As part of my New Year's Resolution, I wanted to do a cleanse. We all have fluctuations in our diets from one day to the next, week by week and month by month. I actually did pretty well over the holidays this year. Probably the first year I didn't gain 5 pounds over the holiday. But never the less, I wanted to start my year out right. My goal was to clean up my diet, so that I began craving the healthy foods more and making healthier meals overall. (I'm also getting married in June, so there's a desire to look better than ever on that day since those pictures will last a lifetime!)

     I started my cleanse with cutting out all processed sugar for 4 days. It wasn't nearly as difficult to cut out the sugar as I had thought it would be. I was still eating fruit and starchy carbohydrates these first days. Then, for days 5-7, I cut out all sugars including the fruit and starchy carbohydrates...this was rough! I only ate non starchy vegetables, protein, and healthy fats. I felt like I was wasting away. I thank my fiance for keeping me sane and doing the cleanse with me. He's the type of person that eats to live, while I am the type of person who lives to eat! I feel like I spend a good portion of my day thinking of what I'm going to eat next.

     During these few days of only vegetables, protein, and fats, I noticed that I became much more in tune with how food was affecting me. I started to realize that I don't really like animal protein all that much. Fish didn't seem to bother as much as land animal meat. I also noticed that I was having a difficult time focusing, probably because I wasn't getting the same amount of glucose in my system as I was used to. Glucose feeds your brain, and is what all your sugars and starches turn into during the digestive process.

     On week two, I started adding in carbohydrates again but no fruits. I definitely felt better. I wasn't craving other foods anymore, and I got my energy back. At this point, I was also very tuned into how foods were affecting my body. I came to a definite realization that my body doesn't like meat very much. Twice I got a headache right after eating bacon and turkey bacon. I could literally feel where the pain was coming from. I don't know how else to explain it other than my gut instinct knew the headache came directly from the meat. It didn't happen every time I ate meat, but just those couple experiences confirmed to me I don't need meat in my life. So I've decided to become semi-vegetarian. 

     I don't consider myself an extremist when it comes to my diet. And I know that if I try to cut out something completely, I may feel deprived and want to eat it more. So, for now, I'm not buying any meat, and I won't order anything at a restaurant where the meal is designed around meat. If I happen to be at someones house and there's a little bit of meat in something they prepared, I'm not going to complain. Or if I'm at a sushi restaurant and want a roll that has meat in it, I'm okay with that. But I don't want my life to revolve around meat as a necessity. I've sort of eaten this way for years anyway, but the past two years I got off track and started eating more meat since my fiance eats meat. It's time for me to get back on track.

     Aside from that, I've truly been enjoying my diet recently. I'm on day 22 and feel good overall. I have energy, I'm eating a little bit of fruit again, no meat, mostly vegetables and healthy fats. I've been enjoying making green smoothies in my high powered blender, preparing large skillets of stir frys, going to the farmer's market once or twice a week, and making vegan sauces, dressings, and soups from healthy cookbooks. 

     I highly recommend doing a cleanse at some point. There's so many ways to cleanse your diet. You don't have to follow my method. But I do recommend going vegan for at least a few days and then re-introducing foods back into your diet. This will allow you to better assess how foods are affecting you. If you can go completely no sugar, you will feel amazing and not want to make it a daily part of your diet anymore. Some people like to go on a juice cleanse or soup and smoothie cleanse for a couple days or more. There's endless possibilities to healing your body and creating awareness through cleansing.
     Leave comments about your cleanses and stay tuned for more cleansing updates!
Better-Wellbeing.com

The New Year is the perfect time to assess where you're at, and take some time to set new goals for yourself in order to continue manifesting the life you want to live. New goals can be as simple as giving yourself a compliment every day, spending more time with your family and friends, starting to be more conscious of the food you're putting into your body, and finding a workout buddy to help you stay motivated and keep on track. Whatever it is that would like to have more of or less of in life, is entirely possible. If you can think it, you can make it happen!

Dave and I have been setting goals and doing specific work to help influence our subconscious mind in order to manifest our dream. Only 12% of our brain is conscious thought (that includes conversation, daily thinking, reading, writing, assessing, anything that you are aware of in your mind), and the other 88% is unconscious (the part of the brain that is working all the time, but you are not aware of it). To make lasting changes, it would make sense to do something that would influence the 88% unconscious, but we usually write down our goals during the day using our 12% conscious mind. So how do we influence the subconscious?

The subconscious mind can be influence best at night during the 30 minutes before falling asleep. In that last 30 minutes, you are between a waking and sleeping state (similar to a hypnotic state). You are very susceptible to messages influencing your subconscious mind at this time. The first 30 minutes of waking is also similarly in this state. So, be aware if you are watching TV or the news before you go to bed or first thing in the morning. The negativity of the news might be affecting your mood and view of life.

So here's what you'll want to do, write down your goal at night right before you go to bed. If you can focus on one goal, that would be ideal, but you can write two or three goals at a time if you like. Writing down one goal will allow your subconscious mind to focus more easily and possibly help manifest your goal faster. During your sleep, your subconscious mind will start to process your goal and begin to manifest it in your life. 

If you aren't seeing your goal begin to manifest within two weeks of writing it every night before bed (and you should be accomplishing physical tasks throughout the week that will help you reach your goal), you may need to adjust how you are writing your goal. For example, writing "I will receive $500 by the end of the week" or "I enjoy the $500 I got this week" or "I have $500 coming to me in cash this week" may all work for different people, but you may need to tweak your verbiage depending on how your subconscious mind is processing the information. 

This method of influencing the subconscious mind was created by John G. Kappas, Ph.D., founder of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. I've simplified the method for you here to a simple single affirmation that you can start working on. If you're interested in learning more about how to influence your subconscious and how to perform self-hypnosis to help manifest your dreams, take a look at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute Website and check out their book Success is Not an Accident: Mental Bank Concept (that's what Dave and I have been doing every night for our subconscious mind). There's also a video you can watch to learn more about the Mental Bank System.

Keep Manifesting your Dreams and Living the Life You Want!

Natalie

Better-Wellbeing.com