Love

noun, verb, loved, lov·ing.


–noun

1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

3. sexual passion or desire.

---dictionary.reference.com

How to Stick to A Detox - Battling Temptation

If your like me, when you first begin a detox, fear of failure is already starring you in the face, in the form of chocolate cake donuts you so conveniently see your co-workers eating, or a family size supreme pizza laid out on the kitchen table that someone at home so conveniently ordered so that as soon as you walk in the door, you would see it!

Prepare yourself for the Battle of the Foods!

The temptation of food is always around us, and isn't going anywhere just because you are on a detox. Many of us don't even realize that we have food addictions. This is what you need to realize before you begin. If you've ever started something and didn't finish, it means you weren't prepared to deal with whatever it was that made you give up. In this case, you need to be prepared for the temptation of the foods that you are not allowed to eat on your detox! Do what you need to do in order to minimize temptation. You definitely can't control what other people eat, but, it might help to tell those that you live with what you are doing. It might also help to explain why you are detoxing. If they can understand your health concerns and goals and see how important they are to you, and, they are generous enough, they might agree to kindly hide certain things from you, particularly those things that you have a weakness for, or they might even opt to join you on some level and incorporate more healthy foods into their diet. This would be especially helpful if you typically eat together with the people you live with.

If this method doesn't work in terms of minimizing your temptation, just prepare yourself on a mental level to avoid it or reject it. This definitely takes strength and practice, especially if this is something fairly new to you. By strength I mean you need to be telling yourself to stay strong! You need to remind yourself of why you’re doing it and how that purpose will never be accomplished unless you follow through!

Here are some positive affirmations that might help you do this:

I am capable of doing this.

I am taking very good care of my body.

I value my body

I value the results of my effort.

While doing this, my digestive system is getting the rest it has been asking for.

I appreciate my body's ability to heal.

I respect my body.

I am strong enough, I have plenty of will.

I am worth this much.

If others can do it, I can too.


These are just some things that you can tell yourself throughout the process to keep you strong and focused until the end.


I also mentioned that it takes practice. Once you get through one detox, even if you get through it half way :), you are that much more capable of having success the next time around.  In addition, you need to train yourself during the course of a detox by practicing to resist temptation, and also, diligently eating or drinking the things that you are required to have throughout your detox whether it is a juicing that you are doing, a fasting, a raw food detox, or if you are taking herbal detox pills, and, whether you are doing it for a day or a month.  If you have a hard time resisting a particular type of food, or something that you should not do while on a detox, such as drinking coffee or consuming alcohol, then you need to practice not giving in to that weakness. For example, if you are doing everything right, but, you just can't seem to give up coffee, or you just can't seem to resist that free drink at the bar on a night out with your friends. Don't do it!  It's easy to understand that you are used to doing something, but, if you are on a strict detox then resisting those things that have the strongest temptation will give you the best discipline to carry on successfully.  Part of good discipline is learning how to say no to yourself and to others.  This is important for achieving the goal that you are setting for yourself.  For example, when you finally say no to something you could not seem to say no to before, even if you have to just build up the spontaneous strength do so, you will be proud of yourself and find it much easier the next time the opportunity comes around.  You have to make up your mind that you will reach your goal, no matter what.  If you can help your surroundings that's great, but, you never know what you might be faced with.  I decided once to detox during Memorial Day weekend surrounded by food!  However, I had my mind set on what I was doing, so I didn't give in to all of the temptation!

As always, you should be learning to practice a certain amount of maintenance in between your detoxes.  The more you learn about your body, the more you are willing to help it.  Becoming mindful of what you put into your body helps you to not always "over do it" and to start gaining control over some of your food addictions... When you kick some eating habits, you might realize that that's exactly what they were; addictions.  Remember, you don't have to live to eat, but you should definitely eat to live.

The Mystery of Success

Have you ever wondered about the things that separate the successful from the unsuccessful, the happy from the depressed, and the healthy from the unhealthy? I have, in fact, become obsessed with this particular wonder. Why? Well, if you want something bad enough, you tend to go after it. I'm not sure about you, but, I want to be successful. When I say successful, I'm not just speaking of making lots of money. When I focus on making money, I surely like to be successful at it! However, I'm talking about being successful in multiple areas of life. To rephrase it, I'm speaking about being successful at life.

One thing you should get into your mind is the right perception and idea of the meaning "success". Most people go straight to thinking of just money or having a high status in society or in the corporate world. Surely, these are things that accompany successful people, but, there's more to the concept. Gaining money is something that you can be successful at, but, you can be successful, as I was implying, at anything good in life. In other words, the money and the material things will never define your true success. View the money, the statuses, and other material accumulation as perks. On the other hand, view success as an umbrella under which all these things can reside under. You see, success is not determined by outcomes, results, or any accumulation of material value. It's actually determined by your performance in a given area, with your performance being a complexity of the approaches you take towards building the things you desire. The constructed outcomes are perks you get for being successful.  In addition, your success can be determined by how you protect, maintain, and nurture those perks. 

How often do you hear about famous athletes being evaluated for their performance? This is probably the majority of the time. Rarely, are they solely evaluated by the number of games they win. For one, most times, they are not in the game as a separate entity. They are in the game as a part of a team. You should start viewing yourself as a part of a team. Successful people build teams with other successful people and people who are like-minded in terms of their goals.  Just as that athlete has to take into consideration his teammates, many times it may take the help of others, or additional factors to reach a goal. Of course, you can not always have control over all of these things. That is the nature of life, but, your performance, if well, will definitely get you far. Indeed, you should strive to perform at your best. Plus, if you win, the victory is sweet.  In addition, when high performing athletes are on a winning streak, they try their best to keep it that way and give a good performance, and when the best athlete loses, they lose with dignity and grace. 
The average person who says that they want to be successful fails to just say what they really want. Therefore, they often end up stuck having little to no clues to how to get there and often stay in the dream phase or in the searching phase. They want to be able to spend more time with their family, they want to be able to provide more, they want more money, they want to be promoted at their job, they want a nice car, they want to pursue their passion, etc. If they focused on the specifics of what they really wanted, things would be clearer. If you ask someone what it takes to get these things, they could come up with an answer, plans that can be acted on. If you ask someone what it takes to be successful, they won't be able to give you a direct answer because it depends on what you want to gain from your success, what exactly you want to be successful at, and what routes you are willing to take. Success embodies the action, not the results. That's what separates people who continue to be successful from those that don't. They know this secret of success. They figure out exactly what they want, they set goals to achieve them, and the more goals they accomplish, the more their success mentality is strengthened and the more things they can put on their "wish list.” If you take everything they own away from them, they will likely take their success umbrella and continue to put things under it again and create more success driven areas of their life because they have developed an action-based success mentality.

Under this umbrella you are protecting anything in your life that you want to be successful at. These could be your relationships, your family, your health, your profession, skills, talents, etc. By the way, you want this umbrella to be the sturdy type because it's shielding all of the things you value from adversity.

You might be thinking, "Well, I'm not successful, so does that mean I don't have an umbrella?" I'm going to go ahead and say no, you don't. Now that that's out of the way, I will tell you that you can start building one whenever you like! All you have to do is decide why you want to be successful, then that should lead to you figuring out what it is you really want. Once you figure out what you want in life, you have an edge towards success, a clear vision of motivation that can drive you to be successful. Once you start taking action, the action will start to form you your own success umbrella! The good news is that you can continue throughout your life to strengthen it.

Successful people treat success as a principle and a practice, and, no adversity or any outside forces can destroy a person's principles, only that person can. Also, if success is a principle, then you can acquire it before you acquire things. Do you see where I'm going with this? What did every successful person do before they became "successful"? Once they knew what they wanted, they believed in their success instantaneously! They then practiced success, and thus, became filled with a successful attitude as they took necessary action towards the things that they wanted. They ultimately became successful, and, accordingly, manifested what they wanted.

The Idea of Detoxing

Many people, unfortunately, give a weird expression or response when you mention the idea of detoxing to them. Although there are many who do grasp the importance and "realness", if you will, of the concept of incorporating detoxing into their life, there are still many, far too many, who are ignorant, whether by choice or by social conditions, to the reasons behind detoxing, and why it is a necessary component to a healthy life.

I first gained an interest in detoxing through research of my own. No one in my family or my circle of friends had ever mentioned anything about detoxing to me. It was a foreign concept to me, as it still is to many. I actually had never heard of it until learning of it on my own by searching for ways to develop a better health. I've spent years now, researching ways to acquire an overall better quality of life, of course, taking a holistic approach to my learning. However, thus far, nutrition and body health has been a strong focus, and the concept of detoxing was one of the very first key factors I had come across. Ever since, I have valued it to be one of the most important factors in healing and maintaining a healthy body.

Growing up, I didn't always eat healthy. Let me rephrase that, I don't think I hardly ever ate healthy! In fact, my eating habits consisted of a lot of McDonald’s and other fast foods. I loooooved pizza...shhh, I still do! I would often eat frozen dinners...and not the "Healthy Choice" ones. As a child, I remember not drinking water because I didn't "like" it. I loved candy and junk food, and in my household, there was plenty of it for me. My mother would cook meals often enough so that I would occasionally get my serving of vegetables, but, when she didn't, which became more often than not after having three more children, I was left to live off of the frozen pizzas, chicken nugget dinners, hot pockets, and hot dogs. I know, that sounds bad, but, I was ignorant to what was good.

Then, of course, I carried these bad eating habits with me into my adulthood. When I moved into my first apartment, I hardly ever used my stove!

Any who, after suffering from health problems as well as depression, I started to wake up and realize that that lifestyle was not the one I was meant to live. I wanted something better. I hated going to the doctors for health issues, only to find that nothing they ever provided for me gave me any true healing or long-term relief. As far as the depression, I knew for a fact that I would not yield that information to a doctor. The last thing I wanted was a doctor telling me what I already knew; that I was depressed. They would only to give me yet more medicine, which, again, had never provided any long-term relief for me before, and I didn't expect it to give me any long-term relief now. All that medicine could possibly do for me was suppress symptoms. I didn't want any suppression, I wanted a cure! I definitely didn't want to go to counseling...why would I want to talk to a stranger and I didn't even want to talk to those close to me?

I started researching. I thank God that I had finally instilled it in my mind that I was going to work on improving my life and turn all of my negative dispositions into positive outcomes, no matter what it took, and no matter how long it took.

I was introduced to the world of raw food. I was intrigued enough to use a 100% raw food as my first method of detoxing years ago. It lasted for a few days. I will never forget how much I went to the bathroom and how much weight I lost! Not being educated enough on what I was doing to my body, I had a near break down right after and my health problems seemed to get worse. I quickly went back to my bad eating habits...McDonald’s chicken sandwiches, fries, and shakes...almost everyday after work!!

With that being said, I knew that I didn't want to give up forever. I continued researching, making it a habit in itself. I learned that detoxing is essential, but, for a body that never detoxes, it can be initially very shocking to it. Many people may detox and either don't follow through because of the shocking feelings and withdrawal symptoms, and/or dismiss the idea altogether because of problem symptoms they have that seem to get worse during or after the detox. This is a natural, but, not long-term, body reaction that I was not initially aware of.

The more I learned about the body's ability to heal itself, I fell passionate to the truth that what you eat has a ton, a load, an EXTREME impact on the way you think, feel, look, live, and all of the bodily conditions that you have. Not only did I begin experimenting with preparing full meals, I taught myself how to prepare healthy meals. I discovered that I love cooking this way. Incorporating new spices, herbs, and an array of veggies into meals and inventing your own nutritional dishes is fun! I used to pass on salads at restaurants, now I am the salad making queen! Restaurant salads are boring :-)

Of course, as you may have gathered this is not something that happens overnight. It's a process that has to turn into a way of life. There are so many things to learn about the human body, food, and how they interact with each other, so many things to learn about the S.A.D. diet, or the Standard American Diet, so many things to learn about the way you should be eating, what foods can help you achieve this, not to mention the intricacies of raw foods, cooked foods, herbs that heal, etc.

You might be saying, this is too complicated or, where on earth would I start? I remember my mom starring at me in the kitchen while I tediously spent time cutting up an array of fresh veggies to put in my salad. She said, "That's why people don't do that, it takes too much work." I responded by saying, "It's worth it." Now I don't pay attention to the time it takes, I just do it and enjoy doing it. Indeed, after years of McDonald’s, cookies, cake, ribs, and indulging in a combination of every culture's food and seeing billboards everyday to keep us reminded of it, there is GOING to be temptation and you may be glued to some of your weaknesses for a while, but, you can make a drastic change in how often you fight that temptation, and what bad habits you will replace. You can start your new habits by building a foundation of respect for your body. Start by detoxing. Done right, it can provide as a strong leader to your health journey. When I say done right, I mean don't just go to the health food store and buy some detox pills. Instead, research the topic first. Learn what you are doing to your body. Learn how you can prepare for a detox, the ways that you can detox, the length you want to detox, how often you should detox, and what exactly are you detoxing! This will not only be a gesture of you respecting yourself and your body, but you will learn a lot about ways of health that you never knew, encouraging you to value the detox process, your body, and empowering you to maintain new healthy eating habits and living practices.

A lot of people get discouraged when they think about losing weight, setting health goals, or even just developing healthier eating habits. What people fail to realize is that the change needed to successfully accomplish any of these things should be viewed as a change within your lifestyle, and not just a temporary fix. Eating is a mandatory way of life! We wouldn't be human if we didn't eat. We eat everyday, all throughout the day. So obviously, making any change to how we eat is huge! In other words, it's ok to have that initial fear or resistance. But my point is that most people tend to give up and succumb to the defeat of the discomfort of the change, the confusion of what foods to eat, how to prepare it, etc. They feel as though they are not interested in learning, yet they want their desired weight, they want their health problems removed, they want more energy, and they want it now! Commercial businesses that advertise commercial chemical filled products that proclaim to solve your problems feed off of your impatience, yet, they will never feed you want you really want or what you really need. Yes, there is a lot to be learned in order to develop a new lifestyle, but, it is worth it. Any change that you can make to benefit your health, whether small or big, is worth it. You can start small by doing a detox for as short as two to three days. What value there is in a free education that will not only increase your intellect, but increase the quality of your life? If you don't value your body who will?

What's important to remember is that if something has the potential to increase the quality of your life in any measure, then it is well worth trying until you succeed. In fact, working on your health and the way you eat is something that should be done for the rest of your life, hence earlier when I stated it is a way of life that needs to be developed. Of course, in the beginning, as with any habit you are trying to develop, it may seem as though you have to obsess over it just for it to work at all, and again, that may seem like just too much work. Trust me, this is ok and healthy and better than giving up! Obsess over it! Drill it into your head that you want to kick old habits to the curve and develop new ones! This is just a secret to success. You do want to be successful at your health, right?

You may have guessed that gaining good health doesn't only depend on a detox, but, if good health is one of your goals, then you might want to start with the idea of detoxing...That's where I started.

Remember that eating is a way of life. Eating healthy is a way of health. Keep your life healthy!