What’s the difference between a diet,

a cleanse and a change in eating habits?

I see a lot of confusion as to what course of action is the best when it comes to trying to lose weight.

Which is the best for you?  What kind of results should you expect to see and what kind of results should you expect, to keep, when it’s all over?

A Cleanse- Whether you take on a cleanse for spiritual reasons or physical reasons they can be a wonderful cathartic experience both physically and emotionally.  Cleanses require true discipline and 100% adherence.

Here are a few of my favorite things about cleansing:

A. They require discipline and you will have a sense of accomplishment when it’s over.

B.  By depriving yourself for a little while, you will appreciate little things like chicken breast and steamed broccoli.  Which leads me to…

C.  They can be a great starting off point for a new healthy way of eating.

D.  Some cleanses will help to clear out toxins from your body, clear your skin, stop food addictions, etc.

My least favorite things about “cleanses”:

A.  the term is too broad, one person might be referring to a “fast”, like the cayenne pepper and lemon water cleanse, with no food for several days, to several weeks or longer and someone else might be referring to just cutting meat out of their diets and yet both will use the phrase “cleanse”.

B.  what’s good for the mind, ,may not be ideal for the body, if you are doing a severe fast for your own personal reasons I commend you for your discipline but keep in mind that you are ultimately starving yourself and that will cause your body to consume its own muscle and store fat.  Any time you starve yourself this is the reaction your body will go into so please remember that the weight you lose during a fasting cleanse is not healthy weight loss.  If you are doing a “fast / cleanse” for the sole purpose of weight loss then you have been misled.

C. Some cleanses are flat out unhealthy and dangerous.

A Diet- This refers to any style of eating where discipline is required to force yourself to eat a certain way to get to a goal weight.  In other words someone is making all the decisions for you;  Jenny Craig, The Zone, following the “email diet” exactly.  All of these are examples of diets.  Someone else is doing the thinking for you, limiting, restricting your calories and forcing you to only eat certain foods.

The good things about diets:

A.      It’s a good place to start, especially if you are obese or have other health concerns related to your diet (hi blood pressure, diabetes, etc)

B.      They take no thought

C.      99.9% of all diets out there work, if you follow them.  If you are following a diet and not losing weight, the problem is your interpretation of what “following the diet” means not the diet.

The Bad:

A.      If it requires discipline and “true grit” to stay on it… Then it’s only a matter of time before you fall off the wagon.  It will only last so long and you will go back to eating the foods that brought you comfort in the past.

B.      If the caloric requirements of the diet, are too low, you will lose primarily muscle and water and ultimately slow down your metabolism.  So that when you go back to eating your “comfort foods” they will actually make you fatter than they did the first time.

C.      Some are just plain unhealthy

Changing your Eating Habits is ultimately what we’re always after for you.  If you are not 100% satisfied with the way your body looks, your health or your athletic performance.  Then the first place to start is by changing your eating habits. This can be done utilizing the aforementioned tools (diet and cleanses) but it will only be successful if it ultimately leads to a permanent change in your eating habits.  A cleanse that helps to stop your food addictions and cravings, that leads to a “healthy” diet (like the email diet) and a period of time where you are letting someone else do the thinking for you, monitoring your body fat percentages and seeing the effect different foods have on your body, is where you most likely have to start but in order to be successful you must not end here! The next phase is taking the time to learn what foods are best for you and what your body requires to give you the energy you need.   Slowly this new style of eating will become what you gravitate towards, naturally, and it will no longer require discipline.  Until you get to that point you are still “dieting” and that means you are still in the danger zone.  You are at a point where at any moment you will revert back to eating your “old way” and just as quickly as you lost the weight it will pop, right back on!

We are here to work with you to help you take the foods you crave and understand why your body is asking for them.  I hate the words “I sabotage myself”.   No you do not!  There are very few people that have had such emotional turmoil in their lives that they truly eat to protect themselves.   In most cases you think your body is the enemy that it’s somehow going against you, when in fact you just aren’t giving it what it requires to survive because your diet is so freaking pathetic! Stop treating yourself and your body like the enemy, you are very much on the same team, it wants you alive, that is it’s only agenda.  Take the time to learn why you eat the way you do, journal your cravings, your energy levels, your sleep pattern.  Take some time to focus on you and be willing to eat differently, be willing to change and be willing to get uncomfortable so that ultimately you can be very comfortable and happy with yourself.

My 3 goals with the upcoming 7 week challenge, is not to see how long you can adhere to a “raw” diet before your head explodes J My hope is that I will see you incorporate, lots and lots, of veggies and fruits into your diet (with many of those being raw)  #2 That I will see each and every one of you, participating in the challenge, stretch yourself into an uncomfortable zone.  Whether that be simply by taking the “before” picture, participating in a race, forcing yourself to eat vegetables, or all of the above!  #3 that when the challenge is over you will have acquired new “healthy eating habits” that will last a lifetime!

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