Today on #HealthyThursday I talk to you about cleaning up your eating habits so that you can live a healthy lifestyle. It all starts with taking care of your gut. It all starts with the choices you make.
Yesterday’s article was all about how processed foods are deliciously toxic and make an addict out of you through heavy consumption. Today I help brake the chains and free your gut from all the bad stuff it had to digest so far. Let’s get to it!
DETOX YOUR FRIDGE
Go and open the door to your refrigerator. What do you see? What foods do you have in it that are closer to their natural state? Not so many, do you? How many cartboard and packaged foods you have? A lot? Get them all out now. Sort out anything that has ingredients you can’t even pronounce, let alone understand what they are. Get rid of anything that your grandma wouldn’t think of it as food. Not so much left there, is it?
Now go buy real food. The kind that spoils fast and that has organic written all over it. Nature has so many alternatives for us to choose from and we stroll a supermarket, buying frozen meals and artificial sweeteners. Buy a rainbow of foods, ranging from yellow to dark violet. Buy all natural produce. Visit your local farmer’s market or farm. If they are far away, make a grocery list and go there when you can.
The trick to keeping up with healthy eating is to meal prep in advance and always have healthy snacks around the house, in case you get terribly hungry and didn’t had time to cook. It will take a while to get adjusted, but I promise you, the advantages are worth it. It isn’t an overnight change, but keep doing it and you’ll soon see and feel the results in your body and health. Every day, make the choice to be healthy.
DETOX YOUR BODY
Food Matters TV is the best place you can go to find out how today’s food industry is in fact killing us rather than feeding us. Their documentaries inspired me into writing this week’s posts and being even more careful with the diet and lifestyle choices I make.
One of your biggest enemies is monosodium glutamate or MSG. It is far harming than nicotine and excess caffeine combined. Mostly found as an additive to chinese food, it’s a staple ingredient for most processed products. You can find it in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and even in baby food. It enhances the flavour, making the frozen meat look, smell and taste fresher. But don’t be tricked, MSG is an excitotoxin. It overexcites your neurons, causing brain damage to varying degrees, and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease and other conditions.
Another substance that can harm your brain is aspartame. This artificial sweetener is used in all kinds of sodas and in most sugar-free or diet products. It’s a substance that promotes inflammation in the body and that kills your neurons by overexciting them.
Fat-free products are full of sugar and artificial sweeteners. They rise your insulin levels, making you fat and sick. The body gets a sugar rush, forcing the liver secrete more insulin, just to keep you alive from all the glucose in your body.
The favourite place where toxins gather is fatty tissue, especially the visceral fat, lining your abdomen and thus your internal organs. It’s dangerous just to lose fat without cleaning your diet and doing a detox. All those toxins will be let loose in your body, causing even more problems.
Eat gel like foods (chia seeds, aloe, algae) to absorb toxins and clean your body. Parsley and cilantro both bind to heavy metals and thus clean the bloodstream. Foods like celery, cucumbers, kale, collards and all dark green vegetables, apples, pineapples, limes do the trick and make you healthy.
It all starts in the gut. In order to fight inflammation, you have to heal your body from the inside out. What you choose to eat has amazing impact on how you look and feel.
The inner lining of your intestines gets dammaged from all the processed products you eat. Give it a well-deserved rest and choose fermented foods like sauerkraut in order to favor the spread of good bateria, that heals you from the inside out.
By choosing a whole, fresh foods diet, you'll avoid this toxins and regain your health.
DETOX YOUR LIFE
In time, your body cleans itself of the harming, addictive substances. There are people that have a hard time letting go and although they try, there seems to be no result. If you give it all your best and you still can’t let go of processed foods or sugars, find specialized help like a nutritionist, a trainer / instructor or even a psychologist to help you deal with your issues and hold you accountable of your food choices.
Start moving more. We live in a world that has an abundance of online, offline and DVD options for training your body into heath and shape. You can even go outside if that suits you. The trick is to train everyday, every single day. Train in the morning so you can avoid being too tired and giving up in the evening. Get up a half an hour early and do some crunches, some squats and stretches and then go in the shower to start your day. You have the power to choose whatever fits you and your lifestyle best.
Sleep plays a major role in decreasing your body’s inflammatory response. A minimum of eight hours a night will help you wake up being rested and energized, ready to face the new day ahead. Don’t tell me you haven’t got time for sleep!
If you have a Facebook account and access to the internet, you have time. If you watch movies on Netflix, you have time. It’s all about making it a priority and even treating it as medicine. A well-rested body helps you get a whole lot more done than you think.
In business and in life, it’s not about the quantity, but the quality of the work done. By the way, make sure those 8 hours are quality sleep. Quiet environement, warm room and no distractions. More about that in a future article.
Choose the healthy things to do, transform them into habits and see your life change and fortunately brake addiction. Find motivation in family, career, etc.
End addiction and unhealthy habits.
This was all for this week’s #HealthyThursday! Thanks for being here!
What are your favorite detox methods? Tell me all about them in a comment in the box below. I would love to hear your story and help you in any way. Let me know you want to read more of what I write.
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With love,
Alexandra