Spring is a great time for cleansing.  Here are some tips to get you started:

-Cleansing doesn’t have to involve the extreme measures you may have heard about, such as fasting, consuming only juices or others you may have been told about.

-Often times, just cleaning up your diet can be a great help.  So focus on eating whole foods, which are foods that have not been processed and have either grown from the ground or had eyes (to keep things simple).

-Along with this, making sure that a large portion of your meals are comprised of vegetables (mostly those with dark green coloring as they contain chlorophyll, a substance which helps to aid in the body’s detox mechanisms), ideally either raw or lightly steamed, will help to make sure that your digestive system is working well.  During this period, try for at least 60% of your diet to be vegetables.

-Drinking plenty of water is ESSENTIAL for cleansing!  You should be having at least 50% of you body weight (in pounds) in ounces a day as a baseline.  So if you weighed 200 pounds, you would need 100 ounces of water.  If you perspired a lot during a workout or it was particularly hot, then you’ll need more.

-Try doing this for at the very least 2 weeks, or if you can handle it 3-4 weeks.  Due to the high amount of vegetable content and relatively low protein and fat content, this should be avoided in winter months.

-Check with your doctor first, but some herbs that may help also would be milk thistle and dandelion (root and/or leaf).  You can have these as teas, starting out with one a day and gradually working up to three or just to your tolerance.  They will help to support the liver and kidneys, which are major detoxing organs.

-You also want to make sure that during this time you’re not working out too hard and getting plenty of sleep, since your body needs plenty of energy to cleanse.