January is the month of New Year’s resolutions. How many of us start the new year with great intentions to lose some extra weight, improve our eating habits or better our health yet don’t follow through and are making the same resolutions the very next year? Why is it so difficult to follow-through with health-related New Year’s resolutions?
Simply put, the holiday season provides more than enough time to turn our bad eating habits into a full-blown bad lifestyle change—habit with momentum! That is why I suggest shifting the momentum and changing your habits quickly, for the first month while you are invested in the intentions of New Year’s resolutions to change the tide of unhealthy eating habits you set during the holidays.
I recommend committing to a healthy eating program or a modified cleanse for just one month to lower inflammation in your body, improve digestion and strengthen liver and kidney function. At the end of the month, you will be well on your way to creating new healthier habits that will last the full year while only having to actually commit to instigating a New Year’s resolution for one month!
First, you need to decide why you want to change your health? For me, changing my eating habits to a less-inflammatory diet through a cleanse is a rewarding idea because I know that regardless of how many health-fulfilling things I do or vitamins I take, it won’t matter if my liver and kidneys are not healthy enough to clean toxins out of my blood and my digestive system isn’t strong enough to break down foods and absorb nutrients. Digestive disorders are responsible for over 50 million physician visits a year and more hospitalizations than any other category of medical problems. The National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse estimate that 7,7 million North Americans have chronic kidney disease and 100,000 are diagnosed with kidney failure per year! Those are good enough reasons for me!
Second, you need to decide what will happen if you don’t change your health for the better? What will your life look like if your health continues down the same path—eating the same foods, in the same way, with the same lifestyle choices? It could mean not having the energy to play with your grandchildren, not fitting into those jeans you gifted yourself, not getting off insulin, having to resort to pharmaceutical drugs for health conditions you have been diagnosed with.
Finally, commit to making that change for the month. An anti-inflammatory diet means removing the foods that are the most difficult to digest and those foods or “food-like” substances that cause the most tissue damage. The best place to start is to remove all grains (or at least gluten) from your diet, all legumes (unless vegan), all sugar, processed foods, artificial sweeteners and caffeine. Just for a month! Or just pick one or two of those food categories to remove. Or commit to cooking all of your own meals for one month. Any of these choices will vastly improve your health, decrease inflammation and create new healthy eating habits that will last you the entire year, even if you don’t continue after a month to eat the same as you did during your modified cleanse.
If you would like more information on how to do a safe cleanse that will leave you feeling lighter, clearer and more energized, please register for my *free* webinar on Thursday, 1/12. Even if you can’t attend, if you register, I’ll send you the recording. Also, all live attendees will be entered in a drawing to win my guided cleanse program and all registrants that attend live will receive a complimentary 30 minute cleanse strategy session. Before committing to doing any commercial cleanse, please read this report on how some cleanses are actually dangerous to your health. If you have any questions about doing a cleanse, please post them below so that everyone can benefit from your question and the answer.