Our bodies are perfectly-crafted machines, completely capable of getting rid of the junk they are inundated with on a daily basis. That is, until they’re not. High cholesterol for example, is when your body has taken on so much LDL (bad cholesterol) that it builds up in the arteries and impedes proper blood flow. People with Type 2 Diabetes can’t use insulin properly, resulting in high blood sugar levels that can lead to a host of other life-threatening health issues including high blood pressure, kidney disease, and stroke.
What do both of these examples have in common? They’re both caused by what we eat and what we don’t. They aren’t the only ones, either.
What if we could help to prevent or reverse these and other chronic diseases, lose weight, and gain health at the same time instead of starving ourselves on fad diets that rob our bodies of what they need to survive? We can, but first we need to forget what we have been taught about food.
Let’s start with the word “detox”. It’s problematic to call a dietary change a detox, because unless you’re coming off alcohol or other substances, you’re not really detoxing. Sure, sometimes your body needs a little help to get right, but there’s another way to think about it. A diet heavy in processed foods makes the body work a lot harder to digest those foods. When your body isn’t using its energy to digest food, it can put that energy to use elsewhere.
A vacation is a break from the norm. When we go on vacation, we usually eat (and sometimes drink) all of the things we know we shouldn’t, knowing that afterward we will have to go on a diet to make up for it. What if we were to give our bodies a vacation from all of that junk?
For these 7 days, we are giving our body a vacation means we’re going to nourish it with plenty of water, fresh fruits and vegetables and juices and all the nutrients it needs to thrive. We’re not doing a “detox” or a “cleanse”, we’re just giving our bodies the tools they need to do what they do best, and then getting out of the way.