleep the night before, my auto immune condition ( Hashimoto’s) is playing up or I’ve over done it at work
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• The whites of my eyes are clear and bright
• My periods are regular and PMT free – yes it is possible to eliminate PMT!
• My skin is clear
• Brain firing!

My way of every day eating was the soul motivation for writing my e-book Eat Yourself healthy In 28 Days – to teach people how to eat well every day, so they could feel good most of the time and get more out of life.  I belived if it worked for me to recover from Lupus and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, it could work for others. But a recent two month trip to the United States for work and to visit family left me feeling a little worse for wear. For the best part I ate well, accessing mainly organic food (you can read about my hot tips for healthy eating in NYC here), avoiding gluten most of the time – although traveling meant it found its way into my diet a little more than usual (typically I avoid it 95% of the time). I also caught a monster head cold from my gorgeous nieces that took 2 weeks to shake and drinking a little more than usual – I have to admit I’m not big on the sauce (alcohol) – its screws with my auto immune condition, Hashimoto’s too much and I tend to suffer week long hangovers if I do. I also encountered pretty bad jet lag for the first ten days, creating a nice little sleep debt, (you can read about the effects of a sleep debt here) and I also noticed a shift in my health when I drank the water in one part of the US, which I later discovered was heavily polluted from agricultural run-off.  It is subsequently put through a hefty purification process but I dare say is just as toxic, only they use legal toxins such as gallons of chlorine!

So when I noticed a gradual decline in my day to day well being and a resurgence of long gone Hashimoto’s symptoms, like gaining a few kilo’s for no apparent reason – and no it wasn’t because I adopted the American tradition of ‘supersize’ meal deals – I decided it was time to time to put my body through the paces of my gut repair and detox program as seen in my e-book Eat Yourself healthy In 28 Days.

Oh and did I mention the high fructose corn syrup in the United States! OMG they seem to be having a torrid love affair with the stuff! It’s in everything and I mean everything and I am not one to eat processed food and yet it still managed to find it’s way into my food – take gluten free bread sold in health food stores! You can read about the fattening effects of high fructose corn syrup and other sugars here. Consequently I returned home with a nagging sugar craving that hits me around lunch time and is proving very stubborn to shift! I’ll be posting my tips for kicking the cravings soon.

So over the next two weeks, I’ll be sharing my detox experience with you and in support of anyone else who is contemplating doing my detox program or wanting to learn more about how mine works. I’m willing to bet you will be pleasantly surprised, not just at the results but how user friendly it is and not so scary, compared to a lot of crazy detox programs out there. You still get to eat delicious tastey food, so there’s no fear of having to forage for bird seed and order like a rabbit.

I’ll also share some of my recipes, meal choices, products that are on the detox friendly check list and I’ve also written a brief post about what’ in my detox shopping basket here to get you started. You will find the full shopping list in my e-book here. I’ll also be making daily posts on face book which you can follow here. Best of all you could win a detox pack and consultation with me just buy making the decision to Eat Yourself Healthy! Read how to enter here.

For more health tips and delicious recipes, checkout my e-book, Eat Yourself Healthy. It's not just a healthy diet, but a way of life, so you can feel better than you have ever felt before .