Mini Detox Menu (for between cleanses)

This week we’re dishing up a yummy ‘Mini Detox Menu’ to keep you healthy, clean and glowing between cleanses. Enjoy!

Breakkie

• Bircher muesli or raw muesli with sheep or goat’s yoghurt. Add fresh fruit and raw activated almonds if you’re feeling hungry! Sheep and goat’s dairy are better tolerated than cow’s dairy as their protein-fat structure is easier to digest.

• Dandelion tea or a dandelion latte (if you’re lucky enough to have a good coffee shop that does these!) instead of coffee. Green or white tea OK too. Dandelion helps cleanse the liver and purge toxins; green and white are packed full of antioxidants!

Lunch

• Mixed bean and/or lentil salad with spinach leaves, diced tomato, haloumi (or goat’s cheese) and avocado. Season with olive oil, squeezed lemon, fresh herbs (we like basil), rock salt and ground pepper.

• Peppermint or ginger tea (drink an hour after lunch to avoid diluting digestive enzymes) to soothe a bloated tummy and ease digestion.

Dinner

• Oily or white fish in a pine nut and herb crust or baked in foil with fresh herbs and organic butter. Serve with a bitter greens and beetroot salad. Bitter greens include chicory or endives, rocket, watercress, mustard greens etc.

• 2 squares of dark chocolate – we like Loving Earth as it is raw and sweetened with agave

• Fennel tea to combat bloating and fluid retention

Snacks

• Detox juice: choose either apple/pear + green veggies or beetroot/carrot/ginger 

• Celery and/or carrot sticks with hummus or fresh guacamole

• Raw activated cashews or almonds

• 1 or 2 pieces of fresh fruit

The Urban Remedy 'Easy Guide to Summer'

With summer fast approaching, we’ve narrowed down our 10 top tips to get you feeling and looking great.

1. Drink a glass of warm boiled water first thing in the morning to flush out your lymphatic system – this is an amazing (free) home remedy for combatting cellulite, fluid retention, bloating and enhancing digestion and detoxification. We say boiled as the body can then use it immediately rather than processing (digesting) the mineral content.

2. Hydrate throughout the day: don’t guzzle your 1.5-2L in one sitting. Sip on water throughout the day to stay continuously hydrated. And avoid drinking with meals as this dilutes your digestive juices!

3. Do some gentle weights or toning exercises every morning. You don’t need a gym or even gym gear to do this! Tricep dips on the bath are a sneaky whole-body toning exercise (they get your legs and tum toned too if done correctly). Simply do 2 sets of 25, et voilà!

4. Moisturise and protect. If you want to stay youthful and avoid the dreaded leather-face look, moisturising and applying SPF is the ONLY way. Think 15+ not factor 4 coconut oil, unless you’re trying to re-enact a scene from Hot Shots.

5. Fake it to make it. Yep, we’re talking about fake tan. Not the orange kind but a nice subtle hint of summer in a bottle… You can get some pretty good ones now (even organic), either applied in salon or at home. For you Sydney peeps, we like Fleur De Lys MediSpa in Woollahra – $25 tans every Friday, all summer. Yes please.

6. Get 15 minutes of SPF-free sunshine every day to boost your vitamin D levels.

7. Keep it clean throughout the silly season. Make sure your liver is getting the TLC it needs by supplementing with milk thistle and detoxing regularly to avoid toxic overload. We often recommend cleansers with busy social calendars try weekly mini-cleanses throughout December, working their way towards a longer ‘new year cleanse’ in January.

8. Give your summer drinks a makeover. Claire from the Saha Space shared some of her lovely ice tea recipes with us last week. Check them out here. We also recommend choosing your alcoholic mixers carefully – soda water and fresh lime is always a good option. Avoid pre-mixed drinks, soft drinks (even diet), fruit juice (you can bet the stuff at the bar isn’t good for you) and milky cocktails.

9. Avoid yeast and sugar to beat the bloat. We often think wheat/gluten is the culprit (and it is for some people) when in fact it is more likely to be yeast. If you’re OK with pasta but not with bread and pizza, yeast is not your friend. Try sourdough bread if this is the case.

10. Tune in to summer cravings (good ones that is). Fresh fruit, fresh veg, grilled fish, seafood, barbecues… We naturally eat differently according to the season so it’s time to break out of your winter food rut and embrace summer.

Up my what? A colonic affair

So my beautiful housemate has been RAVING about her series of colonics. Her tummy is flatter, her digestive system has improved, she’s been having regular “movements”, her skin looks amazing and she generally feels great.

Ok, so it’s my turn. I’m not particularly fond of the idea of having a foreign object put in my “sacred place” (just around the corner from my “special place”), but the benefits sound great, so I’m willing to give it a shot.

Beforehand I’m a little bit worried about it being embarrassing and my “not so nice stuff” from my “sacred place” being on display. I have visions of unflattering noises and yucky mucky stuff coming out for all to see. This is made worse by the fact that my colon hydrotherapist turns out to be a man. Oh joy.

Believe it or not, it’s actually not that bad and not really embarrassing at all (especially if you have had a Brazilian wax before and been asked by your therapist to lie on your tummy and “spread em please”).

For those of you interested in the gory details, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the process. The therapist leaves the room and you get undressed from the waist down and cover yourself with a towel. Therapist comes back and puts lubed tube in “sacred place”. This is the least fun part. I might have yelped as Marcus (lovely Marcus with whom I am now intimately acquainted, much to the displeasure of my boyfriend, who likens it to having an affair) asked if I was ok, to which I replied, “um, it’s just that I’ve never had anything up there.” He then said, “that’s too much information.” And I said, “no, too much information would be me telling you that I have all sorts of stuff up there all the time.” Ice-breaker. I feel better already. But still not happy with tube in sacred place.

Then comes the “fill” part, where 18-25 litres of water is pumped into your colon. I didn’t even feel this; it was only noticeable when there was a little “gas” to pass through and then it just felt like a slight cramp.  Then the pressure is released and stuff starts coming out. There is no sound at all (thank goodness) and it’s not like you even feel like you’re going to the toilet. Aside from the tube up the youknowwhatsit and seeing your waste travelling past a glass window in the machine, it’s actually fine.

Each treatment is a series of fills and releases and lasts for about 45 mins. Your therapist stays with you the whole time guiding you through the process, massaging your tummy to move things through and watching what is coming out. All sorts of wonderful things can come out; gas, candida, parasites, poorly chewed food, waste, toxins and adrenal fluid (caused by stress). I’m not telling you which of those came out of me, but suffice to say that most did and I am a pretty healthy person, so imagine what an unhealthy person would pass through!

After four treatments with the lovely Marcus at The Colon Hydrotherapy Centre in Darlinghurst (also in Randwick), I can honestly say that I feel amazing. One of the key benefits that I’ve noticed is reduced edema (fluid retention) due to allergenic substances being removed with the waste and I swear that I feel skinnier and lighter than I have in ages. My tummy is flat and my digestive system is much improved.

I can honestly say that combining a juice cleanse (I know of a good one…) and series of colonics is an amazing way to detox and feel light and full of energy.

The cost is $95 per session. Well worth it in my humble (nothing more humbling than having tube in sacred place) opinion. 

PS. I highly, highly recommend Marcus as he made me feel so comfortable and at ease. He’s my new best friend and I’m going back in 5 weeks for a follow up treatment.

PPS. I almost titled this post “A colonic journey with a happy ending”, but then I thought better of it.

Weight loss and detoxing/cleansing

I can't tell you how many people ask if they will lose weight while they are cleansing. Tons of them... The answer is yes, but it's not quite as simple as that.

You definitely do lose weight, but not all the weight you lose is fat and some of it will come back if you’re not careful after the cleanse finishes.

A lot of the weight you will lose is excess fluid. Excess fluid (fluid retention or edema) has many causes including; too much salt or not enough protein in the diet, food and environmental allergies, poor circulation, and hormonal imbalances (women are particularly prone to fluid retention prior to and during their periods). Fluid retention masquerades as fat (and looks like fat) and can add up to 2kgs to even the smallest frame.

Juice cleansing can help to flush this excess fluid due the natural diuretic properties of many of the ingredients used and the cleanse’s high content of water (which actually helps get rid of excess water, contrary to what you might think).

In addition to this, because the cleanse is relatively low in kilojoules (approx 4400 kilojoules per day for a Level 1 cleanse), you will most likely lose some fat also.

It’s pretty simple, if you want the weight to stay off following the cleanse, you need to eat less salt (the main offender for fluid retention) and follow a healthy, wholefoods diet (see our blog post on Simple Healthy Eating Principles). If you can stay off the booze, takeout and sugar for a few weeks after your cleanse, you’ll do your body (and weight), the world of good.