Sunshine+Design

A detox diet that isn’t totally extreme

Oh hello, please pardon the delay, last week I had one heck of a work week and it doesn’t look like it will be any less busy this week. It makes me forget that I even had a little holiday vacation. Anyway, back to the life. I haven’t exactly kept up (or even started) most of my new years resolutions. For instance, I have not “hit the gym” once. Over the weekend, I got Verizon Fios which is very exciting because I essentially went from watching Hulu and Netflix via a 12” laptop to buying a big ass television and getting cable including HBO + Skinamax (for a limited time). On Sunday, I was exploring On Demand, a heavenly feature, and discovered the FREE exercise videos. I choose to check out the kickboxing video and lazily realized that I was literally laying on the couch watching the guy do his kicks and punches. What’s wrong with this picture?

One mini triumph however is a detox I’ve been doing for the past 10 days. I read about it in a really great magazine called Whole Living (it’s a Martha Stewart publication) which is an inspirational read if you’re into nutrition, yoga, mediation, and general healthy way of life. The detox isn’t anything terribly extreme like the Master Cleanse of a juice diet, but instead it focuses on eating whole foods, limiting caffeine, sugar, dairy, and gluten. What can you eat? There’s actually quite a lot, but it isn’t as easy as coming home and popping seven slices of cheddar cheese in your mouth while cooking dinner (hmm, I’m not talking about myself…).

The past week and a half I’ve traded my coffee for green tea, and my nightly red wine for chamomile tea (haha, it actually has the same effect on me—I pass out). I’ve been eating less meat (not no meat), in exchange for lentils, beans, millet, lots and lots of veggies: spinach, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and collard greens. I’m trying to use less olive oil (again, not no olive oil) and making fish and chicken in the oven. I’ve been using a ton of fresh herbs in everything, sage, parsley, cilantro, basil and using honey and lemon to sweeten things up. Overall, I feel really good. These are healthy changes that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I pretty much bought everything on Whole Living‘s grocery list and whip up a new creation every night. If you are interested in reading about it, check it out here.