Purely Nourished

Cleans­ing seems to be the new buzz word. It seems every­one and their sister’s mother’s sis­ter is doing it. Does that mean you should?

Let’s begin by break­ing down the term cleanse. Cleans­ing, sim­ply put, means to purge or clean. From  that angle the term doesn’t look so daunt­ing. To clean, as if to clean your room or wash your sheets. Con­sider the term spring clean­ing; “Out with the old, in with the new.”

Cleans­ing is the basic act of remov­ing impu­ri­ties. To be per­fectly hon­est, a lit­tle cleans­ing never hurt any­one and it’s easy for every indi­vid­ual to design theirs. A cleanse can be as sim­ple as remov­ing salt from your diet, or remov­ing a bad habit. Dur­ing a cleanse, you can purify your body as well as your mind and behaviors.

Is there a bad habit you would like to break or have you noticed cer­tain foods or drinks make you feel less than your best? Maybe mak­ing an indi­vid­u­al­ized cleans­ing plan is right for you. Decide what you would like to improve and get started. Let’s take cleans­ing sugar as an exam­ple: You’ve real­ized that sugar gives you an ini­tial rush but shortly after you find your­self antsy and lethar­gic. You notice you’re gain­ing weight and your com­plex­ion is less flaw­less than you remem­ber. Could the cul­prit be sugar?  Make a con­scious deci­sion to remove sugar from all aspects of your diet and you will notice changes.

Clean­ing can take on many forms, you can go “Cold turkey” or slowly trade a poor alter­na­tive for its healthy coun­ter­part. A com­bi­na­tion of the two is what usu­ally works best.  Self-control is going to be your best friend and remem­ber if you fall off your plan it’s not the end of the world. Get right back on. The first two days are always the hard­est but as the days go on, sugar becomes less detectable in your body and you will crave it less. Just as sugar becomes a dis­tant mem­ory, so will any other “impu­ri­ties” that you are try­ing to reduce.

Start here and if you like the results slowly work your way up to more intense cleanses. As long as you edu­cate your­self, lis­ten to your body/mind, and take pre­cau­tions, cleans­ing can be a way to bring about great transformations.

Let’s face it, eat­ing healthy can be con­fus­ing with all the con­flict­ing advice out there. Here are the 7 keys to eat­ing healthy 100% per­cent of the time.

• Read the ingre­di­ent list.
• Know what a serv­ing size is and stick to it. Por­tions are the num­ber one cause of weight gain. With huge por­tions becom­ing the norm, no won­der we are hav­ing dif­fi­culty stick­ing to a sin­gle serving.
• Lis­ten to your body. What does your body truly want/crave?  A sweet crav­ing that you think is for candy or cook­ies could actu­ally be a crav­ing for a sweet veg­etable. Try to stop, breathe, and ana­lyze to deter­mine if you might be just as sat­is­fied eat­ing a piece of fruit.
• Equip your fridge with healthy options. Pick up these 20 ingre­di­ents the next time you go to the super­mar­ket. They could be the key to keep­ing you from eat­ing unsat­is­fy­ing empty calories.
• Bal­ance your meal. Include a car­bo­hy­drate, pro­tein, and fat in every meal you make.
• Be flex­i­ble. Try to eat health­fully 90% of the time and what­ever you feel like eat­ing 10% of the time. We are all human and leav­ing a lit­tle room for flex­i­bil­ity is what will help you main­tain a healthy diet.
• Drink H2O along with any meal and you’ll real­ize you feel fuller faster. Many times when you feel hun­gry after you’ve eaten, it’s because you are actu­ally thirsty.

There you have it, short and sweet!