AFTER THE HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS THE GUILT COMES

If you were able to control yourself from bingeing during the Holidays, then good for you! A lot of people most probably forgot the word ‘diet’ either the entire month of December or the last two weeks of December. And if you’re one of them it’s perfectly okay. It’s hard to ‘celebrate’ when you can’t enjoy all the available goodies, so you took a two-week break or more. No problem. Besides, it was the Holidays! Time to celebrate, right? What’s the harm? It’s just for a short while of being carefree, right?

 But now that it’s January and everyone’s back to reality you may have started to feel some guilt. All the delicious dishes you tried and devoured during the celebrations may now be manifesting through a bit tighter pants or dress, the feeling of being bloated, or maybe you’re seeing a bit more flesh where there used to be none. So, you may be feeling regret for overindulging. But don’t be because you’re entitled to have fun from time to time.

 Don’t beat yourself up about it. What you can do is take action now and get your body back in shape! You did it before, so you can do it again. To start off, you can do some cleansing/juicing to detoxify and get your body back in tip-top form. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when doing so.

• Juicing doesn’t mean drinking packaged fruit juice, which you buy from the store. This is made from a juicer that compresses fruits and vegetables to get all the ‘juice’ out.

• Days before your cleansing, wean yourself from drinking coffee. Green tea will be a good alternative. You will need to phase out red meat, dairy and processed food 2 days prior to cleansing. A day prior, eliminate all meats and carbohydrates. Then you start juicing, which will be fruits or vegetables or a combination of both.

• Avoid doing exercises when cleansing because at this stage you’re trying to bring your body to neutral, and exercising will not be good because it requires a lot of energy. Doing exercise during this time may have negative side effects like feeling more tired and muscle mass breaking down.

• Don’t go beyond 7 days. No matter how great juicing is it also isn’t good when done for prolonged periods of time due to certain deficiencies.

After you’re done cleansing your body and getting rid of the toxins, and if you’re feeling adventurous, you can schedule a colonic to really get ‘clean’. Otherwise, your body will feel brand new, and you can’t start eating healthy and doing exercises again. Your body will be back in no time!