What is a cleanse and why should you try one?

A cleanse? No thank you. I’ll starve. Do I only drink juice? I can’t just drink juice. I’m cranky enough as it is when I’m hungry – my family won’t survive me doing a cleanse, seriously. I have too many meetings this week to sit on the toilet all day. Any of these thoughts sound familiar? These are all examples of what ran through my head whenever I had heard someone talk about doing a cleanse. Enter 2020 and COVID-19 and me bingeing on chips and wine and feeling blah in my body. After a few months, I learned about different types of cleanses and their benefits and I slowly started to buy-in. Key here being slowly. I decided to try one that the Health Coach Institute (where I studied) designed, and it wasn’t nearly as awful as I thought it would be and I I had some pretty great results. So, in today’s post I’m going to share more about this 14-day reset cleanse and my experience with it.

What is the 14-day reset cleanse?

It’s a special diet designed to renew your wellbeing by releasing toxins, removing excess bloat from your tissues and resetting your digestive system. It’s also an incredible way to learn which foods affect your body either positively or negatively.

The cleanse is broken down into 3 phases:

Phase 1 – 2 days for prepping (planning, shopping)
Phase 2 – 7 days of the cleanse diet
Phase 3 – 5 days of reintroducing foods

What are the benefits of doing a cleanse?

My clients who have completed the cleanse have:

Lost weight
Felt more energized
Understood which foods are best for their body
Kickstarted new healthy habits
Felt lighter and clearer
Slept better
Felt less gassy and bloated after eating

What is the cleanse diet?

It’s a diet designed to eliminate foods that are either higher in toxins (chemicals) and foods that are associated with allergies that cause inflammation in our bodies. Our bodies are full of toxic chemicals from the air we breathe, the foods we eat and the water we drink. While the body is self-cleaning, we can get overloaded with toxins requiring some extra help to excrete them. By eliminating food categories that commonly cause allergies (i.e., gluten) and then reintroducing them one by one, we can see which foods have a stronger impact on our digestive system and can change our diets accordingly. For those of you who are parents, think back to when you first started feeding your baby solids – you tried one new food at a time to see if there were allergies. This is a similar process.

The 14-day reset diet consists of eating simple, clean foods such as whole vegetables and fruits, brown rice, quinoa, beans, nuts, fish and poultry. In other words, not eating gluten, dairy, red meat, eggs, alcohol, sugar and caffeine.

Now you’re probably thinking that’s a heck of a lot of foods to avoid eating but I can say from my husband’s, mine and my client’s experiences, it’s really not that bad and the benefits are more than worth it.

What was my personal experience (and my husband’s although don’t tell him I shared haha)?

My husband’s biggest benefit – weight loss
My biggest benefit – not having the mid-afternoon slump and having more focus
Caffeine withdrawal hit me hard and actually caused me to be in bed for part of a day – a good sign I was drinking too much coffee. For my next cleanse, I will ween myself off slowly ahead of time.
We have since reduced our coffee intake and my husband has even started drinking green tea, which is a big change for him. I also primarily use natural sugar such as date sugar and almond milk instead of cow’s milk now.
We discovered new meals that even our kids eat – ground turkey and rice taco casserole, smoothies and bone broth – yum!
We didn’t starve! The foods we still ate were filling although it was hard to know you couldn’t eat after 7pm (our bodies need 12 hours to fully detox).

What makes following through on a cleanse successful?

If you’ve never done a cleanse before, start with a gentle cleanse such as this one.
Set your goals and intentions before you start – this way on those days you want to cheat, you can remind yourself why you’re doing this cleanse.
Plan and prep! The more prepared you are with your meal planning, the easier it will be.
Ensure you’re doing activities like moving your body, drinking lots of water and even regularly using a skin brush all help release toxins.
Do it with someone else – challenges are always more fun with a friend and hold us more accountable.
Participate in a group cleanse such as the Path to Presence Cleanse I run regularly throughout the year – click here for more details!