Many people ask if I know of a good way to detox your body and lose some quick weight to jump start a healthy diet. Well, I gave you a few ways in my previous blogs, but here's one I just discovered using some other materials.
I bought some Odwalla Superfood (which is good itself) and Naked Blue Machine and Mango purees. I usually take a few drinks of these by themselves, but I had an idea. I also bought a large bag of spinach at Costco and decided to mix the three.
Use this for your breakfast and snacks (yeah, I know it's not a snack, but trust me it works). Use the following ingredients:
1. 3 cups spinach
2. 1/2 bottle Odwalla Superfood
3. Any amount of Naked juice (use multiple juices for more flavor)
4. Any other fruit you would like (I recommend bananas and pineapple to add more flavor)
5. Optional: Add a low sugar protein powder to thicken up the shake. I use the P90X recovery drink to add a bit of taste.
Blend the ingredients together and you should get about 6 cups of puree that you can drink throughout the day. For a major detox drink only this for a week (make it a few times a day so your body feels it's getting enough healthy calories each day). After a week ease back into food and only drink this once a day.
In addition to drinking lots of fluids and only eating healthy options, I used this once a day for a week and lost 15 pounds and 5% body fat. This is much faster weight loss and body fat loss than healthy eating and exercise alone.
Beware this is only a short detox and you should not use this as a pure diet all the time.
One question I've received is, "So I cut out sugar and started eating more grains, but I'm not feeling any better, why is that?" When I ask what type of grains are being eaten I discover it's white flour products.
Let's get something straight, white flour is not a grain whatsoever. White flour is a simple carbohydrate, meaning your body can break it down quickly for energy. Some might think, "Wow, quick digestion and quick energy, what's wrong with that." Well, with quick breakdown comes quick usage of the energy, meaning it doesn't last long. The other problem with white flour is it is stored as fat much faster than other types of actual grains.
White flour isn't only in white bread, it's in almost any type of processed food you can buy at the grocery store. Look at the labels of the food you eat; if the food label has anything with "bleached" and "flour" together, it's the same thing. Condensed soups, pastas, meal mixes, etc. all contain this ingredient. Ditch the white flour for real grains and watch out for the processed foods.
Have you seen those commercials sponsored by the corn companies that try and convince you that high fructose corn syrup is nothing worse than sugar? Well, if you haven't check out one right now. At the end of the video is a little rant by the guy who owns the video on youtube and makes a good point.
First I have to say this, we eat too much sugar as a nation period! Whether it's corn sugar or regular table sugar everyone is used to, we consume too much sugar and need to cut down on all different types. However, watch the commercial again and think this the whole time, "It's healthy to eat corn sugar because it's just like regular sugar." Although you might be able to say, "That's retarded, no sugar is healthy." it is pretty simple for many Americans to justify to themselves they are ok to eat corn sugar and other processed foods because these sugars aren't anymore unhealthy than the sugar we've been consuming for years.
According to many sources you can find online, high fructose corn syrup (also called corn sugar now by the corn industry) doesn't do anything different than cane sugar. But what are they saying exactly? From all the sources I've read there are two things consistent between refined white sugar and corn sugar:
1 - Same amount of calories
2 - Both sugars cause the same reaction in the blood stream, meaning you will produce the same amount of insulin no matter what type you eat
Well a study at Princeton University says different when it comes to over-all health of corn sugar VS regular sugar. According to a research study in March of 2010, corn sugar is a high factor of obesity in our nation today. There were two main control groups of rats in one study. One group was fed regular rat chow (whatever that is) and water sweetened with corn sugar. The other group was fed regular rat chow and water sweetened with regular table sugar (I'm assuming that's refined white sugar that you used to pour on your cereal every morning). The control group being fed the corn sugar gained a significant amount of weight compared to the other group.
In another study with animals, all animals that were fed corn sugar gained more weight and had obesity related diseases that many people are dealing with today. For more information you can see this study at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/and see for yourself.
Now that doesn't mean go eat all other sugars instead of corn sugar and you'll be fine. Cut back on the sugar! According to researcher Nancy Appleton, PhD there are approximately 146 reasons to avoid all sugars. Some reasons are (this is a copy and paste from http://www.naturalnews.com/022692.html and is not my own material):
* Sugar feeds cancer
* Sugar increases cholesterol
* Sugar can weaken eyesight
* Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children
* Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein
* Sugar causes food allergies
* Sugar contributes to diabetes
* Sugar can contribute to eczema in children
* Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease
* Sugar can impair the structure of DNA
* Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children
* Sugar contributes to the reduction in defense against bacterial infection (infectious diseases)
* Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections)
* Sugar contributes to osteoporosis
According to this same website (again it's http://www.naturalnews.com/022692.html and not my own information) Stevia is the best alternative to sugar when it comes to health. Don't overload of course, but look at the facts. When finding a sugar alternative be careful.
In my opinion avoid as much sugar as possible, mainly soda pop and processed foods. However, today it's very hard to avoid these foods and prepare a healthy meal everyday. Use your best judgement and try to stay healthy and avoid the sweets as much as possible.
Diet professionals constantly tell me to "Eat less calories than you expel in energy and you'll lose weight! It's really that easy." Well great but what kind of foods am I supposed to eat? "Anything low in calories." was always the answer. However the calorie count on packages is an estimated count, and technology that I use to track my calorie usage during excercise are also estimated. What about all the other ingredients in food (salt, potassium, fat, cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, etc.). How do those not help in losing weight?
Counting calories can be an effective start to losing weight, but it's not going to get you farther than most other diets that are easy to follow. Take into consideration that other things, such as salt, can cause a fluctuation in weight daily (fun fact: weight can actually fluctuate anywhere from 3 to 12 pounds per day on average...so if you weigh yourself at 190 lbs you could be as high as 202 or as low as 178!). When you consume excess amounts of salt your body retains more water than normal, adding water weight to your daily scale checks.
How about vitamins and minerals? Well, you could eat whatever you wanted that was low in calories and lose some weight, but will you be healthy? According to http://www.livestrong.com you can develop the following problems due to a low amount of daily vitamins:
- Low Immunity
- Brittle Bones
- Bad Oral Health
- Joint Pain
The last thing I want to consider is the amount of fat in food. Calories and fat are not the same thing and your body does not absorb/digest/store fat and calories the same. This is why food labels have the tiny little section saying "Fat from Calories" to show the difference. Something low in calories can be high in fat. Fat is the hardest energy source to break down by the body, so the body stores it for future use and uses other components that can be broken down easily (carbohydrates as an example).
Don't believe the hype that you're healthy just by focusing on calories; focus on a multitude of factors such as fat, cholesterol, simple and complex carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, etc. All in all, eat a healthy diet consisting of a variety of foods without the refined sugars and processed procedures and exercise consistently. Losing weight and feeling great has an easy answer but a difficult process to constantly follow on a day to day basis.
