Detoxing vs. Dieting- Separating Fact From Fiction

Spring is here, baby! Longer, warmer days mean more time outside to play and get moving. It feels like a natural push from Mama Nature to get let go of the introspective time of winter, release any and all stagnant energy, and reenergize our lives.

With that kinda energy brewing, spring feels like the best time to detox aka cleanse (In next week’s post, I’ll talk more about the way Mama Nature supports cleansing our systems, especially from sugar, during springtime). Everywhere I look, I see the word detox splashed on magazine covers, blogs, and ads.

Obviously, I’m not against detoxing itself. I lead and do seasonal detoxes myself and know their incredible benefits. They can be an amazing JUMPSTART to creating a new lifestyle and giving your body a much needed time of rejuvenation/healing. (In fact, my Lean, Clean, and Sugar-Free™ Spring Detox is coming April 12th, and I’m having a special free preview call next week that you can sign up for here.)

But I do have some beef with how people misuse the word, conduct them, and basically turn them into another diet (which is truly a four-letter word to me!)

So today, I want to give you 3 tips on how to get savvy on detoxing and know if you are being sold a bunch of irresponsible “diet in disguise” detox hype or if you are getting your hands on the real, truly healing deal.

I also want you to get hip to when you, my dear, are using even the most nutritionally sound detox as yet another diet and how to break yourself from that kinda thinking so you can truly benefit from your next detox.

So when is a detox just another diet with a cuter name?

1) It is extreme in nature and is solely centered around weight-loss.

Dieting by definition is about restriction and is almost always centered around weight-loss, not health. And what usually happens when we lose the weight on a diet? We are so damn happy the thing is over (because usually we are STARVING) that we jump at the first brownie we see. We walk away with little to no knowledge about how our bodies work, what they need, or how to keep them happy and healthy. In short, we haven’t learned jack about how to create a sustainable lifestyle change. We just learned a quick gimmick on how to lose weight.

Bottom line: If the detox you are looking at is simply promising weight-loss and/or has you feeling hunger-pangs throughout, I would highly advise you run the other way. The truth is a great detox will have you enjoying (yes, I said ENJOYING) real food that will promote health, healing, and instilling practices and tools that you can use long after the detox is over so your body can run more efficiently and stay in more of a detox mode. You’ll walk away with knowledge about what foods make your body feel and look amazing and have a game plan for how to keep the benefits going after the detox is over. A beautiful side-effect of this is that you naturally will release weight (if that is indeed what your body needs), no hunger pangs required.

2) If the detox comes in a pill, bottle, or tub, with no high quality nutrition to go with it, something ain’t right!

I see this all the time…a so-called detox plan in the form of a pill, drink, or shake (and it usually, again, promotes instant weight-loss). This is not to say that high quality supplements can’t enhance our health or the detoxing process; they absolutely can. But if someone is telling me to take a pill, drink, or a shake 3x’s a day AND THAT’S IT, then hello, I smell scam and diet in disguise.

Bottom line: High quality supplements can enhance a detox by aiding the release of toxins and aide in healing our bodies, but using them without the aide of high quality nutrition is like throwing a glass of water on a burning building…no progress will come of that. If someone is promising a magic-bullet pill, take your money elsewhere.

3) If the detox gives no mention to other lifestyle factors, such as movement, stress, toxic thought patterns, and quality of life, that’s a red flag in my book.

By definition, a detox is about enhancing the body’s ability to release toxins and giving it a unique opportunity to rest and repair itself, more than we often do in our daily life.

Therefore, looking at food and water solely as the avenues to detoxing is missing a big piece of picture. You can eat the best food, take the best supplements, drink the best water BUT if you aren’t addressing the other factors in your life that are keeping you toxic, true healing and detoxing won’t occur.

Bottom line: Don’t overlook the importance of examining the other ways your life needs to be detoxed. It’s important that your detox program gives you the tools and the space to detox your environment, your body, your heart, and your mind aka your thoughts. This will lighten your toxic load ten fold.

BONUS TIP: YOU must be super honest with yourself as to why you are detoxing. If you are doing it JUST to lose weight, this is not a detox you are embarking on. It’s just another diet and you will have a very small chance of creating a lifestyle switch. Plus, you are more likely to be pulled into these false and unhealthy detox programs which are a dime a dozen these days.

Bottom line: There’s nothing wrong with wanting to release unwanted weight, especially if you truly know that you are holding onto unhealthy extra weight. However, your goal should be obtaining the best possible health and happiness for your body and for your life, not just the dropping some weight. If you make having crazy good health and happiness your top goals, then you are coming from a place of true love for your body and treating her to a special time of healing and rejuvenation during your detox. And when she feels loved and appreciated, I promise you, she will pay you back in large dividends.

And what could be more detoxifying than that?

Did this post speak to you? What about it was your big takeaway?

Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to share this post with your friends…we don’t want them getting scammed either!

Love,

P.S. Make sure you sign-up for the call on March 22nd. It’s going to be crazy good. Get in on the action right here.