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Feeling Fab in Feb

February often marks the time when New Years Resolutions, made with all the best intentions, tend to fall by the wayside and old habits start to rear their ugly heads. Old habits really do die hard so its a good time to refer back to those resolutions and decide whether you really do want to have those positive outcomes of a healthier lifestyle like losing weight, looking better and having more energy.

So how do you stop yourself from reverting back to old habits? Its a good idea to identify all the barriers you have to positive change and then thinking about how you are going to overcome those barrier in a sustainable way. For example, you may feel like finances are a barrier to exercise but a solution to this problem may be to exercise in ways that don't require money. It costs nothing to go for a walk. You might feel like you don't have the energy to cook a healthy meal at the end of a busy day but using pre-cut meat and vegetables will make a pretty quick and easy stir fry. The healthier your diet becomes the more energy you will have for cooking and exercise. It's really is a snow ball effect in that regard.

Emotional eating is a key contributor to the success or failure of a healthy eating plan. Next time you eat the wrong kinds of food, particularly if it is in a large amount, think about how you were feeling at the time. Many people eat to suppress feelings of anger, sadness, boredom and loneliness. If you can identify the feelings that trigger your emotional eating, you are one step closer to preventing it from happening again by thinking about alternative strategies to coping with those emotions.


What About A Detox?

Although a detox program may seem like a quick fix solution to an unhealthy lifestyle these programs play a much more important role in wellness and prevention. Toxins can be classed as both exogenous and endogenous, which simply means they can come from sources both outside and inside the body. By cleaning up your diet and taking supplements to assist the detoxification pathways of the body, wonders can be achieved in overall wellness. However, many people are unaware that endogenous toxins often originate from a state called 'dysbiosis' in the bowel. Put simply this means the balance between good bacteria and bad bacteria, yeasts and parasites are not optimum. These nasty micro-organisms cause digestive problems, leaky gut, malabsorption and generally release toxic bi-products which can be absorbed into the bloodstream.  Without addressing any level of dysbiosis in the digestive system, a change in diet and most commercial detox programs will only serve as a band-aid measure at best.

The Metagenics Integrated Detoxification Program I use with clients in practice addresses any nasty micro-organisms in the digestive tract before moving on to support the kidneys and the liver. Not sure if you have 'dysbiosis'? I use an in-house test called the "Urinary Indican Test" to determine whether dysbiosis exists and I offer this to my clients free of charge.