Originally posted on The Daily Zeel!
DIET MYTH #1: All calories are created equal
DIET MYTH #2: Carbs are the enemy
DIET MYTH #3: Fats cause weight gain
This fall chore is actually a great workout! Get the family outside and start raking… You’ll work up a sweat, get some cardio, and have a great time! Try to lunge forward with every pull of the rake, and make sure to alternate your dominant hand. This will work your arms, abs, and legs and will burn about 250 calories in an hour!
If you’re in the midwest, chances are there is more snow to deal with than leaves… Shoveling snow is an amazing resistance workout, and can turn into a really fun family activity! The motions of pushing, pulling and lifting the shovel work the back, abs, arms, and legs!
Transforming into Cinderella before and after the big Thanksgiving get together can feel like a tedious chore, but if you think about it in terms of exercise, mopping, sweeping, dusting, and vacuuming can burn some major calories! Throw in some lunges while you mop the floor, calf raises while you clean the counter, and squats as you move furniture or pick things up and you’re burning over 200 calories an hour.
This venerable American turkey day tradition is probably one of the best things you can do for your body before or after the big meal. Get outside, run around, break a sweat and offset those Thanksgiving calories. Not a football family? A game of tag, capture the flag, or even just catch will do the trick!
After dinner, grab the whole fam and the dog and go for a walk. Walking after a big meal is a great way to stimulate digestion and get things moving. If you keep a brisk, steady pace, you’ll burn up to 250 calories in an hour! And the fresh air is a welcome break after having been inside for a few hours. Mom (or whoever cooked) will appreciate the change of scenery!
I’ve written a lot about the benefits of seasonal cleansing, but it being spring, I want to go into a little more depth about the importance of getting your system detoxified and cleaned out after a long winter. Basically, if you’re only going to do one cleanse a year, this is the time to do it. If you’re up to doing a more intensive cleanse, check out my article on how to detox and cleanse the right way. For those who aren’t quite ready to go all out, you can reap a lot of the benefits of a detox just by consciously incorporating cleansing, seasonal spring foods into our diets to reverse the effects of winter.
In the winter months, our bodies naturally crave more warming, protein-rich, heavier foods that insulate us (physically and even psychologically) against the cold, comfort us, and provide an additional boost to our immunity to keep us healthy. Often times, those foods cause us to gain a bit of winter weight (which is totally normal, and can even be healthy!)… However, come spring, our bodies have an innate need to shed that weight, detoxify the organs from the heavier winter diet, and get light and healthy for spring. Spring’s harvest provides us with all of the foods to start making this happen: astringent bitter greens and roots, antioxidant berries, and super nutrient-rich sprouts, which all serve as an antidote to the heavier vegetables, grains, and in some cases meat and diary that we’ve been consuming all winter. The spring is a time of rejuvenation and cleansing in nature, and it has the same purpose for the human body: to detoxify the system and to reset our ability to burn fat.
In early spring, animals are naturally drawn to eating more bitter roots that serve to cleanse the intestines of built up mucus from our winter diets. We, too, should focus on incorporating spring’s root vegetables into our diets for this same purpose. As we transition out of the the colder months, we should eat more celeriac, beets, new potatoes, radishes, turnips, jicama, and fennel, which are all super cleansing and break down our intestinal mucosa. You can supplement and intensify this effect with dandelion root tea, which also has a detoxifying effect, particularly on the liver. Make sure to up your water intake during this period, and cut down (if not completely eliminate) heavy foods rich in mucous like dairy, oily or fried foods, processed sugars or artificial sweeteners, and anything overly salty. In addition to gently cleaning out your intestines and detoxifying your organs, you will also be eliminating excess water weight from winter.
Once you’ve begun to clean out your intestines, the next step is to fertilize your gut with healthy bacteria. Having the proper balance of intestinal flora is vital for proper digestion (and elimination), which is what keeps old, stagnating food from getting stuck in your system and causing bloating, weight gain, and a whole mess of other unpleasant digestive issues. Luckily, mid-spring provides us with a bounty of delicious and astringent leafy greens and sprouts that refertilize your gut and also make up a perfect light, low-fat seasonal diet. As you move into April/early May, try to comprise as much of your diet as possible of watercress, baby spinach, dandelion greens, chicory and endive, as well as bean and alfalfa sprouts which are all super high in nutrients and full of healthy flora. These light, fresh and springy foods are the perfect antidote to slow, heavy and cold winter foods, and will do remarkable things to your body and your energy levels.
The last step to a super effective, spring detox is to flush out the lymphatic system. Lymphatic stagnation is something that effects most of us year round, but can have the most profoundly negative effects as we come out of the winter months. Chronic colds, weak immunity, sore joints, weight gain, headaches, depression, and low energy are all symptoms many experience during the winter months, and a lot of them are due to our impaired ability to flush out toxins and fat through our lymphatic system. Late spring provides us with the perfect harvest of berries to get our lymphatic system moving again, and flush out all the toxins we have dislodged from our intestines and internal organs. Once the weather begins to warm and the berry season starts, we can start eating tons of seasonal cherries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries to flush out our newly balanced intestines destagnate our lymphatic system. As this flushing occurs, energy levels soar, immunity is boosted, and we can say goodbye to sniffles, sore joints, aches and pains.
The seasons provide us with ways to cleanse our system, maintain healthy weight, and be in our best health possible.. all it takes is some intuition to eat what is seasonally available at the time when it is offered by nature. By taking the time to reset our digestion and metabolism in the spring months, we are able to recharge our ability to burn fat and detoxify our organs naturally, without having to take extreme measures or go on difficult deprivation diets. Spring’s harvest features the year’s most potent toolkit of foods to get our bodies on track for maximum health. It is the most vital time for cleansing and gives us the easiest set of directions to follow to lose weight, gain energy, and clean out our bodies.. Just by eating what the season gives us!
For a convenient chart of spring’s seasonal foods, see Dr. John Douillard’s Spring Grocery List.
Snacking has become kind of a hot topic in the world of nutrition, and with good reason. For many years now, the diet books and the fitness world in particular have been promoting the concepts of “grazing,” “snacking,” or eating several small meals throughout the day as opposed to the traditional 3 squares. At first, it seemed like the answer to all our problems. Hypoglycemia (or blood sugar issues) was on the rise in addition to the frightening prevalence of obesity. Even otherwise healthy people who watched what they ate and stuck to their diets were struggling with weight that was fluctuating more than was normal or desirable. When the merits of several small meals started to be touted in the media and in new diet books, it seemed like an easy, fun cure-all: Eat all the time and still lose weight! Never get shaky or experience symptoms of low blood sugar again! Never go hungry! The logic behind it seemed very solid. If we never let ourselves get to the point of extreme hunger, we will make better choices about what we eat (and how much) and our blood sugar will stay stable with a steady stream of fuel to burn. Feeding your metabolism all the time keeps it humming and burning fat, right?
What Is Detoxing?
Regardless of how well we eat and how much we minimize our exposure to harmful toxins, our bodies can derive a whole lot of good from a detox or cleanse that is approached responsibly. Toxins can build up in our livers, kidneys, and digestive tracts, leading to a whole slew of uncomfortable phenomena: fatigue, constipation, skin breakouts, low libido, premature aging, and weight gain… not to mention far worse, long-term effects like lowered immunity, liver toxicity, and, yes, the big C.
The practice of detoxifying the body is an ancient one, from the ancient Greek and Roman concepts of “autointoxication,” to the ritual fasts that are a part of nearly every single documented religion (used for both spiritual and health benefits). Today, we know more about the effects of these practices, and have honed in on methods that are less extreme, but equally beneficial, and can fit into our busy, everyday lives. Cleanses can vary in intensity from juice fasts, to raw food diets, to taking special supplements to detoxify various organs. Here are the easiest and healthiest ways to detoxify and cleanse your system, from least to most intensive.
Get this… what common ingredient in your kitchen cupboard can accomplish all of the following:
Organic Apple Cider Vinegar!! Amazing, right? How does it manage to be such a miraculous cure-all? Well, the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar helps your body metabolize fat and stabilize blood sugar. Its high content of over 50 vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and minerals in very specific combination do wonders for your body, while its antiseptic, anti-fungal and antimicrobial qualities help heal skin problems and ward off illness.
A new study in the British Journal of Cancer found that acrylamide, the chemical that is released when starchy foods (particularly potatoes) are fried at high temperatures, is associated with an average of 40% greater risk of breast cancer among pre-menopausal women. So not only do fried foods pile on the pounds, make your skin breakout, and increase your risk of heart disease, they now officially cause cancer as well… Think about it… are those Fritos really worth that much risk?