No matter what your best friend from high school/cousin/colleague/random Internet marketer tells you, cleanses, detoxes, laxatives teas, and jump-starts are bullshit. Sure, you’ll spend tons of time on the toilet eliminating waste and water from your cells and digestive system and maybe see a temporary loss on the scale, but its just that, temporary loss facilitated by tons of time on the toilet. Once you start eating again the scale will reflect what your body weight actually is with food and waste in your system. The human body is meant to be breaking down energy at various stages throughout the day.
Do you know what does work to detoxify and clean your cells (barring medical issues)? Your liver. You’ve got one, I’ve got one, and they were free so that’s pretty super. Save your money.
However, there is a type of cleanse that I can fully get behind that will actually make your life better and work long term: a social media cleanse.
If you follow pages that make you feel bad about your body, your exercise intensity and preferences, your food consumption, or yourself in any other way, unlike them. Yep, even mine!
If you have friends or family members that post inappropriate content, share things that shame others, or are just generally high on the ick or smug factor, unfriend them or hide their posts.
I’m the last person that will suggest you limit your time spent on social media. Because that would be, uh, hypocritical. But I do suggest looking at facebook/Instagram/twitter etc. as an experience that you get to curate. You can decide to fill your newsfeeds and walls with messages that uplift you and others, genuinely inspire you, and improve your life. You can decide to opt out when you see messages that don’t.
We choose what ideas, information, and people to connect with here, why not make the choice to make it a positive experience more often than not? Your time is too precious to have a facebook feed filled with assholes.
H/T to Erin Brown for starting this conversation for me in her amazing book, As Is.