Are You Doing The Wrong Kind of Detox?

Remember back in grade school when one of the biggest rules was to do your own work? As we grow up, we lose that lesson somewhere along the way. We have a tendency to look at what our friends or some celebrity is doing, or what the hottest trend is, and think it will work for us as well. And when it doesn’t, we feel defeated and maybe like there must be something wrong with us that we couldn’t make it work. Detox programs are perhaps one of the biggest examples of this.

Focusing on what other people are doing to detox or forcing yourself to do a detox that simply isn’t right for you can be downright dangerous. If you’re new to detoxing, doing a lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper detox or an all juice detox is one of the worst things you can do because your system can be thrown into shock from the extreme change. The reality is that your body does not care whether you fit into your skinny jeans. Your body is focused on one simple thing, and that is keeping you alive! When you jump into an extreme detox without preparation or previous experience, your body experiences what it happening to it as a crisis. And when your body goes into crisis mode, the LAST thing it wants to do is to create extra work for itself. Instead, it focuses on preserving energy and SLOWING DOWN your metabolism by burning fewer calories and less fat to protect you and keep you alive. Yikes! That’s the exact opposite of what you want to have happen when you’re detoxing.

What to do instead: Trust your instincts and your body. Although detoxing isn’t always comfortable, most of us can tell the difference between experiencing a little discomfort and something that’s really wrong. If you’ve tried detoxes before where you felt super sick the whole time or you just knew in your gut that something wasn’t right, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s okay to say no thanks to a detox that doesn’t sit right with you. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with YOU, it simply means that isn’t the right detox for YOUR body. Our bodies are different, and the reality is that there just isn’t a one size fits all detox. Instead, if you haven’t detoxed before or if you’re struggling to find the detox that’s right for you, I encourage you to try a detox that’s built around adding lots of detoxifying foods to your diet rather than restricting and depriving you of food. These kinds of detoxes are just as effective as those really extreme ones, and can actually be better for you because you’ll stick to the whole program instead of giving up halfway through. Even better, your body WON’T go into crisis mode. Click here to find out more about a program that might just work for you.