A beautiful Spring cleanse

The first time I did a juice cleanse was about 3 years ago. My motivation was clear as crystal - to lose weight, plain and simple. I believed that three days of drinking juice not only would get me to my goal weight, but would also change all my habits so that on the other end I would find it so simple to stick with eating only beautiful healthy green foods and maintaining my new weight would be a breeze. I struggled through, wishing I could eat almost the whole time, and while I enjoyed the juices, I realised that my expectations had really been rather askew.

The second time I did a juice cleanse was about 2 years ago. I had been doing some self development work around becoming more body positive and more intuitive with my eating. I had lots going on in my life at the time and approached it more from a convenience perspective than a dieting one. What I didn’t realise was that my underlying belief was really the same – that stopping eating for a few days and drinking only juice was somehow going to change my feelings and habits around food. My mind was more focused on the other things that had been busy in my life, and as a result, I found the cleanse to be extremely challenging, I felt drained and hungry, so I ate when I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to and then felt guilty that I had wasted time and money on expensive juices and couldn’t even stick to it.

One of Marc David’s core concepts, the phases of nourishment, was taught to me during my training at the Institute. What it taught me was that just like we go through different phases in life, our nutrition and nourishment needs can also go through phases, such as an emotional phase, celebration phase, or a cleansing phase. What I realised was that the times that I had tried to juice cleanse were solidly about dieting, and not aligned with where I was at with my nutrition or nourishment needs.

While there are many out there who challenge the need for a cleanse and would argue that it is simply another type of diet, I understand this viewpoint as it used to be me. I believe there is wisdom to be learnt from all types of diets, and we each have a great power in being able to tap into this wisdom when we need to. Questioning ourselves and our motivations of why we are choosing to take on a certain diet or part of a diet is key. Our bodies have an innate ability to tell us what’s going on and what they need, we just need to tune in and listen.

Two years later and I have just finished a beautiful Spring cleanse from Orchard St. This time was different. I had finally learnt to identify what was going on for me, and listen to my own signals, which told me that I needed a break. This time it wasn’t about changing my body in just a few days and more about feeling the need to rebalance and replenish. A better ability to hear my appetite signals had me eating a few snacks in the first days of the cleanse, doing so without guilt knowing that I was giving my body exactly what it needed. I felt a sense of power that I have never had before. If you are feeling a need to cleanse, listen to those feelings, question what your motives are, and take some time to write it down. What are you wanting to achieve? What does it look like? What part of your life is calling for it? Take a look at what you write and then take action in a way that works for you, whether that ends up looking like a cleanse of your diet for a few days, or a cleanse of your wardrobe, your linen cupboard, or your inbox. Trust yourself, you’ve got this.