Detoxing without realising you're detoxing

Its been the season of food babies. We have had Christmas, New Years and Australia Day. There's been excessive food eaten, copious amounts of alcohol and a drop in exercise. It probably all got put in the too hard basket because 'It's holidays' and you could deal with it later.

All I have heard lately is how everyone is feeling disgusting from the blow outs and they can't wait to start losing the excess weight they gained but it's all a little overwhelming.

I started a detox about a week and a half ago. It's not an insane one, It's through a nutritionist and really its basically just very clean eating and it's most definitely working.

When I tell people I'm on a detox they look at me like I'm a complete idiot. I'm not living on a celery stick and water people!! I did it for my health, not to be some rake thin starved girl. I've been taunted by photos of a delicious plate of bacon, eggs and pancakes. Donuts placed in front of my face with excessive noise about how great they taste. Stories of the best combination of cold rock. (Just these instances have all been purely from my boyfriend by the way!) But to be honest the detox hasn't been too hard.

Breaking up with sugar

Here's a challenge.
Go sugar free for 30 days. I'm not kidding.
A break up from sugar, a 'it's not me, it's you' ending, a 'maybe we can still be friends at some point but we will probably ignore each other' break up.

Fructose, glucose, pretty much anything ending in 'ose', corn syrup, molasses is sugar. Manufacturers are actually breaking it down into these words to make it look a little less scary but it doesn't change what it is. Sugar has absolutely no beneficial qualities at all. It's basically just pure energy. It's toxic to our bodies and with no nutritional benefits it goes no where in our body except being stored as fat. It's found in so much food these days it's almost ridiculous. Simple white carbs like pasta and bread, junk food like chocolate, ice cream, lollies, muffins, cakes - It's all loaded with the stuff!

On average Australian's consume about 20 teaspoons of sugar per day. PER DAY!! This is the number one reason more than a million aussies have type 2 diabetes. This is actually shocking to me and frankly its disgusting.

Admitting To Self Sabotage

It's been a long but satisfying 8 months of constant exercise and clean eating. It's been the best decision I've made and I've never looked back since becoming a lot more healthy, fit and happier.
It took a long time to finally get to that point where I decided all excuses need to go out the window. I had been through many attempts to get fit and healthy, all of them failed for one or many stupid reasons.

There was that time where I decided I would get up every morning and go for a run. I did it for 3 days and then on the 4th day I decided I was too tired and I deserved a sleep in. I never got up and went for a run after that.

Then there was that time where I decided to cut out all sugar. I lasted until 3.30pm that day and gorged myself on chocolate because I needed a pick me up.

There was also the time I decided that hot yoga was going to be best thing for me, I'd lose weight from sweating it out and I'd relax because yoga is supposed to be so great for me. I went to one class and went to go to a class a couple of days later but it turned out they didn't have a morning class that day. I never went back.

The big fat truth about 'low fat' foods

We see the products every day. The ones that say low fat, fat free, reduced fat, no added sugar. It’s basically just a marketing ploy used by companies to make you think it’s the better option. I mean if you quickly glance at the calories they specifically show there is less than the original one next to it, so why are these foods actually worse for us? 

When you see the words low fat or light you can much pretty much translate that to chemical loaded piece of crap. Seriously. Think about it...

Companies try to make a ‘low fat’ version of the original to appeal to the calorie conscience consumer trying the new fad diet. Sure they might reduce the fat in it so there’s less calories but that generally means they have added a heap of sugar, salt and other artificial sweeteners to make it taste less like a piece of cardboard and more like the flavoursome original. Manufacturers aren’t stupid, they want you to buy their product on the pretence that it is exceptionally good for you without compromising on taste. But too much of the bad stuff is actually damaging to your body and instead of losing weight you will essentially start gaining weight from all the unnatural chemicals in your body.