Search Results for: detox

October 3, 2021 By Hajra Mithani 1 Comment

Healthy Eating Tips To Detox The Body

Are you looking to detox your body before the Navratri festivities begin? If you’re planning to indulge or go off your healthy routine for a while, it would be great to take these few days to detox the body. It is a good opportunity to give your body a break. Take these steps to detox the body, clean out your GI tract and provide your body with the nutrients it needs to thrive. You can also follow these steps post festivities.

What is Detoxification?

Detoxification is the process of cleansing our body from chemicals, waste, toxins, and harmful substances. Our body has its own internal detoxification system through our liver, kidneys, colon, skin, lungs and lymph glands. However, when our body becomes overloaded with toxic substances, such as from pollution, a poor diet of fast food, alcohol, medications, illness and stress, it needs help in rebooting so it can function optimally again.

In essence, detox is all about eating a diet that supports and improves the functioning of our liver. Unlike popular belief, detoxification is not about weight loss alone. It’s mainly about helping and supporting your body to get rid of all the waste through proper dietary choices. It is beneficial for one and all.

Who Needs To Detox The Body?

Anyone who is suffering from unexplained fatigue, dull skin and hair, allergies, tired and puffy eyes, menstrual irregularities, and feelings of anxiety and depression. This also includes people suffering from constipation as it’s likely to be a result of harmful toxins lingering in your body, preventing the absorption of essential nutrients – and when this happens your immune system will not fight bacteria efficiently resulting in colds and flu most often.

Benefits of Detox

Removes toxins from the body
Improves digestive health: The digestive system is one of the most critical areas of the body. It’s where nutrients from the food you consume are absorbed, keeping your body functioning as it should.
Mindfulness
Increase in energy
Control food cravings
Micronutrient bonus

What To Consume To Detox the Body?

1. Natural Detox Waters

Lemon water consumed with black salt immediately improves digestion, cleanses your liver and maintains PH levels of the body.
Coconut water has composition that mimics our plasma and helps clear out impurities from blood.
Water infused with cinnamon sticks overnight and having it the next day.
Water infused with cumin seeds, coriander seeds, ajwain and fennel seeds overnight and having it next day
Water infused with 1 inch ginger, slices of orange, mint/tulsi leaves overnight or you can simply use any sliced fruit and sliced vegetable and herbs.

2. Smoothies

Green Smoothie: Grind cucumber, parsely, celery, pineapple and chia seeds together and have it replacing your breakfast
Green Juice: Grind kale, spinach, broccoli, mint leaves, apple/pineapple and have it in your mid meals
Mango Smoothie: Grind 1 mango with almonds and have it replacng your breakfast
Apple Date Smoothie: Grind 1 apple, 2-3 dates, water and mint leaves and replace it with your breakfast.
Orange Banana Smoothie: Grind banana and orange or strawberry and banana with 1 tbsp of yogurt and ice cubes and replace it with breakfast.

3. Soups

Lemon and Coriander Soup (you can add chicken if you’re a non-vegetarian)
Beetroot and carrot soup
Tomato and carrot soup
Zucchini and broccoli soup
Green moong soup
Spinach and carrot soup
Egg soup
Corn soup

4. Salads

Sprouts salad
Moong salad
Green salad

For an entire list of raw detox salads, click here: https://goqii.com/blog/9-raw-food-diet-that-are-tasty-and-healthy/

Replace your aloo paratha with moong chilla and your maida pancakes with oats pancakes. Avoid milk and milk products, refined flours and oils, breads, pasta, sugar, fried foods, packaged foods, pickles, papad and junk food. Once a month try doing a complete detox by replacing your meals with smoothies, soups, salads, chillas and infused water. Make the most of this precious time by cleansing your body.

We hope this article helps you. For more tips to detox the body, check out Healthy Reads or ask your GOQii Coach directly by subscribing for personalized coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Stay home, stay safe, detox the body and #BeTheForce

May 26, 2021 By Neha Goyal Leave a Comment

All About Digital Detox: Part 2

You might have understood the basic idea about digital detox in the first part of this article. In this part, I’ll be sharing how you can actually digitally detox! I promise, after reading this, you will definitely want to give it a try.

What Happens To Your Brain and Body During a Detox?

Here are some good things that you can expect during a digital detox:

Spending some time away from your phone that regularly beeps can result in a calmer state of mind.
Staying away from social media can make you more productive and your memory power may improve.
Your mind will be more clear & focused.
You may have lower anxiety & stress levels.
Growing awareness about how you use technology.
Improvement in sleep quality.
Better posture & reduced tech neck.
Improved social life as you connect with people in reality & eye contact will become a thing again.
Better engagement with yourself and the world around you.

Challenges You Might Face

It will be uncomfortable at first as you might feel alone or disconnected.
The thought of quitting the digital detox will fill your mind recurrently, but it will lessen over time.
You may feel you are missing out even if there is nothing to miss out on other than pictures & gossips.
Boredom will try to deter you as you might feel uncomfortable without having something to do.
You might feel unproductive at first.
Other people may directly or indirectly pressure you to quit.
You might find it challenging to go out without a phone.

Easy Steps To Do A Digital Detox

For many of us, quitting gadgets completely is not at all possible. But here are few practical and easy ways you can try to have a taste of digital detox.

First step in your digital detox journey can be observation of your daily digital involvement time. This will reinforce you to make a change and unplug.
Clean your device. Delete old apps and social media accounts.
Have a device free morning. Do not check your phone as soon as you wake up. In fact, keep your phone away during bedtime.
Choose a day in a week when you will stay away from gadgets. On this day, focus more on health, meditation and spend time with family.
Turn off notifications as they distract you constantly. Set a time for checking messages, emails and notifications.
While reading, eating and doing some work when you need to focus, keep your phone out of sight in another room, or turn it on silent or vibration mode.

How Do You Ensure Digital Detox Success?

Consider doing it during vacation or start with weekends if you have a technology focused job.
Commit loudly: Let your family & friends know that you will not be available on social media during a particular period of time & ask for their help & support.
Fill the void: Plan, in advance, some ways to stay distracted and some other activities/ hobbies in hand to keep you busy.
To reduce temptation and easy access, delete social media apps from your phone.
Keep a track of your progress and write down your thoughts & experiences.
Plan for real meetings with your friends and family or simply go for a walk when you feel most tempted to use your gadgets.

Going device free might be a bit uncomfortable at first, but if you can just start doing it, you will find it much more rewarding. So try this detox over the coming weekend and share your feedback in the comments below!

For more tips on improving mental health, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions by experts on GOQii Play. To get these tips directly from your GOQii Coach, sign up for our personal coaching service now: https://goqiiapp.page.link/wssu

#BeTheForce

May 25, 2021 By Neha Goyal Leave a Comment

All About Digital Detox: Part 1

We all know that a healthy work life balance is not only important for our health & relationships, but it also has a great impact on our productivity & day to day performance. But in the past few years, the inability to separate work from home has massively increased as we are constantly in touch with each other via mobile phones & laptops. During the ongoing pandemic, our gadgets made it easy for us to continue our work from where we are, but with excess usage, it is proving to be detrimental to our physical as well as mental health too. In recent research, it has been found that overuse of gadgets is increasing depression, anxiety & restlessness in people. Now this calls for a break from this tech savvy world through digital detox. Wondering what exactly it is? Let’s find out!

What Is Digital Detox?

Digital detox, in simple terms, is a time frame when you voluntarily stay away from your gadgets like smartphones, laptops & social media. It can be whatever you want it to be. One might try giving up usage of all digital devices at once for a specific time period. In other cases, one might just focus on restricting their use of one type of digital device like their smartphone.

Reasons To Do It

Digital detox can be a way to set limits & reduce following negative outcomes due to heavy usage of devices:

While people often feel that spending time with their devices can be a stress buster after a long and tiring day, the truth is that it can greatly contribute to stress.
Researchers have proved that prolonged use of devices around bed time can interfere with sleep quality & quantity. It can lead to issues like insomnia, anxiety & shorter sleep duration.
Heavy usage of devices can decrease your attention span as they create unwanted distractions.
Constant connectivity with the world around, makes us feel disconnected with ourselves & affects work life balance too.
Comparison of your life with that of others, based on curated glimpses we see on someone’s instagram or facebook post, can make it hard to be content.
Digital connectivity can feed the fear of missing out. It can lead a person to feel that their life is less exciting than others.

Signs That You Might Need It

Feeling anxiety or stress if the phone is not around for a while or when the battery is discharged.
Feeling compelled to check the phone every now & then.
Depression, anxiety or anger after spending time on social media.
Overthinking about likes, comments & shares on social posts.
Feeling afraid of missing out on something if the phone is not checked after every few minutes.
Inability to resist using the phone till late hours.
Trouble concentrating on one thing without having to check the phone.

Does Digital Detox Work?

Many psychologists & mental health experts agree that digital detox can be a helpful approach to technology overuse. However, one time detox might not help you get back into your groove mentally & emotionally. Rather, it is probably one of the most effective tools if it is used as a way to kickstart a healthier relationship with technology.

Now that’s not all about digital detox. To understand how digital detox helps, what happens to your body & brain during a digital detox and challenges you might face as well as easy ways to do a digital detox, watch out for part 2 of this article!

We hope this helps you understand what a digital detox is and why it is necessary. For more on wellness and mental health, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions by experts on GOQii Play. To get these tips and hacks directly from your GOQii Coach, subscribe to personalized coaching now: https://goqiiapp.page.link/wssu

#BeTheForce

January 6, 2018 By Shimpli Patil 10 Comments

Body detoxification – A way to rejuvenate and re-energize

Most of us are worried when we put on that little extra weight. Recently, one of my pals came to me cribbing about her weight gain. she said that she had tried every possible diet… but nothing seems to work on her! she was desperate that I do something for her.

Amidst listening to her cribs and complaints, I noticed that she looked absolutely dull and was feeling terribly lethargic. It seemed like someone’s sucked all the energy out of her. A detailed conversation with her led me to discover that she was over-exerting herself at work and ending up binge-eating to counter stress.

This, in turn, was followed by unreasonable crash diets and excessive exercise to burn up the excess calories. Little was she aware that her body was actually in dire need of some essential nutrients which could make her healthy for the better.

Today, most of us lead a very fast-paced lifestyle. And this lifestyle is associated with certain inevitable factors such as stress, pollution, physical exertion, few negative habits such as drinking alcohol and smoking etc. As one’s body gets continuously exposed to these factors, there comes a point wherein the body gives up. The body gets weighed down by huge amounts of toxins which essentially needs to be flushed out.

These toxins include waste products that result from normal cell activity, such as ammonia, and also the chemicals that we consume almost daily through the air, water and food like flavoured enhancers, food colours, pesticides and preservatives. A cumulative load of these toxins is known to slow down the body metabolism which in turn results in weight gain and other health-related issues such as indigestion, impaired immune function, low energy levels, lethargy, fatigue, poor concentration, headache, dull skin and so on.

The body has its own ways of detoxifying itself. The liver is the main organ which has detoxification as its primary function. The other organs like intestine, kidneys, lungs, skin and blood work together with the liver to ensure that toxins are transformed into less harmful substances and excreted from the body via urine, stools, sweat or breath.

Just as your car engine needs servicing so that it runs better, your body organs also need to be cleaned at regular intervals so that they perform their functions well and at a faster rate. One way to cleanse your body is through food by including various detox foods into your diet.

Detox foods include the ones that are power packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibre and water. The antioxidants neutralize the toxic free radicals that are generated due to stress, excessive exercise, air pollution, etc. whereas fibre and water draw out and eliminate toxins by increasing the frequency of bowel movements and urination.

While detox dieting is a great way of cleaning your body internally, it can be beneficial to lose weight as well.

How is that possible? As detox foods cleanse the liver by flushing out the toxins, it actually gives relief to the liver by reducing its workload. This gives the liver a chance to focus on its next important function which is fat metabolism. Thus, many of whom I know have found that detox dieting is a wonderful way to kick off those extra kilos or to get over a weight loss plateau. Apart from weight loss, the other benefits of detox foods include improved digestion, regular bowel movements, and improved energy levels, lowered levels of fatigue, improved concentration and glowing skin.

Now the next big question is how often should you detoxify yourself? According to me, at least once a week and preferably choose a day which is followed by what you call “a cheat day”. So after having an exhaustive week and a fun-filled Sunday where you break free and grab that cup-cake or a pan pizza, Monday is a perfect day to detoxify yourself. A detox food menu would ideally include colourful fruits, all kinds of veggies – either stir-fried or in the form of soup/juice/salad, beans and lentils, nuts and dry fruits, oats, beverages such as green tea, coconut water, Aloe Vera juice and many more.

Remember, we are keeping the proteins at bay just to avoid burdening our digestive system and kidneys with extra work as proteins are heavy to metabolize. Thus, milk, cheese, butter, cream, eggs, meat and meat products are out of the list. Other foods to keep away during detox include wheat products, excessive sugar, unhealthy fats (saturated and trans fats), processed foods, artificial sweeteners, caffeine and alcohol- that goes without saying!

A detox diet will, therefore, rejuvenate your system, re-energize you and gear you up for all the meetings and assignments lined up for the week. A word of caution here –Pregnant and nursing women shouldn’t go for Detox diet. Otherwise, it’s an amazing experience. So get started with it and feel the difference.