What's all this about a cleanse?

A dietary cleanse can sound strange when you first hear of the concept. We don’t think of cleaning our insides like we would grout in the bathroom, but perhaps we should. Giving our body a break from many of the common foods found to be related to increased insulin, swings in energy and mood, and things most commonly known to be irritants or allergens. This means taking out: sugar, alcohol, caffeine, gluten, dairy, soy, peanut, eggs. As you can see, this list excludes all the foods we see in the Standard American Diet and the basis of most meals at all the major chain restaurants. Doing a diet cleanse gets challenging because of how much food impacts our life. It takes a lot of planning and troubleshooting how to manage around things that come up over the 14-30 days that you do this.

Despite the fact that this takes some effort, it is a way to get clear about how these ingredients influence your wellbeing. It is easy to predict that doing so will make for clearer skin, calm mind, ease any digestion discomfort, feeling more energy, and generally weight loss (although, that isn’t the goal). I will do this a couple of times of year to re-set myself and get back into the groove of healthy routines. The first time I did a cleanse, I got more clarity about my life and quit my job, and more recently, I’ve noticed gluten and eggs bother me more than they used to. As you consider adding any of the foods that you removed during the cleanse, you become more aware of what ingredients impact how you feel. You discover more about yourself. It is part of the journey of knowing who you are and what makes you feel your best.