We all seem to understand the importance of Spring Cleaning, emptying out the attic, and tossing away the clutter and junk we accumulate throughout the year. But when it comes to our bodies, we have a harder time acknowledging that we do some serious junk collecting. If we think of our bodies as a house (some people say temple), with corners and hard to reach cobwebs, little piles of chips and soda in the attic, we’d be more prone to accept that sometimes we just need to cleanse house.

That’s right. Cleanse. It sounds like a dirty word. Instead of promoting a healthy lifestyle, it tends to put brackets around health, and can reinforce our negative relationship to food.  I was never one for cleansing. I’ve never done the Master Cleanse, gone raw for a month or jumped head first into the depths of any other extreme. I’m not saying it’s wrong, it just definitely isn’t me.

I recently tried something called the Optimal Cleanse. It’s an amazing system where you actually get to… EAT FOOD. It’s 10 days. You eliminate all the bad stuff from your diet: sugar, alcohol, dairy, corn, soy, wheat, nicotine, and coffee.  Ahh yes. Coffee. No more morning fix. It isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. On days 1-3, you drink a rice based detox shake (provided by the program) and slowly curb your food intake.  On 4-6 you drink only shakes. And on 7-10 you start to incorporate food back into your diet. By day 7 you feel like a brand new person.  I had more energy, I slept better, was able to concentrate, there was no spike and crash in the afternoon; I was operating as my best self.  Sounds like the kind of cleaning we all could use.

You can find the Optimal Cleanse at www.eastwestessentials.com

-Arianna Schioldager