The 10-Day Cleanse Our Whole Family is Embarking On!

My family is presently, right this second, gearing up for a 10-Day Sugar Detox cleanse through Standard Process (SP) to begin this coming Monday. Today, the prep includes menu planning and working on that grocery list. As you can imagine, we parents are more excited than the kids! But it won’t be easy for us either. No alcohol, caffeine, grains or sugar. Twice the amount of veggies as fruits, which may not sound tough, until you quantify it. The target serving of vegetables is 13-15 1/2 cup servings per day! That’s gonna take some real dedication. The kids’ cleanse will be food changes only. My husband and I will also be including what will feel like a LOT of SP supplements that will help maintain healthy blood sugar metabolism, stave off sugar cravings, fill any nutritional gaps (though with this plan, I can’t imagine any), and support the body’s natural detox mechanisms.

Trust that I’ll share the honest ups and downs as we go and will, of course, welcome any questions!

What does this Cleanse include?

The plan calls for 3 meals a day with plates proportioned with 60% veggies, 35% protein and 5% miscellaneous (butter, oil & vinegar dressing, raw nuts except peanuts, oils).

Each meal also calls for a protein shake to include fruit and veggies, water, Standard Process protein powder, and ground flaxseed. Snacks are okay too, as long as they follow the Program’s approved Food List, which is primarily veggies.

SP also offers a 21-Day Purification Program. With it, comes a fab support manual which includes a cookbook to see you through. Though we’re starting with 10-days, we are pulling from those recipes!

I also love this SP Health Pyramid!

In the same Purification Cookbook, SP describes the pyramid saying it, “is ideal for nutritional support. Filled with greens, vegetables, and other plant-based foods and quality proteins, this plan supplies your body with nutrients, vitamins, and minerals in their natural form. Water, so vital to keeping our bodies functioning well, is also a key element in this pyramid. Following this plan along with getting proper exercise and enough sleep will have a positive impact on your overall health and well-being.”

I’ve gotta say, I’m really looking forward to getting creative with the 3 shakes each day! It feels like a personal challenge to sneak in as many veggies per shake as possible, while still getting my kids to down them happily. My kids get a solid B- on veggie intake. They typically get a third to half their plate filled with vegetables with lunch and dinner, but we repeat their tolerable list over and over and over. So getting some fresh options blended in (literally) will be a joyful task for me!

I’ve included the recipe I’m looking forward to most at the bottom of this post.

 

Why Cleanse?

A cleanse, detox or purification helps remove toxins from your body and maintain a healthy weight. Though our bodies are designed to rid these toxins naturally, they often become overburdened. Cleansing jump starts healthy habits, builds confidence in your ability to make healthy choices, and provides tools to support the body’s natural detoxification processes. Once the cleanse process is complete, ideally participants will continue the healthy habits and keep the body working at an optimum level.

This diet also promotes emotional health!

Additionally, for our family, we want to see if the supplements we use to treat ADHD, Anxiety, and Tourette Syndrome symptoms work more effectively when our bodies don’t have to work as hard processing and clearing unhealthy foods. We may be able to lower doses or even cut some out. It is ideal to get all vitamins and minerals from diet vs a supplement, no matter how high quality it may be. Expect a follow up on those results!

Standard Process’ 6 Key Changes

The Standard Process Purification Programs operates under these 6 Key Changes.

1. Learn about foods for good health.

• Food should ideally have 5 ingredients or less.
• Buy food whole or as close to its original form as possible.
• Avoid packaged foods, which are usually highly refined with multiple additives.

2. Remove bad fats and replace them with good fats.

Our brains are 60% fat indicating fats are essential for proper brain function. Fat also helps protect our vital organs, promotes healthy skin, eyesight and brain development. The healthier the fats, the healthier all of these functions! Increasing healthy fats is also very helpful for treating ADHD symptoms.

Standard Process provides this acronym for remembering which fats are the healthiest, but be warned, it may make you crave something I’m pretty sure is not on the Program Food List.

B = Butter/ghee (clarified butter)

A = Avocado and avocado oil

C = Coconut oil/cream/milk (unrefined, full fat, unsweetened, guar gum acceptable)

O = Olive oil (extra virgin) and olives (packed in water or plain vinegar, preservative-free)

N = Nut oils (unrefined, expeller pressed)

3. Change the meat you eat.

Though meat isn’t necessarily required during this cleanse, SP does want any meat included to be from highest quality sources. Consuming animals that have consumed commercial pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, and hormones put our metabolism under a much heavier burden than what we receive from hormone-free, organically-fed sources.

The plan promotes a list of Ideal Protein Choices as raw nuts, minimally processed cheeses and hormone-free, grass-fed, free-range and cage-free meat sources. Cold water fish are ideal. Avoid farm-raised and Atlantic fish when possible.

Legumes & lentils, organic eggs from free range chickens, wild game and whey protein also make the list of Ideal Protein Choices.

4. Replace and reduce refined sugars in your diet.

Too much sugar in the diet can lead to numerous health issues and diseases.

Sub these instead:

• Stevia
• Medjool dates
• Bananas
• Minimally processed honey, ideally from your local area

5. Replace grains with pseudo-grains.

I had never heard the term “pseudo-grains” before! It refers to seeds and grasses we typically classify as grains, but actually are not.

These days many grains are processed which reduces nutritional value. They cause digestive issues for many — some of these are not the obvious digestive issues and are only revealed once the grains are removed from the diet. Grains are associated with inflammation. Overeating grains can lead to elevated insulin levels and insulin insensitivity. Because I’m Type I Diabetic, I try to limit my carbs, including grains. Having this list is going to be handy!

 

Pseudo-grains to use:

Quinoa

Buckwheat

Teff

Millet

Amaranth

Wild Rice

6. Drink more water.

Duh.

But seriously…..a common symptom of dehydration is feeling tired. Though lots of things can make us feel tired, this is an easy solution to try. What’s the worst that can happen? You’re still tired but your skin improves. Counts as a win for me!

Have you tried drinking water first thing in the morning? There are all kinds of recs for drinking it hot or cold, with and without lemon, but the key part is WATER FIRST THING in the morning to rehydrate and enliven. As I’ve been cutting back on my caffeine in prep for this cleanse, I’ve been drinking a full glass of water before anything else. I *instantly* feel revived and though it honestly makes me a tad sad inside to say, I don’t actually need the coffee. I want it for habitual reason, but I don’t need it to wake up.

The goal is to drink a minimum of half your body weight in ounces every day. So 150 lbs of body requires 75 ounces of water per day.

Cucumber Mint Shake

• 1.5 cups cucumber, peeled and diced
• 1/4 cup (packed) fresh mint, chopped
• 1 TB fresh lemon juice
• 2 cups coconut ice (made from coconut water or milk)
• + SP’s Basic Shake Recipe

SP’s Basic Shake Recipe

• 1 cup water, unsweetened coconut milk, and/or unsweetened hemp milk
• 3-4 cubes ice (this thickens the shake and can be from water, or above listed milks)
• 1 TB Flaxseed and/or 1 tsp. Calamari Omega-3 Liquid
• SP Complete protein powder, as recommended by Purification Plan

Blend all ingredients EXCEPT coconut ice. Once blended, add the coconut ice and blend well.

Thanks for reading! I’m really excited about planning menus and shopping this weekend. We’ll also start amping up our water intake and aiming for better sleep. I raise my glass of citrus-herb infused spa water in a toast to you, my loves! *Cheers*