You made it – one week into 2016! How are the resolutions/goals sticking? At the end of every year, I really look forward to doing my annual New Year’s cleanse to get all the bread, cheese, coffee and sugar out of my system. I start feeling sluggish and bloated, weak and tired right around Christmas, and it’s tough to eat clean when I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off, especially when surrounded by fudge and spinach dip. My little yearly detox is a nice reset to clear my tastebuds of all the deliciously unhealthy food, so that clean, nutritious food starts to taste good again.
I like to switch it up every year by trying new recipes, which helps make it much more exciting to give up all my favorite holiday foods. This year, I scoured Pinterest for some ideas and found smoothie recipes for my five-day cleanse, plus a few dinner recipes I could make extra batches of for leftovers at lunch. It was important that I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into it all, because otherwise, I knew I’d run out of steam and give up early. It’s happened – more than once! Here’s what I did, in case you’re wondering or need inspiration for your own diet reset.
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Want the recipes? Here you go!
Shrimp and Avocado Rice Bowl / I substituted the rice for quinoa and used frozen mixed veggies instead of edamame
Miso Soup / this was really an inspirational recipe, I’ll post my detox version soon!
Lemony Toasted Quinoa and Cabbage Salad / omitted the greek yogurt and used half the olives
Detox Smoothie Recipes / I did the lunch & dinner versions on different days and btw, this is a broken link on Pinterest but the recipe is on the graphic!
Liver Cleanse Smoothie / ps this is supposed to be a juice that I prepared as a smoothie, so beware the grossness! but highly, highly effective – hold your nose and chug
The teas I chose for this year were: rooibos, peppermint, gas relief from Traditional Medicinals (lots of extra fiber=lots of extra bloat), green and yerba mate. The last two have some natural caffeine, which helped ease withdrawals from my holiday latte habit. I’m OK with the amount of caffeine in these teas, because it’s so much less than what I’d been consuming + they offer lots of antioxidants! And I make my own rules, so there’s that, too! HA!
Some tips? Prep all your snacks + hard boil your eggs all at once before the week starts/buy clean, packaged power greens and spinach and use a paper towel placed inside to keep it fresh all week/chop a yellow or red onion for all the week’s recipes and sautés/if a snack doesn’t satisfy your craving, try a cup of tea, it seems to help me!
I know it’s cliche, but I feel totally different after this week of eating over-the-top clean! I could tell on the second day that the cleanse was working, and by the end of the fifth, I had more energy, cleared sinuses, focused thoughts, less body aches and some serious motivation to get back into healthy eating and working out. Obviously, it’s not easy giving up all my favorite foods. But knowing at the end of five days I could have an occasional piece of chocolate or a slice of freshly baked whole-grain bread kept me strong throughout the week.
I hope this year is treating you well. I’ll post the recipe for my Clean Miso Detox Soup soon, in case you’re interested. It is way better than last year’s detox soup, I promise! xoxo
*top photo by anda ambrosini
