Detox: Healthy Living Starts From Within

Article by Thomas Jane

In my early 20s, I was fortunate to bag the job-of-a-lifetime! I plan events, TV commercials and photo shoots for magazines — yes, basically I rub elbows with celebrities and up-and-coming stars. The glamour and thrill of advertising was priceless, but I had sacrificed a lot of things including holidays and vacations, sleep, and my health. The fast-paced environment of the industry was taxing; food were my ways of coping. But then I wasn’t eating right. That’s where the problem starts.

I have an erratic eating pattern. I sometimes eat one meal in a day; yes, I consider coffee as my meal. Because with the kind of work I am in, who has the time to indulge in a 30-minute break? Sometimes, I binge in weird places and times. Sometimes I eat walking my way to a meeting, while waiting for a taxi cab, while working on my laptop, etc.

So you see the way I lived my life then is quite stressed out and toxic.

When I started working, I lost a lot of weight. You could say that I got slimmer, but if you’d weigh me down the scale I was underweight. Then I got pregnant. Then I gave birth. Then I stayed at home to become a work-at-home mom. Then came another problem: post-pregnancy weight and the effects of sitting for long hours in front of a computer.

I tried almost all types of diets and bought all kinds of slimming products from slimming teas to slimming coffees and slimming pills to get me back in shape, but none of them worked on me completely. I’d loose a couple of centimeters and shed some pounds, but it goes back again when I start pigging out — especially on holidays.

Exercise outdoors, yes, but never on a gym. But it is not the same as it used to. I cannot go anywhere as I please as I have parenting duties, household chores, and work to mind.

In a holiday reunion with my family last year I saw my cousin, who could pass as a contestant for The Biggest Lose, and whoa — he really lost the weight. So we talked and I learned through him the wonder of detox diets.

I got home and googled it.

According to Linda Page, N.D., Ph.D., a naturopathic doctor, lecturer, and author of the book Detoxification, “Detoxification is a normal body process of eliminating or neutralizing toxins through the colon, liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph glands, and skin,” she writes in her book. “Just as our hearts beat nonstop and our lungs breathe continuously, so our metabolic processes continuously dispose of accumulated toxic matter.”

The general idea suggests that detox diets can involve consuming extremely limited foods (water or juice only) or eliminating certain foods from the diet (like Atkins Diet) thereby resulting to cause the body to burn or secret accumulated stored fats and toxins.

Page recommends that if you feel “congested” from too much food — or the wrong kinds of food — you may want to detoxify. If your energy level is low, if you have been taking many medications that have not been eliminated from your system, or you feel bloated with all the foods and beverages you’ve taken on weekdays, a weekend detox may help you feel better.

So, I started to change my lifestyle. I embarked on a green lifestyle and embraced anything organic. I could never be a Vegan because I still need lean meat in my life, but still eating vegetables are a must.

Now, I am doing daily reps of Cardio and Pilates exercises and healthy diet (6 meals a day in small portions; I make sure that I take at least 2 liters of water a day (water therapy — the best detox ever!), eat fresh fruits and veggies, and have my Wheatgrass Juice Diet on weekends.

Aside from my exercise and diet regimens, I make sure that I indulge in wellness activities like going to the day spa for a massage therapy and meditations to aide detoxing.

Indeed, detoxing is not just about secreting toxins inside the body but also relieving ourselves with negative emotional baggage.

And just what Deepak Chopra said, “The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.”