The start of the new year reminds us all to take a moment to start fresh, detox and cleanse, renewing our focus for health in the year ahead. Detox your body in the new year. Here are 6 tips to help you. 

When it comes to detoxing, many think they need to go on a week-long juice cleanse or nix out entire categories of foods to remove toxins from the body. Truth is, our body’s naturally detoxify themselves without our efforts! But, eating the right foods, developing proper health habits, and drinking enough water certainly speed up and help in the cleansing process.

Here’s 6 practical tips to help you “detox” your body and mind in the start of the new year. Bonus video: 3 of my favorite water detox recipes to help you destress, de-puff and detox as you sip.

 1. DRINK UP

Is there really a better kind of water? The short answer: YES! There are chemicals in tap water, and while it’s good to filter out the bad, we also need to keep in the good. Dafi filters (featured in the photo above) protects the minerals you need to keep in your water, and enriches tap water with valuable calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium, and raises the pH of the water. This creates a more alkalinized water for detoxing out our systems.

Why drink more alkalinized water? It can prevent chronic disease, slow down aging, strengthen bones and teeth, increase metabolism and improve immunity. In addition, drinking enough of the right water helps to cleanse and clear out your entire body, down to the cellular structure.

Aim for 8 or more glasses of water a day, depending on your lifestyle and habits (for example, drink coffee? Up that number). See my post and video here for tips to drink more water each day.

Note: adding fruit to the water bottle might decrease filtering efficiency by roughly 10%.

 2. EAT THE RIGHT FOODS

You don’t have to be on a juice cleanse to add in foods in your daily menu that will detox your body and cleanse your liver. Why focus on anti-inflammatory foods? Well, less inflammation means a much slimmer you.

Almost all of the following meals you can plan ahead pack in an air-tight container to bring along with you, if needed too. Here’s a sample meal-plan to add in some of the top anti-inflammatory foods to your diet:

Breakfast: Blueberries, sliced pineapple and brazil nuts. Blueberries are super high in anthocyanins, which effectively turn off inflammatory and immune gene. Pineapple is not only high in Vitamin C, it is packed with bromelain, which helps to repair and resolve muscle soreness through its significant levels of potassium. Brazil nuts are packed with selenium, which is vital in flushing mercury from your body.

Lunch: Spinach salad topped with brussels sprouts, beets and avocado. Spinach is rich in carotenoids, and vitamins C, E, and K, all of which protect the body from inflammation. Beets have a mix of phytochemicals and minerals that makes it a great blood purifier and liver cleanser. Brussels are high in sulfur, helping to remove toxins from the blood.

Dinner: Salmon (or black beans, my fellow vegans), steamed broccoli, and garlic offer a triple threat anti-inflammatory powerhouse. Broccoli increase glutathione, which helps the liver transform toxins into a form that can be easily eliminated. Garlic is loaded with sulfur to purify the system.

3. MOVE YOUR BODY

Twist, side bends, backbends and forward folds. When you move your body, particularly your mid-section, you clean out all of your digestion and organs when doing so. It’s like a big squeeze for your torso and tummy, and a bit of a push to get any of the lingering crap (literally) out of your system.

Try these three moves to get your body in gear:

1. Seated or Standing Cat and Cow: Place your hands on the tops of your knees if you’re seated, or bend your knees to a mini-squat if you’re standing. Similar to a kneeling cat-and-cow sequence, inhale and create a backbend in the upper back and look forward or up, stretching the neck; exhale, rounding the spine and neck, tucking chin toward the chest. Repeat 10 rounds.
2. Side bends: Preferably standing during a bathroom break if you’re on a plane, with arms extended, use the inhale to elevate the ribs, and the exhale to bend farther to the corresponding side. Repeat for five breaths on each side. As a bonus, use an overhead bin to press your hand into for a little assist.
3. Twisting Chair: Twisting for equal breaths on each side, use the inhale to extend the spine, and the exhale to twist deeper, squeezing and cleansing out the belly and inner organs.

Want more? Check out this video to ground and restore your body.

4. REMOVE SUGARS

Sodas are out. Fruit waters are in. Natural flavors are those that sound just like that: found from nature. Sodas are loaded with added sugar that is 100% useless in any benefit to your body.

Make it tasty, keep it clean, drink more water. Shown in the Dafi Water and Kitchen Essentials system, these three detoxify water recipes will all get the cleansing job done, so try one, or try them all!

3 Different Detoxifying Water Recipes to Cleanse your system:

1. de-puff // cucumber ginger lemon
2. de-stress // pineapple strawberry lime
3. de-tox // lemon lime orange

5. EAT MORE, BUT SMALLER MEALS

Eat more throughout the day. Sounds awesome, right!? Having more, but smaller meals throughout the day can work if you’re a “grazer” like my self. I get hungry, and often, and don’t particularly like the feeling of being full after a larger meal. So, having 6 smaller meals throughout the day seem to work best for my diet and lifestyle.

Focus on portion control here, and remember you don’t need to finish all that is on your plate or the bowl that you make your food in. We’ve been conditioned from an early age to clean your plate and finish your meal. Time to change that!

Store and save half when prepping your dish, putting it an air-tight container to have later (like the one shown here by Dafi). If you’re still hungry after your first bowl, have some water, give it 15 minutes and then decide if you still want to eat something in addition. At the point, at least you’ll know you’re eating and acting based on hunger, and not from boredom or habit.

6. SLEEP MORE

Sleep is the time our body gets to repair, rebuild, and restore in every way. Your cell phone eventually dies if it doesn’t get recharged or plugged in every day (give or take), right? Your body works the same way. It need to shut off. It needs to recharge.

Ways to get started:

• Turn off your phone an hour prior to going to bed. No emails. No social media. Both of these tend to flood our mind with emotions and thoughts.
• Start small: if your goal is to be in bed by 10am and your currently up until 11:30pm or midnight, tick the bedtime timer back 15 minutes gradually to give your mind and body time to adjust.
• Create a bedtime ritual. Remember when we were young and we needed a bedtime story to fall asleep? It’s not that we needed the story, but that nightly habit reminded us that it was time to shut down and go to bed. Create your own evening ritual, be it taking a bath, reading a book, or writing in a journal.