Inexpensive, easy detox - the one gallon challenge

You've heard of the ice bucket challenge, and maybe even the Ferguson Challenge. Here's a new challenge: the one gallon challenge. Drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade a day, sweetened with stevia, and spiced with cayenne. This is one of the best ways to detoxify, lose weight, and clean out your system. It's also a much better choice for most people than The Master Cleanse.

There's more.

Exercise. Sweat. Get your heart rate going. Deep, heavy breathing helps detoxify the body. Exercise vigorously for 20 minutes a day. If you have access to a sauna, especially one of a non-toxic variety, use it! A steam room is great, too, as long as the water is purified, with the fluoride and other chemicals removed.

There is one specific exercise that can help this detox in an unusual way - bouncing. Rebounding on a trampoline, jumping rope, or jogging while ensuring that you're running with good form (not heel striking) all help circulate your lymph. Do one of these activities for at least 20 minutes a day. Of course, if done vigorously enough to induce heavy breathing and to work up a sweat, the bouncing activities count as the exercise for the day.

Eat. This isn't a fast. You can detoxify without fasting. You are welcome to fast if you want to, and if you know your body can handle it, but it's not necessary in order to receive amazing benefits. Eat produce, salads, and fruits. A serious detox is a good time to avoid pretty much anything else and just focus on produce. If the body is very toxic or so sick that it cannot get nutrition out of food, it is a good time to juice. Otherwise, we recommend eating whole, unadulterated vegetables and fruits in order to get the fiber and many other benefits that are lost when juicing.

If the gut is out of balance, i.e. Candida overgrowth and/or an abundance of bad bacteria, eat lots of garlic with those salads, and take a high quality probiotic and some undecylenic acid or oil of oregano. (When taking oil of oregano, do not take it with probiotics as it will kill the beneficial bacteria}.

Cranberry lemonade recipe:

• Glass gallon jar
• Safe, clean, spring water
• 1 cup of organic cranberry juice, not from concentrate
• 3 organic fresh lemons
• A citrus juicer
• Liquid stevia
• Liquid cayenne

Fill the jar to about 85% capacity with spring water. Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice into the water. Add cranberry juice. Add stevia to taste and then add cayenne to taste. The amount of cayenne used is up to you, but the more the better.

If you don't have access to a good spring water source, use other clean drinking water that does not have fluoride. If you don't have access to organic lemons, use conventional. If there are no fresh lemons, use bottle lemon juice. If you can't get cranberry juice that is not from concentrate, get the reconstituted kind (just don't get any kind of cranberry juice that has any other ingredients like sweeteners or other juices). If you can't stand cayenne, don't use it. No glass jar? Use plastic. No excuses.

If you have powdered cayenne and/or powdered stevia, I recommend using a blender to mix some of the liquid with the powders so they don't settle later.

Drinking a gallon of water a day makes an amazing difference to your health and your appearance (google gallon a day water before and after). Drinking this much fluid flushes the organs and the lymph nodes, hydrates the skin, and helps the body to rebuild cells and regenerate in ways that most people do not get to experience. The cranberry and the lemon help flush the liver and the kidneys even more, and in my experience it's a lot easier to drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade than it is to drink a gallon of plain water. And cayenne has a ton of amazing health benefits. For more, check out, Cayenne - Natures Miracle Medicine.

How long should you do this for? I challenge you to ten days. But do it as long as you like. While produce should always be the staple of any healthy diet, no matter what you're eating, your body will always benefit from this gallon of hydration a day.

Please use common sense with this. If you do not follow a healthy diet with lots of produce, the amount of liquid consumed on this regimen can deplete the body of much needed minerals. Do not attempt to drink a gallon of anything in one sitting. This has been known to kill people, even with just water. If you have kidney problems, this may be the best thing for you. On the other hand, depending on your health issues, it may overload the kidneys. I find that smaller people who weigh less than 120 pounds can see the benefits at 1/2 to 1/3 of a gallon. Your health is in your hands. Again, please use good judgement.

8 Things Nutrition Experts Wish You Would Stop Saying About Food

One day, your morning cup of coffee is a great idea for your health. The next, it has too many negative health risks. Even the savviest of consumers can easily become confused amid constantly evolving research and the loud personal opinions of prominent people.

And when food marketing is thrown into the mix, the black and whites get even more gray. Packaging with words like "organic" or "natural" or "light" purposely gives us the impression it has a nutritious product to sell, when in reality there's little to formally define what those terms mean.

"There is so much nutrition misinformation out there," says Appetite for Health's Julie Upton, MS, RD, CSSD, "and add on the fact that marketers often use 'health halo' descriptors to sell products, it's no wonder Americans are confused about what's really healthy to eat."

To help clear up some of the confusion, we asked a group of nutrition experts to dish on the healthy eating concepts we're most commonly misusing. Here are eight of the worst offenders.

 1. Detox

 "If I could erase one word from the dietary dictionary it would be 'detox'. The idea that certain foods or nutrients will speed up or enhance your body's detoxification process is just silly. The best way to help your body get the toxins out is to put fewerin." 
--Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN, CNS, HuffPost blogger and author of Nutrition Diva's Secrets for A Healthy Diet

  2. "Good" Foods And "Bad" Foods

"I don't like saying there are good foods and bad foods -- it's so judgmental! I'm not saying French fries aren't loaded with calories, fat and sodium, or ice cream isn't rich in calories, fat and sugar, but saying they're 'bad' foods invokes guilt on those who enjoy these comfort foods. Eating and enjoying food -- even foods that aren't the most nutritious -- shouldn't ever be done with guilt or shame. Eating should be one of the great pleasures of life! And if you learn to eat with pleasure, you may even feel more satisfied with less food." 
--Elisa Zied, MS, RDN, CDN, author of Younger Next Week

3. "Clean"

"Everything is all about 'clean' foods, a 'clean' diet, but there is absolutely no definition of what 'clean eating' means. Many athletes refer to 'clean' as eating natural, wholesome, real foods and fewer processed options. I think that makes sense, but I don't know why we need to call it 'clean' instead of healthy eating. I'm starting to see marketers say their processed products are made with "clean" ingredients, so to me this is just a meaningless term. I think, 'You've been had!' when I hear friends use the term." 
--Julie Upton, MS, RD, CSSD, Appetite for Health 

"I shy away from the term 'clean eating'. I appreciate that people use the term to describe eating plans that include high-quality, unprocessed foods and perhaps organic and locally-grown foods, and I applaud their efforts to eat nutritious foods. But I have a hard time with the clean-eating label because it makes me think that if you're not eating 'clean' then you're eating 'dirty.' Also, clean eating doesn't necessarily equal a balanced diet. As much as I've tried to embrace the clean eating term, I sense some shame in it. For example, people may feel bad that they can't 'eat clean,' because the cost is prohibitive or it's inconvenient. And I sometimes get the idea that die-hard clean eaters look down on people who don't eat the same way, and that they use the term to define themselves rather than their eating. I'd love it if we could ditch the eating labels and try to eat the fewest processed foods possible as part of a balanced diet we can afford and live with in the long-run." 
--Elizabeth M. Ward, RD, author of MyPlate for Moms, How to Feed Yourself & Your Family Better

 4.  "Low-Carb"

"The one that gets to me the most is when people tell me they eat 'low-carb', or [say] 'I don't eat sugar.' I always ask, 'What does that mean for you?' I constantly find myself explaining that carbs are in multiple food groups. There are grams of carbohydrates (a.k.a. sugar) in bread and bread products and fruits, but also in other foods that you may not think of as having grams of carbs, like unsweetened yogurt and vegetables. Once I explain the basics of food science, the 'low-carb' proclamation that so many claim to adhere to is not accurate." 
--Marjorie Nolan Cohn, MS, RD, CDN, ACSM-HFS, national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics and author of Belly Fat Fix

 5. "Gluten-Free"

"Many people who tout the wonders of going without gluten don't even know what gluten is -- and there is little evidence that those who do not have celiac disease (only a small percentage of the population) [or non-celiac gluten sensitivity] will benefit from a gluten-free diet." 
--Katherine Brooking MS, RD, Appetite for Health 

6. "Fruit Has Too Much Sugar"

"While fruit does indeed contain natural sugar, it comes along with great nutrition, such as vitamin C and fiber. One of my favorite fruits is grapes. They are [around 100] calories for a cup and are loaded with antioxidants and vitamin K. It's natural to enjoy sweet foods -- so getting a natural sugar fix from fruit rather than candy is smart. Aim for two cups or two pieces of fruit per day." 
--Dawn Jackson Blatner, RDN, CSSD, LDN, HuffPost blogger and author of The Flexitarian Diet

7. "Breakfast Is The Most Important Meal Of The Day"

 

"NOT! All meals are important for different reasons. Each one plays a role in keeping you energized and at the top of your game." 

--Joy Bauer, MS, RDN, health and nutrition expert for the "Today" show and founder of Nourish Snacks

 8. "Made With Simple Ingredients"

 

"This is popular with brands that say things like 'made with ingredients you can see and pronounce.' We all know what simple means, but 'simple' is now a marketing buzzword showing up on supermarket shelves. The 'simple' foods have a more wholesome look and may make you believe that you're buying something that's better for you and your family. 

I'm all for foods with a single ingredient, like apples, bananas, broccoli, nuts, eggs, lean meats and fish, to name a few. They're all as simple as foods can come and are loaded with nutrition and provide major health benefits. We'd all be healthier and live longer if we ate single-ingredient foods most of the time. 

The new 'simple' foods I'm talking about are things like gourmet ice cream, cookies, candy, butter and other foods that may contain just a few ingredients. The problem is, those simple, all-natural ingredients don't provide a nutritional punch. I'm talking about sugar, cream, salt and oil. There is no shortfall of these 'simple' ingredients in the typical American diet, so positioning them as a health bonus is just, well, bogus." 
--Upton

From Detox To Elimination Diets, Skipping Sugar May Be The Best Bet

When it comes to detox diets, we totally get the appeal.

You can’t detox your body. It’s a myth. So how do you get healthy?

Whether it’s cucumbers splashing into water or models sitting smugly next to a pile of vegetables, it’s tough not to be sucked in by the detox industry.

Treat Yourself to a Copper Detox

The medical community has been showing a great deal of interest in the anti-bacterial properties of copper. In today’s article, Sadhguru gives us the yogic perspective on the importance of storing our water well, and how water stored in copper vessels can play a significant role in cleansing our system of various toxins.

What you call as “myself,” what you call as the human structure is essentially the work of a certain “software.” We know today that software means memory. Whether it is the individual human body or the larger cosmic body, essentially, they are made of five elements – earth, water, fire, air and space. All the five elements have a memory of their own. That is the reason they behave the way they are behaving.

Because water has memory, we are very concerned with how we store it.
Today, particularly in the last few years, much experimentation has been done and they have found that water has memory – it remembers everything that it touches. We have always known this in this culture and we have been using this in so many ways. Our grandmothers told us we should not drink water or eat food from just anyone’s hands; we must always receive it from people who love and care for us. In temples, they give you one drop of water, which even a multi-billionaire fights for because you cannot buy that water anywhere. It is water which remembers the divine. This is what theerth is. People want to drink it so that it reminds them of the divinity within them. The same H2O can be poison or it can be the elixir of life, depending upon what kind of memory it carries.

Because water has memory, we are very concerned with how we store it. If you keep water in a copper vessel, preferably overnight or at least for four hours, the water acquires a certain quality from the copper which is very good for your liver in particular and your health and energy in general. If water is being violently pumped and is travelling to your house through many turns in lead or plastic pipes, with all these bends and turns, much negativity happens to the water. But while water has memory, it also has a way of unfolding itself back into its original state. If you just leave this tap water undisturbed for an hour, the negativity will undo itself.

If you’re constantly traveling like me, if your food is not necessarily controlled, minor poisons are always getting into you in various forms. Copper handles those things for you.

16 Health Benefits Of Drinking Warm Lemon Water

Lemons are vitamin C rich citrus fruits that enhance your beauty, by rejuvenating skin from within bringing a glow to your face.