These days you hear about cleanses and detox programs all over the place.  This star’s doing the Hollywood Detox Diet, that one is having regular colon cleanses, and that one? She’s doing some fruit-juice-green-tea-no-solid-food cleanse recently recommended by some trainer-to-the-stars or another in order to drop pounds fast for her movie premier.

I’ve never been one to jump on the diet bandwagon, so I didn’t get sucked into the cleanse/detox craze. But about a year ago, I had the privilege of participating in a cleanse unlike the ones you’ll hear the stars raving about. Over the next few weeks I’ll be describing my experience and the lessons I learned each week as I took part in a 30-day Whole Body and Mind Cleanse with holistic health counselor, Amanda Moxley. Too often we women get trapped in a cycle of dieting and fighting our own bodies in order to lose weight and feel better about ourselves. Amanda’s program goes beyond the quick weight loss promises of popular cleanses and detox diets and helps participants focus on gently cleaning out their bodies and their minds to help them not just lose weight, but live life more fully in the process.

Join me in my Cleansing from the Inside Out series as I refresh my memory and reacquaint myself with some of the strategies and insights that I learned from Amanda last year. I’ll share what I discovered about getting in touch with my body’s signals, reconnecting to my thoughts and feelings, and eating to nourish and satisfy my body. Hopefully, you’ll benefit from my experience, too.

Ami writes about her attempts to stay healthy, live a local and green life and write that Great American Novel (or something like it) at Writing: My Life.

(photo thebittenword ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant/).