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