While we were on vacation in Arizona David & I decided to do the GOOP Detox when we got home, after spending a week indulging and having cocktails by the pool we figured it would be a good time to start when vacation ended. HA. dummies. That was brutal.
I couldn’t believe the withdrawals I had in the first few days of the detox. I felt awful. I was literally crying on the phone to David saying “This is stupid, I don’t need to detox!”. I wanted to go for much easier options like investing in an ionic foot bath which are supposed to be brilliant at helping your body to remove toxins from your blood, it seemed far preferable to what felt like starving myself. I then accidentally hung up on him because my mind was SO foggy I was just pressing buttons without thinking. But he convinced me not to cave… So here’s how the rest of it went.
The goal of this detox is to remove as many toxins from your diet as possible, GOOP explains how are bodies are overloaded with the amount of toxins they have to try to process, so taking charge of the amount we intentionally put into ourselves can give our gut the opportunity to repair and restore the bodies natural ability to repair itself.
The Detox rules are:
- No alcohol.
- No caffeine.
- No dairy.
- No eggs.
- No beef, no pork.
- No shellfish, no raw fish.
- No gluten.
- No soy.
- No Nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers).
- No strawberries, oranges, grapefruits, grapes, bananas.
- No corn.
- No white rice.
- No added sugar.
- No peanuts.
- No processed oils, or butters, no vegetable seed oils, no canola oils. (Can use olive oil, coconut oil, sesame seed oil, pumpkin seed oil).
Since I have a 3 year old, and infant and needing my sanity I cheated on no caffeine and drank Green Tea (which I looked into after, and apparently is fine)… So I’m not a rebel after all.
Like I said the first few days were H-E-double hockey sticks if you know what I mean. Flawless Gwyneth Paltrow had lied to me, I definitely was not glowing from the inside out. I was nauseous, tired, lazy, hungry, irritable, and had really bad headaches. I really didn’t think it would have that much of an effect on me since we eat fairly healthy most of the time, but it was apparently quite the shock to my system. I was taking liposomal glutathione at the same time, which is a detox dietary supplement just to boost the detoxifying effects. It didn’t help with how rough I was feeling (as expected), but I’m sure it made a massive difference in my bodies ability to detox as Glutathione is one of the body’s most powerful detoxifiers. Nevertheless, as we continued we researched the best detox foods to try and started to figure out what foods worked for us with this diet I learned to love it and by the end never wanted to eat any other way.
What I was eating never made me feel bad or bloated, or guilty about what I had eaten. We stopped looking at our meals as how could this taste better, but instead as how is this nourishing us and what it was doing for our bodies. We didn’t feel the need for lots of sauces, sweetness, or tons of different flavours (not that this diet makes you compromise on flavour at all) we got excited about what ‘good for us’ foods were packed into our meals. I actually got more creative with my cooking again having the challenge of new ingredients.
I definitely recommend it, we felt awesome once we go the hang of it. The key was keeping the fridge stocked with things that you can eat. Because when we you cut that many ingredients out, there are very very few grab & go foods. We spent the first few days staring into the fridge saying “I’m so hungry”, and then we spent an afternoon prepping protein balls, chicken salad, tuna salad, & chopping veggie sticks. When I crave candy (which is a lot) I have a handful of snacking dates or a scoop of sunflower seed butter mixed with carob. When I was really hungry I would eat refried beans straight out of the can haha (Amy’s organic brand are actually delish).
Before you start you should make a meal plan, go to the grocery store and load up on ingredients you can eat, get rid of the stuff you can’t.
We started by sticking strictly to the rules for 10 days, but next time I could definitely go for 30. Since stopping the detox there hasn’t been one “cheat” meal we’ve eaten and haven’t agreed after that we wish we didn’t. Our bodies feel SO much better after a detox friendly meal, I wasn’t aware of the feeling before the detox but now majority of the time both of us would choose a healthy meal over a delicious/indulgent one because of the energy we have after.
Here is the link to the book with all the info, including recipes. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.
I’ve included a couple detox friendly recipes below, lot’s more to come!
David’s Delish Date Balls
12 pitted dates
1/4 cup carob or cacao powder
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (plus extra for rolling)
1 Tbs sunflower seed butter or almond butter
Sea salt
Honey to taste
1-3 tsp water
Sesame seeds
Combine everything in the food processor until crumbly, add water as need to make mixture stick together in a ball. Wet hands and roll into balls, roll in unsweetened shredded coconut & sesame seeds. Store in the fridge.
Avocado Chicken Salad
3 Breasts Shredded Chicken
1 Avocado
Salt
Garlic Powder
1-2 Tbs Water
Mash (or blend) the avocado with seasonings, and warm in a saucepan with water and chicken. Serve on top of rice cakes or salad. We liked to keep this in the fridge so that it was a hearty lunch ready to go, and I would just warm it up again with some more water to keep the chicken moist.
Grilled artichoke
1 Artichoke
Nutritional Yeast
Salt
Garlic Powder
Olive Oil
Dip:
Plain Coconut Yogurt
Paprika
Salt
Juice of half a lemon
Cut the artichoke in half and simmer in water 15 minutes, remove from pot and place on a baking sheet. Rub with olive oil, season with salt, garlic powder, and nutritional yeast. Broil on high until it starts to brown.
For the dip: mix ingredients together to taste.
Eat the artichoke one leaf at a time scraping off the meat with your teeth, like so.
