Seasonal Whole Food Cleanse

Seasonal Whole Food Cleanse

The benefits of a seasonal whole food cleanse are boundless!  With so many cleanses out there how can you be sure you’re doing the right one at the right time for your body?  Following the seasons is a good way to start.

Cleansing at the beginning of each season is a gentle way to prepare your body for the season ahead and to rid your body of the affects and effects of the prior season.  Winter brings heavy foods like nuts, seeds, meats, root vegetables, and stews.  These foods keep us warm and grounded.  The Spring offers baby greens and lettuces, peas, sprouts, berries, and cherries.  These foods are high in nutrients, light and hydrating to help cleanse the heaviness from winter and prepares our body for the cooler weather and being active.  Summer has lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, grapes, and berries.  These foods are cooling, have high water content so they are hydrating, high in nutrients, low in calories and are naturally fat free!  You can eat as much as you want without the fear of gaining weight.  In fact, by eating these spring and summer foods you are feeding your body exactly what it needs, nutritionally and physically, to counter the extremes of the season!  

Every now and then our smart phones and computers require a reboot, we should do the same for our bodies.  Our bodies are constantly working 24/7/365 and deserves a reboot every now and then.

Detoxification is a major benefit of cleansing.  When we rid our bodies of saturated fats, processed foods, artificial colorings, sweeteners and toxins we are giving our bodies a chance to calm down and essentially reboot.  Once these are removed from your diet and you add in filtered water and whole unprocessed foods, you will find your body will respond within 2 days.  Inflammation will be reduced, headaches gone, hunger diminished, elimination will start to improve, blood sugar lowered, blood pressure down...  the list is endless of how this will benefit your life.

Mindfulness is another amazing benefit of a cleanse.  On a cleanse you create a connection with what you’re eating and how it effects your body and your mind.  Some typical reasons of mindless eating are stress, boredom, anger, and loneliness.  Have you ever sat down with a bag of chips and the next thing you know the bag is empty and wonder how that happened?  Or finished dinner and find you’re still hungry even though it was a good size plate of food?  Or you find yourself at the snack machine again and can’t figure out how to curb these cravings?  A cleanse will bring clarity to each of these situations and more!

Ask anyone who knows me, I love to eat!  Don’t worry, you’ll find that while cleansing you’ll have more energy, you’ll have better sleep and you’ll be happy!  Why?  Because you’re allowing your body to do the things it’s designed to do, naturally and without deprivation!  We’ve all had new experiences come into our lives that require time and effort and we adjust accordingly.  New baby, new job, new house, new relationship.  These required more of your attention and a cleanse is no different.  If you want the benefits of a cleanse you will find the time.

Begin with a commitment to yourself, to eat only whole fresh fruits and vegetables for 10 days.
Start a food journal and a personal daily journal.  For one week prior to your start date, write down everything you eat and at least a paragraph in your personal journal.  This is an important step in the cleanse, so make the time for this.  It tells your story and will be very useful in the days to come.  Continue the food journal while on your cleanse.  When you revisit these journal entries you will be amazed at the differences between before and after.

If you have a juicer or a blender (or both), bring them onto the kitchen counter, give them a place of honor.  These two pieces of equipment will become your best friends.

Because you’re ‘cleansing’ it’s very important to eat organic.  There's no point in cleansing if you’re putting toxins in while trying to get them out.  MOM’s Organic Market has the best organic selection and they do not sell non-organic vegetables.  They clean and trim all their veggies so literally they are ‘ready to eat’.  Whole Foods has nice produce too, but they offer conventional, non-organic veggies and they sit side by side and they don’t clean the veggies.  Why is buying cleaned veggies important to me?  Because time is important and MOM’s cuts out 30 minutes of washing and prep time!  They have great prices and their store is amazing.  If you’ve never been to MOM’s, I recommend a field trip!  The people there are amazing and very helpful.  You can read all about MOM’s on their website, it’s pretty awesome :) 
Tip: Organic plu numbers always start with a 9.  So the little sticker on the banana for instance will be 94011 instead of 4011.  The 9 stands for organic.

Your next step is to eat lots of vegetables, drink lots of filtered water, fresh veggie juices and smoothies everyday.  When you eat veggies in their raw state, roasted or sauteed you can eat as much as you want.  You don’t have to count calories or fat calories, just eat and drink the veggies.  Because toxins are fat soluble they are stored in your fat.  When you start to release the fat the toxins are released into your system and need to be eliminated.  Drinking lots of fresh filtered water and eating a high fiber foods eliminates these toxins from your body.
For your protein, you can add a scoop of protein powder to your smoothie in the morning and eat a variety of beans, nuts and seeds.  Here is a formula to find out how much protein you need daily.  (If you are an O blood type you’ll most likely need to add some animal protein into your cleanse, just make it lean and clean and 3 oz, twice a day.)

My first cleanse was a 100% raw food cleanse the summer after my chemotherapy.  I had no idea what I was doing.  It started with a conversation with a great friend and he was telling me about how raw foods are so beneficial for you and how they help heal the body.  As a cancer survivor, (thank God), I was all about healing my body.  During my cancer journey I went through hell and back.  I wanted so much to live and to live a quality life.  I wanted to see how this simple diet could help me in my quest.  (If you’ve ever been on the verge of not living, you can understand the desperation of one who has.)  So, blindly, I started on my raw food journey.  I went to MOM’s and bought organic veggies and spoke with the knowledgeable staff in their wellness aisle about how I can support and heal my body.  I started eating raw foods, walking a mile a day, and sweating out the toxins from 20+ years of living like a rock star.  I was taking an active part in my healing, I was making a difference in my life, mentally and physically.  After a week I started to notice many changes in my body and mind.  I was happy when usually I was depressed and anxious.  The quality of my sleep improved and I had more energy.  My acne cleared up, my breath was fresh, I no longer had the aches and pains in my joints and I didn’t have cravings for sugar and processed carbs!!  But the most amazing change that happened was my chemo-brain fog had lifted.  That was the most joyful unexpected benefit of my cleanse.  After chemotherapy I suffered from chemo-fog or chemo-brain and started to stutter because the words were not coming to me.  This was a shocking side-effect of chemotherapy that I was not prepared for.  But after two weeks on the raw food cleanse (and sweating), I was no longer searching for words and the stuttering stopped.  Amazing!  This is when I really started to pay attention to my body.

The best part of doing a cleanse is the awareness you have of how food affects your life.  With this new knowledge and commitment, you can now incorporate whole foods into your daily life and into the lives of your family.  The ripple effect of this one step, this one commitment to yourself is quite amazing.  This is not about deprivation, it’s about feeding your body what it needs without all the other stuff it doesn’t need.

If you would like to know more about how you can increase your energy, get better sleep, be happier and have more fun in your life, contact me for a free 1 hour consultation. 

At Nu-Me Wellness Coaching, my programs are designed specifically for you, I meet you where you are in your life, whether you are a busy stay-at-home parent wanting to feed the family healthier options or a busy CEO needing the energy and mental awareness you need to succeed.  Our health is wealth and every body deserves to be healthy, wealthy and happy!

Nu-Me Wellness Offerings:
• Wellness Coaching - 6-week intensive, 3 months and 6 months.  We meet weekly in person or via Skype.  
• Group coaching - Group coaching is held in my office at Vital on Tuesdays and Sunday evenings from 7:00 - 8:30pm.  6 sessions, seating is limited to 6.  New sessions start Tuesday April 22 and Saturday April 20.
• Grocery store tours, pantry makeover, kitchen organization, basic cooking lessons with recipes for your life, meal planning with recipes.
• Private Yoga instruction in your home.
• Learning about Essential Oils, their benefits and how to incorporate them into your life.

Renee’ Peregory, CHHC, RYT
Owner and Founder of Nu-Me Wellness Coaching
571-212-5761
www.Nu-MeWellness.com
NuMeWellness@gmail.com