Welcome to the first installment of Cleansing from the Inside Out, a series about my experience participating in Amanda Moxley’s Whole Body and Mind Cleanse program. You can read my intro post here.
The 30-Day Whole Body and Mind Cleanse consisted of four weekly group phone conferences, behavior goals, self-care exercises and gradual dietary changes, along with a natural, fiber-based colon cleanse. Unlike the quick-fix cleanses popular in the media today, this cleanse focused on changing the group’s mindset about food and our bodies in order to improve our health without dieting.
In all honesty, I was a little skeptical. It seemed unbelievable to think that in thirty days I could be lighter, healthier, and less obsessed with food, calories, dieting, and exercise. I’ve never had a healthy relationship with food, and Amanda was promising me that after her program food would be my friend. I highly doubted it, but I committed to trying her strategies anyway.
During our first phone call I learned that the first week of the cleanse would focus on three goals.
Goal #1: Build personal power. Prepare for a successful cleanse:
- Focus on mindful eating – Eating mindfully allows us to fully experience the food we’re preparing or eating by paying attention to the look, smell, feel, taste and texture of it.
- Go on an information diet – There is so much going on around us. The messages and images we see, hear and read in the media can have serious negative effects on our health and energy levels.
- Journal – Getting your thoughts and feelings out on paper can help you process what’s going on, work through issues, brainstorm solutions or strategies, and keep track of intentions and outcomes.
Goal #2: Get organized. We couldn’t expect to be successful if we didn’t have a plan:
- Get the right supplies – Amanda provided a list of small appliances and kitchen tools that would make juicing, blending, preparing, cooking and storing foods easier.
- Makeover your pantry – Removing temptations and toxic, chemical-filled, artificial junk foods from your house makes healthy eating easier. Amanda suggested becoming familiar with food labels and completely purging your pantry of anything with unpronounceable chemicals and other unhealthy ingredients. Her general rule was: “If you need a chemistry degree to pronounce the list, it’s not real food.”
- Stock up on nutritious foods – Amanda shared many reasons why we should eat as much organic food as possible and stock our kitchens with foods that taste good and are good for us.
Goal #3: Start the cleanse. Four steps to start changing our eating habits and cleaning out our bodies:
- Replace white-flour bagels and muffins – Amanda recommended replacing these less nutritious foods with whole grains like quinoa, brown rice and oatmeal. She also suggested trying new grains that we’d never tried (or in some cases heard of) before, things like amaranth, millet, Kamet and spelt.
- Replace white sugar and alcohol – The goal here was to begin “letting go” of these foods while paying attention to any changes in how we felt. As alternatives to sugar, Amanda suggested agave nectar, honey, maple syrup and molasses.
- Replace salty snack foods – There’s sodium in just about everything, so Amanda reminded us to read labels diligently. She encouraged us to avoid having more than 2,300 mg per day and she recommended we try baked nori or niziki (sea vegetables) sprinkled with sea salt when we craved salty snacks.
- Eat fifty percent whole, organic foods – Rather than suggesting we immediately give up everything we love, Amanda recommended that we focus on adding whole foods to our diets each day. While she encouraged us to begin “letting go” of sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, processed foods, soda, chocolate and animal products, she didn’t expect us to go cold turkey. She simply wanted us to be mindful and moderate when we chose to have them.
What struck me the most about this initial phone call were Amanda’s energy and excitement. She was full of life and I wanted that. So I listened intently as she talked about setting intentions, visualizing ourselves as we want to be, and getting out of our own way so that we could get there. “While I call this a cleanse,” she said, “it’s really about life lasting lifestyle change.” I didn’t know about life-lasting, but I figured I could handle thirty days.
Tune in later this week for more about my first week of the cleanse experience. If you're interested in joining one of Amanda's 30-Day Whole Mind and Body Cleanse groups, you're in luck. Her next group starts on March 4th. Sign up now!
(Image by D Sharon Pruitt)
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Interesting. I think all the steps under goal #3 make perfect sense.
But I think an information diet would give me anxiety.
Reluctant – You wouldn't believe how hard it was. Especially since I was ON VACATION almost the entire first week. I do try to limit all the "smut" (as my grandmother would call it) — the celebrity news, fashion and gossip magazines, that kind of thing — that I read/watch now, though. I can't seem to tolerate it quite as much because now I recognize how it affect how I feel about myself. More than a "diet" I think I went on an information "cleanse" of sorts. I'm more picky about what I spend my time reading and watching. I still enjoy the occasional Britney Spears or Octo-Mom interview, though.