My Journey on a Food-Based Cleanse

When I hear the word cleanse, I think of fasting for “X” period of time and restriction which has no appeal whatsoever.

When I discovered a cleanse based on foods that aid the body, where you can eat whenever you're hungry and eat until you're full; this perked my interest.

There was a bit of resistance to radically changing my diet, but then, I am wanting to make some changes to my diet—for better health and more energy.  

I knew there were a lot of changes I can make as I learned more about the food industry and the challenge of finding high-quality food in our community today. 

So I decided to embark on the 7-Day Community Food-Based Cleanse at Breathe Los Gatos. I viewed it as a tool to start making some lifestyle changes based on Ayurvedic principles and was happy it came with the support of Talya Lutzker, a certified Ayurvedic practitioner, nutritionist, chef and yoga teacher.

We were instructed to focus on foods that are easiest to digest and richest in nutrition. When you eat a lot of those foods, your body can process and get rid of toxins.

I thought I knew a lot about healthy eating; more so than the average person.  For example, a chicken sandwich with avocado is viewed as a healthy meal, isn't it?

My personal reasoning went something like this …  the bread needs to be sourdough or made from sprouted grain, the chicken needs to pastured and for condiments, you have to read the label because it may contain lots of sugar and if the ingredients have words you cannot pronounce, then stay away.

On this cleanse, we focused on food combining as a way to get our digestive systems functioning optimally. So we didn’t mix grains with complete proteins like chicken or other meat.

We were encouraged to eliminate any foods made from flour (flours in general – even when gluten-free – are sticky and are not considered a cleansing food), so throw out the bread in the sandwich.

I was right on the chicken, except it is really hard to find good quality chicken that hasn’t been fed genetically modified grains like corn and soy. Even pastured organic chicken are fed commonly allergenic grains. I learned how difficult it can be to find pure ingredients in our food chain today. You really have to read labels!

Avocado is actually a cleansing food because it is comprised of healthy, easily digestible fats, so I am good there.

If you use mayonnaise as one of your condiments, then stay away from ones that are made of canola oil because canola oil was initially designed as an industrial oil. It cannot be cold-pressed and is not something our bodies can process easily.

Coconut oil is OK because it has such a high smoking point and it’s so easy for the body to absorb.

Staying away from sugar is a no brainer so I'm good there. But my sandwich didn’t even have any vegetables in it. Avocado is technically a fruit! As you can see, it's not clear that a chicken avocado sandwich IS the most healthy choice.

There were so many facts like this that I learned throughout the cleanse. It's good to be aware of them even though I may not be able to avoid all of these foods forever. 

Having this knowledge allows me to have more choice. Since this is my first time on this cleanse, the information was new and sometimes overwhelming. But because it was a community based cleanse with the stellar support of Talya, any questions we had could be posed to Talya via email was answered within a short period of time. 

I gave it my best. My intention was to follow the cleanse, but I would often find myself accidentally eating something I wasn't "supposed to." I accepted that this was OK because learning to cleanse is a process and it was totally new to me.

Even more importantly, I learned to make choices and changes that are going to serve my body throughout my life. This is huge and I am so grateful I took the first step by participating in Talya’s cleanse.

An added surprise was how fun it was to cook in a new way and try out all the recipes that were given to us in our cleanse manual.

I am looking forward to exploring all the recipes in Talya's new cookbook "The Ayurvedic Vegan Kitchen" so that I can easily incorporate more of this way of eating into my life.