Sustainable Lessons from a 30 Day Detox

The holidays are always a little (sometimes a lot!) indulgent – more parties, more friends, more drinking and eating out. The New Year makes January a perfect time to reevaluate and start some changes – diet, finances, exercise, family… I believe these are always top in people’s resolutions. While I aspire to be one of those people who do not make resolutions (instead they wake up everyday living out their life’s declaration), for now, I love an opportunity to review and revise where I am heading.

After a December full of drinking, eating and not as much exercise as I hoped, I decided to spend the month of January cleansing my body through changing my diet and some regular exercise. I committed to no alcohol, coffee or black tea, dairy, sugar or flour (no meat too, but I’m already a vegetarian!) and started on January 2nd . That makes today, day 29!

The first 5 days were the most difficult; I had a headache 24 hours a day. Why? My guess is no coffee or alcohol. I was surprised about the headache – but it didn’t discourage me, if anything, I was even more strongly committed to not putting any kind of toxin in my body. The “detox” seemed to work immediately – something was definitely happening.

As the days went on I didn’t see any major transformation, but instead I noticed how easy it was. I planned a big shopping trip once a week, and didn’t need to go to the store any other day. I bought tea to drink in the morning and throughout the day (I was drinking green tea – a little caffeine and hopefully many anti-oxidants). I cooked extra for dinner to have leftovers for lunch at work, and bought fun healthy snacks to eat.

So what did this teach me?

With the most recent food security scare – mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup (what a scary combo!), I was feeling pretty safe cooking all of my meals at home. I was buying as much local food as I could, and at the very least organic. I have to admit that I wasn’t perfect. I expect the Park Slope Food Coop, where I did my shopping, to be cautious about local, but they aren’t. So I expanded my terms of “local” to include the East coast… Florida has so many more options than New York this time of the year. I did steer clear of Mexico and Israel – though they were tempting! And I’m sure a non-organic item or two slipped through, but I tried to be most diligent about organic products. One reason for this detox was my newly renewed fear of pesticides, as reports came out recently linking pesticides and Alzheimer’s. Lesson #1, buying products from reliable and known sources and cooking at home keeps me pretty darn safe from the continuing food security issues here in the US. Hopefully these sustainable products will also help me stave off Alzheimer’s and any other disease caused by or contributed to from pesticides, herbicides, artificial hormones, irradiation and genetically modified food.

I saved so much money this month! I was surprised how much. No eating out, no coffee in the morning or buying lunch while at work, no snacks when I’m bored (unless I bought them during my shopping trips), no bars or bottles of wine with dinner, planning every meal – amazing. With the economy in this funk, eating at home is the way to go. Lesson #2 – I save tons of money buying and eating sustainable food at home.

Because this was a “detox” I looked at what need to help keep my body healthy and to rejuvenate it. There are so many supplements on the market, and so many ideas from doctors and scientist about what you can take to keep your energy up and prevent disease. Iron, omegas, vitamin D, vitamin K, DHA, and many more. I am a firm believer in getting what you need from the food that you are eating. I had time to think about my meals and felt comfortable balancing my intake so that I was getting important nutrients. Dark leafy greens (iron and calcium), nuts (protein, potassium, folate, needed fat), flax seeds (omegas), tumeric (anti inflammatory), green tea (anti oxidants), quinoa (protein) are just a few of the good vitamins and minerals that are available through WHOLE foods. Buying and eating sustainable food kept me from having to decipher the confusing and constant babble about diet in the news. Cooking at home gave me control over everything going into my body. Lesson #3, my diet can make my body healthy and I have control over what goes into it.

I know lots of people have this down already – shop, cook, eat at home, save money.  For others, this will take some practice. For me, this month has been a reminder of something so simple that I forget about sometimes.

Exercising on a regular basis was the hardest part for me.  I always struggle with consistency, I did pretty good this time, maybe it will get easier each time I try to reinforce the habit. I sure hope so!

So tomorrow I celebrate the end of my 30 day detox. How will I do this? I plan on having dinner at home, with a glass of wine… and if I can find a really good coffee shop on Sunday, maybe a cup of coffee.