Detox Mistakes
At a glance:
Eating the wrong foods in the wrong season can create metabolic mayhem.
Keep the green juices for spring and summer.
Winter is the time to nourish your body.
So, the new year has set in, but maybe those health resolutions or goals haven’t quite stuck.
Why do we think that we can all of a sudden make a drastic switch during the darkest and coldest time of the year?
I know, I know, we want to get back on track and drop the holiday “presents” that weren’t on our list, and we’ve all been sold that if we do “this” detox any time of year, it’s going get us back in our skinny jeans.
First of all…
Jumping into an extreme diet can set you up for DISASTER for the rest of the year.
The problem with not thinking seasonally and doing something like an all-juice cleanse in the winter is that your body knows it’s winter!
On a cellular level, your body’s primary purpose is to keep you healthy and strong enough to make it to the next day. In winter, the body’s goal is to keep you safe and warm and to make it to spring.
When you deprive your body of calories, fat, and protein when it’s in winter survival mode, what is your body going to do? Um, assume that you’re starving, and do everything it can to hang on to every last calorie to keep you from dying.
You’ve probably heard this before.
So, when you’re on a juice cleanse in winter, your body slows down your metabolism and does everything it can to keep you alive. BUT, here’s the scary part, when you start eating REAL food again, it takes a while for the body to realize that you’re no longer starving, and that means it keeps hoarding those calories and keeps metabolic burn low until your body feels safe enough to come out of starvation mode.
So not only do you cause a problem for your system WHILE detoxing if you’re doing the WRONG kind of detox for the season you’re in, but you also will create a metabolic problem for weeks AFTER. Yikes!
Seasonal detoxes are better
What to do instead: green juices and smoothies ARE a really powerful tool when it comes to detoxing, but they are best used in spring and summer detoxes. So when you’re looking to hit the reset button, be sure to look for a program that understands the role of seasons.
I’d rather have you dedicate five high-quality days to yourself and hitting the reset button a few times a year and really sticking with it rather than having you do one 21-day juice cleanse where you’re miserable, your metabolism slows, and you end up eating a grilled cheese sandwich halfway through because you’re so hungry.
This is why I created the 5-Day Reset seasonal programs. These gentle detoxes are perfect for beginners who have never detoxed before, and for people who have noticed they have a hard time sticking to more extreme detoxes and cleanses.
There’s a Reset for each season!
