Club 24 Nutrition Blog

By Caitlin Leff

Memorial Day weekend finally brought sunshine to San Luis Obispo.  Along with long weekends and sunshine comes barbeques and outdoor happy hours.  In fact, a research paper published in the Obesity Journal in 2008, “Influence of Weekend Lifestyle Patterns on Body Weight” found that participants in a weight loss study consistently gained weight on weekends, both due to higher dietary intake and lower physical activity. After a long weekend of too much food and alcohol, not enough water or sleep, and a lot of sitting around and relaxing in the sunshine you may be thinking to yourself, “My body needs a detox”.

But what exactly is a detox?  This is a buzz word that is routinely thrown around the nutrition and health world, also known as a “cleanse”.   A detox or a cleanse is advertised as a way to purge toxins from your body. While in the most extreme sense of the word, detoxification is for removal of the toxins associated with heavy drug and alcohol use, for those in the health world “cleanse” can translate to a way to rid the body of impurities and reduce cravings.  Sometimes cleanses are even advertised as a way to lose weight.

There are many popular cleanses  that you may have heard of, one of the oldest being the “Master Cleanse” consisting of fasting on mixtures of cayenne pepper, lemon, maple syrup, and water; or juicing cleanses where nothing is ingested except for fresh vegetable and fruit juices.  There are even really expensive kits you can pick up at any health food store that claim to use natural supplements and herbs to detox your body.

What is important to remember before you shell out a lot of money for a fancy detox program, or even begin the path to a 14 day cleanse where you will live off nothing but spicy lemonade is that your body naturally knows how to detoxify itself.  Your liver is an amazing organ that has the capabilities of naturally removing any toxic build up in your body. Unless your liver is in a diseased condition, the detoxification process in is constantly occurring.   While some people swear by occasional cleanses, saying that they reduce their cravings, and help them to feel better, there is no published evidence that these cleanses are anything more than another diet fad.  Does that mean that cleanses don’t work?  Maybe not, but there is a better way.

If you are feeling like you may have gone a little over the top over a long weekend with too much food or alcohol, or just not eating well in general there is a way to detox and cleanse your body without extreme measures.  You can do this by eating nothing but whole foods.  Nothing packaged, nothing overly- processed (ie: dairy is processed but ok unless you have a reaction to it, and even brown rice is actually processed to an extent), nothing that can be popped in a microwave and cooked in two minutes. Eat real food, avoid white flour foods, avoid added sugar, and drink a lot of water.

Some ideas include:

• Breakfast: oatmeal with fruit; eggs and whole wheat toast; fruit and yogurt smoothies; fruit, cottage cheese, and natural granola parfaits.
• Lunch: Big salads with light olive oil based dressings.  Fill up your salad with tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots, black beans.  Add strawberries, peaches, basil for fun ingredients.  You can add tofu or grilled chicken to add protein, or even add some raw almonds or walnuts too.
• Dinner: Grilled or baked chicken or fish;  steamed or lightly sautéed vegetables (you can substitute chicken or vegetable broth for some of the oil when sautéing vegetables); healthy stir fries with tofu or shrimp, broccoli, bell peppers, bok choy; powerful greens such as kale, swiss chard, or spinach; protein packed grains such as quinoa.

Relying on fresh, minimally processed, whole foods is the best way to detox.  You will feel better and healthier and still have the energy to exercise.  One of the best ways to ensure you will follow through is to plan ahead.  If you spend a little time at the beginning of the week, it will save you time down the road.  Make a meal plan and a grocery list and purchase only those things on your list.  Pack your lunch and snacks the night before and put them in the fridge to grab on your way out the door.  Make extra food at night so you can eat leftovers for lunch the next da

Here are a few links to some of my favorite web resources for healthy recipes:

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus

http://www.whfoods.com/recipestoc.php

Stay with it and your detox will become a lifelong habit.

Any questions or comments please feel free to email me at Caitlin@clubtwentyfour.com