No, we are not advising you now to live only on vegetable juices for the next ten days. Many vegetable drinks don’t taste nearly as good as they look, and the often-recommended longer detox regimen of home-prepared or daily-delivered juices isn’t as easy to integrate into every day life.
Medically, there is no proven evidence that it is actually possible to rid the body of so-called toxins with the help of fasting and juices.
Nevertheless, there are three good reasons to approach the topic of detox:
- Rethinking your diet and being more mindful makes sense.
- Detox is by no means limited to food. In many places in life, too much usually accumulates and it frees to live with more ease.
- Choose the period that just fits into your life:
10 seconds detox
Conscious breathing against stress
In ten seconds you can free yourself from annoying stressors. Find a room where you are alone. Sit relaxed or lie flat on a couch or the floor and consciously breathe in and out for 10 seconds.
While inhaling through your nose, exhale with your mouth open and loudly audible. While doing this, try to inhale for as long as possible and do not hold back any breath during the intense long exhale. Strain and exhale as loudly as you can. You will feel the effect immediately and face your stressors far more calmly.
2 hours detox
Curate your closet
Give yourself two hours. Out flies what you have not worn for a year, two, three years or even longer. Inevitably, you will come across garments that have a high personal sentimental value for you. Be ruthless here as well. Are you trying to use the garment to hold on to something that has long since ceased to exist or that you have long since taken a more sober view of? Is not the memory of the time enough?
In all cases of doubt, trying on clothes in glaring daylight in a large mirror helps for all those things that have never fit, but for which you wanted to start a diet the very next day while still in the changing room.
All the things you want to part with end up in opaque black garbage bags, and you firmly resolve not to open them again in order to save a “favorite” piece after all. There are many institutions such as Oxfam, Fairhouse stores, social stores or some church congregations that will take your clothes and give you the good feeling of having done something good with them.
Detox? Yes! – They detach themselves a bit from the past. The clothes that remain will have more space and air and you will appreciate them more again and combine them in new ways.
1 day detox
New food for new momentum
For one day you can easily change the diet. One day is enough to feel a little lighter and then eat a little more consciously again. Since one does not have to expect strong withdrawal symptoms after one day, for example with strong habituation to caffeine, it is easier to integrate the Detox day into the everyday life again and again.
First thing in the morning:
A lukewarm glass of water with the juice of half a lime or lemon.
Breakfast:
A juice made from apple, orange, carrots and a good portion of fresh ginger.
A pot of nettle tea.
Noon:
Beetroot/radicchio and rocket salad.
Cut the already cooked and vacuum-packed beet into strips and saute in a pan with a little oil until soft, adding a little honey and some pine nuts. Mix a vinaigrette of lemon juice, a little salt, pepper, mustard, honey and oil and mix the radicchio, a few leaves of arugula and the beet with the pine nuts.
The salad contains important bitter substances that are good for the body. The bitterness may be mitigated a bit by the honey, but the detox day is not meant to rob you of your zest for life, but to give you energy. After all, you still have a busy afternoon and perhaps a long evening ahead of you. Be careful not to over-size the portion: Eat very slowly, with deliberation and enjoyment. Feel the different textures and flavorful components of the salad.
Throughout the day, drink 2-3 liters of herbal tea and/or water if possible. Black tea and coffee are taboo on this day.
Evening:
An orange, the columns of which you chew just as slowly and deliberately. If you like, sprinkle a little cinnamon over the orange wedges.
Without much preparation of a logistical nature, you can thus treat your body to a day away from too much sugar, meat, salt, alcohol, caffeine or teein, kick-start your metabolism and feel a little lighter.
1 month
Get out of the rut and head for new shores
Detox month takes place in the mind and opens the body and mind to new things. Over the course of a month, analyze all of your habits and always ask yourself: is it doing me good and do I want to keep it or is it holding me back from being healthier, better and more successful. With many rituals and habits, ask yourself why you do it and try new things in your daily life.
Start with small things. Why do you reach into your colleague’s candy box at the office every afternoon? Do you need that kick of sugar because you’re annoyed or because you’re feeling stressed, increasing your stress?
Reach for a completely different magazine at the newsstand, buy different brands at the supermarket, start a new sport, try new places to eat for lunch and make a date with colleagues you never normally go out to eat with, walk a different route home, and analyze your work rhythm.
Gradually start thinking about more significant things in life as well, and try a month of rethinking your habits, throwing ballast off the boat, and refocusing.
In all things, ask yourself honestly why you are doing them and whether you are doing them wholeheartedly. A Detox Month can set the tone for the content and priorities of the rest of your life, and you’ll probably wish you’d taken Detox Month sooner.
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