Toxic Thursdays: Healthy Detox

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Starting Anew with a Healthy Detox

After the holidays, you may feel bombarded by good and sad feelings. Often the holidays can feel like a letdown. Perhaps all the family members you hoped to see didn’t show up. Or perhaps there was more arguing than you would have liked. Having family all shoved together during a holiday can be rough. Here at Toxic Thursdays, I like to stick to talking about products and improving the health of your family and the environment, however, I also would like to pause now, after the holiday craziness, to remind you that people can be toxic, too. Don’t feel like you have to be nice to someone who is toxic just because they are related to you. Perhaps yes, be respectful and polite during special occasions, but they do not have to be part of your everyday reality.

Moving on. Bridget talked about post-holiday detoxing over on her blog, so I thought I would follow up with some healthy ways to detox. You can’t click a link without being over-run by this year’s trendy detoxes. I often warn people to be careful when taking on a detox. They aren’t all good and they aren’t all one size fits all.

After the holidays, I often feel flabby and over-sugared. The best way to get back to health following over-indulgence is to reduce. Reduce your sugar intake – stop it already with the cookies! Reduce your alcohol intake. Reduce your fat intake. Get back to green salads, low-sodium soups, and green smoothies.

Detox with Greens

I find that having a green smoothie every day or even every other day, really helps my body bounce back. These smoothies don’t have to be complicated! Some recipes call for all sorts of hard-to-find ingredients, but for my family, I keep it simple!

Start with fresh organic spinach. Wash it well and put several handfuls in the bottom of the blender. If you have chia or flax seeds at your house (I always have them in the freezer), toss some of those in next. Then add your fruit. I generally use frozen mango or frozen blueberries. Then I top whichever of those with a can of crushed pineapple in 100 percent juice. Stay away from canned fruit in syrup. Add just enough water or orange juice to get the amount of smoothie you want and to make it easy to blend. Whir it up and serve it out – in your glass mason jars that you have repurposed of course!

Simple. Quick. And not expensive. I try to keep most of these ingredients on hand regularly so that I can make a quick green drink for the kids – they love them!

The other drink I make when I am feeling off-balance from overindulgence is an easy turmeric tea. Turmeric is an amazing spice that is both an anti-inflammatory and an antioxidant. Turmeric is often used in Indian cooking, but it is easy to find. Keep in mind:  Turmeric’s beneficial properties only become bio-available to us when heated or mixed with black pepper.

For the tea, I take about a tablespoon or so of turmeric powder and put it in a saucepan. Add just a bit of black pepper. Fill the saucepan with water for your tea – however much you would like to make. I make a pitcher at a time and drink it cold, but you can also enjoy it hot right off the stove. Heat on the stove until boiling. Turn off the heat, add green tea bags. One if you are doing a single cup. I use eight tea bags to make a pitcher of tea. Let it steep.

I wait until it is cooled and then pour it into my glass pitcher, add a splash or so of lemon juice and refrigerate.

I hope you find time to re-balance your body in January and if you are seeking to make resolutions, hop on over to Rita’s blog to read how she plans to bring gratitude to 2017.

What are some ways you re-balance after the holidays? Share with us in the comments!

*You may have noticed the blog name has changed - we have updated this regular blog to be called Be Real. On the Be Real blog you can expect healthy living topics from the front lines of parenting and family life! Enjoy!