We have come to the end of our 21 day family-wide detox. It’s crazy how time flies, even during a time like this one when you’re looking forward to the end. I suppose working to raise 5 kids, homeschooling 2 and keeping a handle on the house will keep anyone busy enough to make time seem to speed by.
As I mentioned when I laid out our Detox Plan, my Hubby was going to do a 21 day intensive detox, while the kids and I participated in a more gentle one. The protocol for the one I’m on lasts much longer- at least 2 months, and it doesn’t actually include any diet modification. It’s just supplements that I continue to take that help my body rid itself of the stored toxins. We decided to add a major diet modification during the 21 day period that my husband was doing his; that way we’d be doing similar things at the same time. Of course, the more raw and the less junk I eat, the better my body will be able to use the special stuff I’m putting in, and not have its energy diverted to deal with new toxins. We also decided that the kids would take the supplements for only the 21 days.
So now, we’ve come to the finish line. Or have we?
My body is still getting toxins out. I can tell. I have certain body signals that show up usually only when I’ve been eating a lot of junk, and they’re here now. Or rather, they never went away. I know that my diet has been exceptionally clean in my choice of food, so they should be gone, but they’re not. Which is proof to me that my body is cleaning itself up, but is not finished.
Now that we’ve come to the goal of our 21 day detox, what do we do? Just cross the finish line and go gorge ourselves?
Not exactly.
If there’s one thing I’ve seen over the past several years of learning to manage a household, it’s the importance of establishing habits. Flylady teaches you to practice one habit each day for one month. And the habits repeat each year. You’ve heard that it takes 21 days to make a habit; there is much wisdom in the concept of focusing on one thing till you “own it” and not move on until it becomes part of who you are and what you do.
These are the healthy habits I plan for our family to continue. They are nothing new or revolutionary, but we’ve been practicing them for the past 21 days so I’ve seen that it is possible to do them.
- Serve a salad with dinner MOST NIGHTS instead of only a couple of nights a week. When the main course is cooked, there must be some raw. No exceptions.
- Grind fresh flour and make bread myself. I’ve always known it’s better to do this, but my lack of time, paired with how quickly we went through a loaf of bread, I thought made this completely impractical. So I would make bread once in a while but certainly not every week and definitely not for daily consumption of sandwiches. Now that we’ve gone through this purposeful plan of cleaning up our bodies, I want to make sure we fill it with things that will be useful and life-giving, and not gunk it up with “fillers”. So, I’m going to make bread. At least twice a week. I did it for the past 2 weeks, and it really wasn’t that hard or time consuming. We only had a little at a time, which allowed it to last much longer. That brings me to number 3.
- Eat less bread. It is easy to get into the mindset that eating a sandwich is the best thing to do for lunch, especially when you are packing a lunch to send with a child to school. But I’ve re-evaluated that idea. Two whole slices of (store-bought whole wheat) bread is a lot for one meal, especially for a little body, especially when it’s repeated several times throughout the week. In fact, I realized that most of the calories and tummy space of the entire meal was made up bread. Bread that didn’t have much nutrition in it, either, because it was not made with freshly ground flour. No more “bread with every meal”, especially since I need to make it all myself. One slice with some veggies or a salad is plenty, and many meals are complete without it. It’s really just a habit.
- Find non-food “treats”. I give my kids a “treat” every Friday. Since we’ve always restricted “bad” sugar, it became the tradition that their treat took the form of real candy, pudding, etc. But during these past 3 weeks, it was not an option. We talked about shifting our focus off of food as a treat. This past week, they each got to pick a special activity to do, something I hadn’t made the time to allow on regular days. One of them wanted to play with play-dough, and so on. I’m not saying we’ll never allow candy, but changing the definition of a treat is important.
So, while we may be crossing the finish line of our official detox time, we’re not stopping the race entirely. We have established some valuable habits and I hope to add to them, one babystep at a time.
What new healthy habits have you/will you start to practice?
