Most of you reading this probably think I'm crazy. Possibly
all of you think that and even a little part of me thinks that I'm crazy too. I didn’t decide to do this on a whim, this has
actually been a really long journey for me to even get to a place where I am
right now: to even consider doing a 21
day detox. But I intuitively knew it was something that I really needed to do
for while.
About 10 months ago, my
husband's cousin who I was seeing at the time for acupuncture, suggested that it
would be a really good idea for me to do a detox before trying to even thinking
about getting pregnant again. My response to her was: “thanks, that’s a really great
idea, but I’m planning on being pregnant soon, so I just don't have time for that.” Yet somewhere deep inside, I knew that it probably wasn't a good idea for me to get pregnant feeling lousy (read on to learn more). This is partly why I'm embarking on a 21-day detox
cleanse. I have a wonderful three-year-old daughter and my husband and I are
really looking forward to having more children. I know for a fact that I need
to do this for myself first before I embark on another pregnancy...
Before I got pregnant with our first daughter Tali, I was in
amazing shape. I was doing yoga 4-5 days
a week and my diet was pretty good. I ate no dairy products, wheat, chocolate, very limited refined
sugars, and lots of vegetables ( not
always all organic), meat and fish ( not always organic or grass fed). I was able to sweat out most of the toxins in my Vinyasa yoga classes. When I was pregnant I continued with my diet and doing
yoga 3- 4 times a week, and when I couldn't do yoga anymore, I swam. I gained approximately
30 pounds in the pregnancy and had a fairly easily labor that lasted about 4 1/2 hours. My birth goal was a natural birth (no drugs) and I was able to do that.
The goal was not easy to achieve, I call it training for
marathon. Besides exercise and diet, I
saw an acupuncturist and a chiropractor almost weekly, and my husband and I
attended hypnobirthing classes. I also
had several hypnosis sessions to help me deal with any fears surrounding
labor. I worked really hard to ensure that my vision of the birth came true. I am extremely grateful to all the
wonderful practioners who helped me achieve that vision.
If you are mom, then you know that once you have your wonderful bundle of joy, your
needs take a backseat. Or rather, the needs are still there
but the time and desire are not. Taking care of myself in the way I had been doing prior to my daughter's birth became much more difficult.
I nursed my daughter until she was 25 months old, which also made things a bit more difficult
as I was pumping 3 times a day the first year and then in the second year, twice a
day. There wasn't really a lot of room and time for me. Don’t get me wrong,
this was purely my choice and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I tried to do yoga as often as I could, but it
became really difficult to even go once a week. I would feel guilty about being
away and not being there to nurse her.
When my Tali turned
1, we introduced cow dairy and wheat products into her diet. Having dairy in the house became very
difficult for me and I began eating goat and sheep cheese again. After spending
six years of not eating any dairy products whatsoever, I began to really indulge. I also switched jobs and
was working over 12 hours daily, leaving me no time to even cook. I ate
at Chipotle daily, thinking this was a good choice. My health started deteriorating
and I no longer felt healthy. I started to feel “old”; my body felt like it was
giving up on me. I was having aches and pains, stomach troubles, mental
fogginess and a really hard time dealing with and processing stress. I knew intuitively that part of that feeling was my diet, but
I wasn’t ready to do anything about it. I had been eating a lot more sugar, and
even though it wasn't necessarily refined sugar, I was eating it in large
amounts. In general, my diet was pretty lousy and I wasn’t taking care of
myself…
to be continued...
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