Alkaline and Acid - in layman's terms.

A simple way to understand why spinach is good and cake - not so good!

I think one of the most confusing things about food is the two camps that nutrition seems to fall into.

1. Eat this to lose weight and
2. Eat this and be healthy.

They are more often than not completely conflicting. There is no way that you are going to convince me that eating nothing but meat and cream is healthy, neither are diet drinks, low calorie spreads or a certain brand of weight lose ready meals!

My way of looking at is – if you eat to be healthy you’ll lose weight AND look after your longterm health. Lets face it – what would you really enjoy doing if you were in pain all the time or had no energy. Health is our most important asset and prevention is much, much better than cure.

So – my easy way to gauge whether something is good for you or not (and why) is the Acid v Alkaline scale. Basically, if something makes the body acid it is bad and if its alkaline its good. Simple. Disease cannot live in an alkaline environment so, if you want to be healthy, then increase the alkaline levels in your body.

As you would suspect – the following are alkaline boosting:
Whole grains, fresh, organic vegetables, clean water, pulses etc ….. all the things you know are good for you. Also, happiness, fresh air, exercise (not weird compulsive exercise though), love, massage, sex (not the weird compulsive sex though) etc all make the body more alkaline too! Guess what – detox is very, very good!

No prizes if you know what makes your body acid. Meat, sugar, alcohol, processed food, dairy, refined wheat …… all the things you know are bad for you. Hating someone, being miserable, complaining (and spending too much time watching people being murdered on the telly) are also acid forming. Oh – I almost forgot – one of the most extremely acid forming foods you can possibly consume are ………… artificial sweeteners! Diet does not equal healthy!

That’s it really – for the simple version. For the complicated version there is lots of information on the net and charts you can download. I just think its important to know WHY you should eat good stuff and the difference it can make to your body and your life.
I hope this is useful – if not, don’t complain – it’ll just make you more acid!!  http://www.VitalDetox.com

A Little Something from Sweden

Here's a little Swedish Proverb for you ........

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours x

Weight Loss Versus Health

At Vital our overall ethos and mission statement is based heavily on Health, not just weight loss. I think we all know that just losing weight quickly over one week is not going to keep it off in the long term because, unless we look at our emotional eating and our food addictions (sugar mainly, followed by carbs that turn to sugar), then we will probably end up back where we started. Like most things you can either treat the symptoms or the cause - to me it seems prudent to concentrate on the former.

This is why I weight (no pun intended) the content of our Retreat so heavily on the side of Emotional Detox and Nutritional Re-education. There is so much more to being healthy and happy than how we look and yet our whole society is based on the premise that if we look good then we will be happy and all will be well forever! If we give ourselves the chance to increase our health, vitality and reach our own healthy weight then we will benefit in so many deeper ways rather than just fitting into our thin jeans! Why not be thin AND happy rather than struggle constantly to be thin?

I really believe that, if we have the courage to look at the things that make us uncomfortable, if we move away from the easily consumed pap and ingest real stuff, that if we face our fears, we will break the negative patterns that we struggle with. We're all in the same boat, it's simply the human condition. Very often, making friends with that part of ourselves that we try to avoid really does set us free. By doing this we no longer need to push our feelings down with food, drugs, work, sex, love addiction, busy-ness or any other such device. When we reach down and pull our 'yucky' bits into the light we are able to see that they are just unloved, unhappy parts of ourselves that need more understanding and compassion - we need to give ourselves a break!

This is be a good example of  - Why Detox.


It's not just loosing weight, feeling great, having more energy and looking younger that makes detoxing a very good investment; there are also numerous other benefits. 


The toxins in our body actual damage our cells which means they can't perform the functions that they need to. These toxins come from our food, the air we breath, our drinking water, cosmetics, cleaning products, medicines, recreational drugs, suppressed negative emotions, radio waves - many more pollutants than our bodies were designed to deal with. If you think that there was a time when our food was purely free range, organic and raised without hormones and antibiotics, there were no fossil fuel fumes  (say that when you're drunk) or any chemical residues - our bodies would have had a manageable amount of toxic load to deal with. Granted we probably had a life expectancy of 25 due to other bigger things that wanted to eat us, but we would have been bloody healthy up to that point!


Many of the ailments we suffer from today are simply due to the fact that we can't get rid of the poisons in our bodies fast enough before another lot arrives. Working on retreats I have seen eczema dry up, psoriasis fade, arthritis pain disappear, acne clear, a myriad of bowel problems settle and two marked cases of Fibromyalgia completely disappear. I hadn't come across Fibromyalgia often before this, although I was aware that the pain can be crippling. This is what one woman said after her week at a Vital Detox Retreat - 


"After 14 years of fibromyalgia: on a good day my joints ached and I was stiff but functional; on a bad day I just had to rest - always a background of chronic pain and fatigue. For the first time in all those years I AM PAIN FREE - completely and consistently! I had no idea the toxicity my body was trying to cope with nor the cost to my life. Words cannot convey my gratitude to you all and to life for delivering me to you. Thank you from every bone in my body - much love x"


The reason why I do this work is so that people don't suffer needlessly. Life can be challenging enough without suffering from physical or emotional symptoms that can, relatively easily, be drastically reduced (I dare not say cured in these litigious times). 


For more information about whether a detox could be of help to you please contact us at www.VitalDetox.com.

Food v Nutrition!

I feel sad that something as wonderful and essential as food has become so fraught with difficulty for so many of us. I've spent years (probably 30 if I'm honest) thinking about how healthy my food is. I've fasted, I've juiced, I've been vegan, macrobiotic, vegetarian and enjoyed the see-food diet! Over the years I have found what feels good and suits the way I want to live my life and, as long as I mainly eat healthily, I don't tend to give myself too much of a hard time. I haven't studied nutrition, I don't know the science but I've certainly found what works for me.


Simple Health Tips

1. - What's good for you? Some people can live on bacon sandwiches all their lives and not suffer and some people won't eat tofu because its too processed! Find out what foods suit your specific body type. A good way to do this is an exclusion diet. Sometimes we are so unhealthy our bodies can't tell us what we need, or don't need. It's so busy sorting out the latest meal that it doesn't have the energy to complain! By fasting - you give the body a chance to detox, clear the decks and throw out years of unhealthy build up. Then, when you're all clean, you can introduce one food at a time. Your body will let you know if it can metabolise that food easily or whether it would be better without it. If I eat sugar my hip joints hurt within a few minutes. Its a good reminder that sugar isn't good for me!




2. - Eat like an Animal! We are so used to the over processed, artificial food that we're sold - some of which we're even told is good for us, that we forget that basically we're animals. We dress our bodies, spray them with stuff and try to disguise it but, biologically, we are the same as any other mammal. As a rule, therefore, the best way to eat is just as an animal would - choose food as it is when it comes out of the ground. Its cheaper, healthier, and tastes great. When we eat foods that are full of sugar, salt and synthetic additives we become addicted and, for a while, food without it tastes bland. If you eat simple, fresh, organic food for a while your body looses its addiction for highly salted or sugary foods and starts to prefer healthy foods. It takes just as long to make a delicious healthy meal as it does to heat up an instant meal - much cheaper too.


Basic rule (with exceptions of course) - brown and green foods are good - white and yellow foods not so nutritious and can be hard to digest. 


At Vital Detox we give you the chance - not only to have an exclusion diet so that you know what foods don't benefit you and drag you down, but also to learn about what foods you, specifically, need to keep you healthy, energised and looking great. Also - when you've only taken in fresh, organic juices with a delicious raw meal to finish - you will remember what its like to feel absolutely wonderful. When you're full of energy, mentally alert, emotionally positive and enthusiastic about life you simply won't want to go back to eating dead, nutritionally empty food again. Why would you?


For more information on detox and health go to www.VitalDetox.com

Its never too late to have a happy childhood!

In the last blog I was talking about the physical aspects of detox. There is more information about how it works on the website www.vitaldetox.com. Other therapies that we provide are yoga, massage, acupuncture, reflexology, abdominal massage, hot stone therapy, beauty therapies and much more.

Emotional Detox

As we all know, our bodies do not work independently from the loony that lives in our head (our minds), our bodies reflect and hold feelings and emotions that we experience. Also, if we're trying our best to change our eating habits or our lives, we can sometimes find, suddenly, as if from no-where, we're compulsively doing the thing that we're trying not to do. This is very often because part of us is actively sabotaging.

In the work that I do as a Journey Therapist (I trained with Brandon Bays 10 years ago) I have come to see more and more that the people we used to be and the experiences we had when we were younger, still exist inside us. Its like having an unhappy teenager living inside us and, just when we think we're getting everything on track, the rebellious teen makes us drink too much, sleep with the postman, shout at our neighbour or eat our own body weight in ice-cream. Its our younger selves that need help - not us.

Usually our grown-up selves have worked it out, realised its not our parents/husbands/brothers fault and that actually we're ok. Our younger selves, however, might still be in pain from an abuse, a death, a rejection or a shock and are still needing help and support. What I do in my work on the retreat, is give the younger self everything it needs to get over what happened and to become an integrated part of the whole rather than the 'enemy' within. If there is a part of you that is in pain, it needs, just like a child, more love and acceptance not less. We so often beat ourselves up when we do things that are against our  best intentions - this only makes that part of ourselves feel more rejected and pissed off and the whole thing perpetuates. ITS NEVER TOO LATE TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD! I promise - its actually really simple and easy and most people I work with let go of a major issue in an hour! I know it sounds too good to be true but its not, its really good and really true!

I think that a lot of talking therapy just gets us to understand rationally what happened to us but doesn't always enable us to let it go. By doing a Journey process, the event or events that caused our pain can be released from the body where its being held in the cells. This is mainly done through forgiveness - very simple and incredibly effective. It's like three years therapy in an hour!

By removing the emotional pain and blocks that are causing our destructive behaviours we can live the way we want to without constantly struggling with ourselves. For this reason, The Journey sessions are an essential part of detox and enable clients to leave The Retreat feeling lighter and happier on all levels - not just physically. For more information about The Journey go to www.VitalDetox.com.

Detox - What, Why, Where and Who?

I think about Detox lots - lots and lots and lots. I think about it so much that I thought I'd start a whole business based around Detox!

I think that the whole concept of health has completely changed over the past few years, its much less about 'I'm broken, fix me' and more about 'how can I make sure I don't break so much'. Because of this change there is a sudden surge in health articles, Blogs, retreats, therapies, therapists, pundits and warnings. As a result most people are confused and don't know what to believe.

This Blog is about what I believe and how that has changed (and still changes regularly - usually when I fancy a pizza!).

There are lots of ways to detox - you can do it on your own (lonely) or with a friend (mutual moaning) or in a group whilst being looked after and guided by caring and rather gorgeous experts! (I'm being glib - I've detoxed on my own lots and its fine but some people find it hard to resist the temptations without moral support.) The basic thing with detox is that, when you stop eating, your body has a chance to get rid of some of the rubbish that has built up over the years. If you keep eating everyday your body has to work to sort it out - to separate it to save the stuff it needs and get rid of the stuff it doesn't. Its like when you go to the local tip and they've closed the gates to deal with overflowing skips. If they didn't close the gates to stop more rubbish coming in they would be overwhelmed and overflowing with detritus. Unfortunately for us - the body likes to store rubbish in fat to protect the rest of the body - your bum is basically landfill!!!

So - first thing is to stop eating. This will allow the body to detox and if you are very disciplined then stopping eating and only drinking water and herb teas is a good start. It will work but its hard.

Add to not eating - supplements. These fill you up, cleanse the gut, loosen the old dried on lining of the bowel and flush it through. This makes it much easier as you don't get so hungry and it also gives you a chance to cleanse the bowel at the same time. This means that, when you do eat, all the nutrients you need will be readily absorbed by your bowel and carried (by the hepatic portal vein - I remembered that from school!) to your liver where it is metabolised and carried to where its needed.

Add to not eating and supplements - fresh organic juices. These give the body some nutrients that are easily absorbed so you don't need to start all that labour intensive digesting again and it gives the mouth (and mind) something to look forward to. It also means that you can regulate the speed at which the body detoxes. If the detox symptoms are very severe (headaches, nausea, dizziness etc) you can slow it down by increasing the quantity of juice or speed it up by reducing it. Juice can act as the detox throttle.

Add to not eating, supplement, juices - colonic irrigation. Although people wince at this, I have found that most look forward to it, are intrigued by it and feel bloody brilliant afterwards. I have special self administered gravity colonic equipment from America (they are called Colema boards there) that gently allow water into the large intestine and the body releases it when its ready. No pushing and shoving - it just flows in and out while you read a book or pick your nose, easy. This washes away the toxins that have been released into the bowel and all the old stuff that has been loosened off the walls. For those of you with a history of constipation it really is like being re-born. I can't tell you how good it feels to have a really good 'wash'.

Now I've started its hard to stop.

Still to come ........... Emotional Detox (invaluable), Nutritional workshops, Coaching to formulate a cohesive, workable plan, massage, yoga, guided meditations (delicious), hot tub (now you're talking), indoor pool, sauna, gym, games room, beauty treatments using organic products, views, fresh air, waterfalls, luxury accommodation, wood burning stoves, great people, fun. It just goes on and on ..... like me!

I'm doing this because I'm passionate about it. I have never worked in an environment that has given me such fulfilment and that makes me feel so lucky before. I love seeing what happens to people when they give themselves the chance to step into health and happiness for the first time in years - its humbling. I'll stop now x

In the meantime - for more information about Detox visit - www.vitaldetox.com