Maintaining the Lifestyle After Your Detox

If you've recently completed a detox, you're probably aware of your nice shiny new body and want to make sure you keep it that way.  How can you do that - especially with the holidays upon us?

While you were detoxing you were probably bombarded with all sorts of “temptations” and saying to yourself “I can’t wait until I can have….” Now that you’ve done all this work do you still want to have whatever it was you thought you were missing?  I always recommend you ask yourself these questions before you “indulge”.  Do I really want this or am I just eating it because I can?  What will this do in my body once I eat it?  Why do I want this?  Will eating this help me to reach my goal? 

Maintaining a lifestyle that you just created can be very difficult in a society in which all social activity revolves around food.  We use food to celebrate, meet people, and to socialize.  The most common thing to do over the holidays is to visit with friends and family over a meal or appetizers.  A lot of business activities involve lunches, breakfast, dinners, and cocktail receptions.  Not to mention the lunches, potlucks, etc… because of  marriages, births, divorces, retirements, and promotions.  I haven’t even gotten into the church socials, the school functions, and girls or boys night out. 

So how do you walk through this maze and stay on track with what you want for yourself? 

Well there are always choices to be made and you always have free will, unless of course you are at a plated function.  Hopefully, while you were detoxing you were able to develop tools to help you through this period.  If not, this is something that I go really into with my individualized nutritional coaching program.  For now, let me give you some examples of how you can handle certain situations.

If you are the hostess or if you are going to a potluck then make at least one healthy dish that you will enjoy.  You may find that often people will gravitate towards your dish before they will try something else.  Many people want to eat healthy they just often don’t know where to start.

When dining out you can always find something on the menu that can work for you. Also never be embarrassed or feel like you are creating a problem by asking the server to either leave an item off and provide you with more of another item and to ask if it can be prepared differently. For example you see a fish you would like to try that is in a batter, fried and it comes with French fries and cole slaw.  You might ask if you can have the fish grilled or broiled with out the batter and instead of French fries you would like to have some steamed broccoli or another vegetable on the menu and a side salad instead of cole slaw.  You just saved yourself around 300 calories and it’s a lot healthier for you.  Also chefs love to be creative and they are more than willing to accommodate people when it comes to dining preferences. 

If you absolutely have to have something that is fast food then go for the salad that is being served.  Anything else is just not a healthy option, it is going to provide you a lot of calories with no real nutritional value.  Again this is something that I go into great detail in my nutritional program. 

One final tip is if you are unsure of a situation that you may be going into - then you might want to eat something before you go.  By going ahead and having something that you know is healthy for you accomplishes a couple of things.  First of all you will not be hungry and therefore will not be tempted to eat anything.  Secondly, because you won’t be focusing on trying to eat something then you can spend more time developing more personal connections with the people that you are interacting with.

For those of you have completed a detoxification or cleanse program during this period I offer you much congratulations on your accomplishments.  Keep up the great work and if you want to stay connected and on track please know that I am here to support you!

I hope that you have enjoyed this series on detoxification and cleansing.  Stay tuned for my next series that will be on Fitness.

Coming Off Your Detox

You’ve finished your detox, now what?  The type and length of program you completed will determine the best way to come off a detox without any major upsets to your system.   

Basically if you have been doing a detox or cleanse that involves all liquids you want to slowly introduce solid food back into the body. You want to start out with your softer and juicier foods such as watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes without seeds, smoothies, or something similar for a couple of days, then move into foods that are little more bulkier like cucumber, sprouts, baby lettuces, for a couple days and then adding in other foods slowly.

If you’ve not been doing liquids but have eliminated food groups slowly add in a food group every couple of days.  Look for any signs of discomfort such as headache, upset stomach, dizziness, swelling, muscle soreness, and fatigue that might occur.  This could be an indication of sensitivity to a certain food.  If this occurs, go back to eating more simply and then try again. 

If you want to maintain the great work that you’ve done you want to try to not go back to the way you had been eating before and begin to make some lifestyle changes.  This is something that we work with and discuss in my SAD2FAB program.  It can be hard to do this but I will give you some basic tips.