Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!  Well about 5 days late anyway.  I think we have all been outside of our normal schedules but in addition to that – I have been fighting a little bug of some sort.  I am not sure if it is from the clean eating causing all the toxins to want to jump out of my body OR if I am fighting a good old fashion cold.  BUT I have been sleeping like 9 hours a night and not doing hair or make up :D therefore I keep planning a vlog I never do! 

I finished the Clean book by Dr. Junger and started a new book by one of his colleagues called Revive.  Great reading and I love how they both tie in our mental and emotional loads into what happens in our body.  So I thought I would summarize the top three things Dr. Junger suggests even if you do not jump into a full cleanse with his supplements besides the normal eat fruits and veggies.

1. Make sure there are 12 hours between the last thing you put in your mouth at night and the first thing in the morning.  It takes our bodies sometimes as much as 8 hours to fully digest our food.  That leaves atleast 4 hours a day for our body to go into detox mode and do some daily house cleaning.  This is harder than I thought as I started… I realized how much I graze on things post dinner but I am sleeping much better!
2. Replace breakfast with a juice/smoothie/protein shake.  This is easier for your digestive system to process so you are not over taxing it.  I have read this in a lot of books.  Even Dr. Mercola says this is what he eats every breakfast.  I got a AWESOME new juicer from William Sonoma for Christmas from my father in law so I have been doing this for the last 4 mornings with protein powder.
3. Incorporate probiotics into your supplements and/or at a minimum a cleanse.  A lot of the cleanse books I read talk about giving your body a break but this one talks a lot about using that time to heal and giving your body the right supplements to do that during that time.  There is some great science on how your gut is as instrumental in hormone production as your brain so keeping the good bacteria is crucial in that. 

So in my first baby step I am incorporating these three.  Only issue so far is a new routine with eating because with the juice in the morning, I am hungry again by 10:30am for lunch. But baby steps….I have also cut out the morning sugar in the coffee (which I do not enjoy yet) AND cut my bread carbs down to one serving a day.  WHOA Happy New Year!! 

I got a vlog to put up tomorrow but wanted to share how much I enjoyed the book!!

Hope your new year started off with a bang and that my Aussie girls are staying dry with the horrible floods.  xoxo

New Year - New Reads!

Mom and Dad stocked me up on some great new reads for Christmas!  Work is slower than normal and I am a reading machine and I have about 3 different directions I would love to try with the new year?  I just get so excited to have some time to think and read and contemplate what I could do with myself with a 48 hour day!  Do you get this way during the last week of the year???  

Well I know we can only choose one so I stopped my A.D.D. way of book reading for the rest of the week and picked one book to finish vs. starting all of them at once.  I chose the Clean Program since I have been threatening for some time to do a cleanse and I think it is a great way to start the new year fresh.  I love the book that goes along with it because it doesn't just say do x/y/z but gives you the science behind the why so I can understand what parts are right for me and my situation.  

So our house is like one big science experiment right now.  We took our measurements and there are supplements and notebooks all over the place while we track and learn more about ourselves.  But the biggest gift is just getting fired up and excited and sharing with my hubby on the results and what we think.  We have had some kick butt conversations to close out the year.  

I have quite a social day - lunch with a friend and dinner with husband's work so I didn't shoot a vlog but wanted to share all the neat things I am reading.  Best quote from my current book - "...all stressors on the system, from toxic foods to toxic thoughts, manifest as a mucusy heaviness in the body, which is the first stage of disease."  That one statement helped propel me from wanting to clean up the diet to doing it.  I am addicted to carbs right now so I am going to prep one week of clean eating and then go into the 3 weeks cleanse.  Main point on why I like this clean vs. some of the raw food ones I have been reading is that it incorporates putting good bacteria and probiotics back into your diet so you are healing and now just cleaning out the system.  I do believe all health starts with our intestines and our detox abilities...even though that is not the prettiest thing to chat about on a vlog.  LOL! 

Well I am off to start my day just wanted to share my new books with you and see what you might have gotten from Santa.

Cheers! Amy