New Year, Fabulous New You!

Happy New Year to you fabulous folks!

So we’ve all partied and over-indulged in everything and anything that was put in front of us over the holidays, now it’s time to focus on ourselves. With the new year, we all want to wipe the slate clean, think about what the year will bring to us and also want to get fit and healthy, right? I know at the top of that New Year’s resolution list for so many is to ‘Lose Weight’.

How do we lose the weight, get fit and stick with it for the whole year and beyond, and not just the beginning of the year? Here’s the thing, I think the focus should be taken off the weight loss and put on getting healthy and prevent getting sick. When we do that and start eating healthier and exercising, the weight subsequently drops off – I hear you say, easier said than done, but trust me, it’s definitely do-able when you change your mind set.

We need to think about this new journey as a lifestyle change and not to go on one of the numerous diets that are available – and there are so many. The reason I say that is because diets don’t necessarily work for everyone. We’re all unique individuals and metabolise differently, that is why one type of diet might work for one person but would not necessarily work for the other. Also, diets are temporary – what happens is that we tend to follow the diet guidelines for the duration and once that’s done, the tendency is to return to what was being done before the diet and you’re back to square one and probably worse.

Think of the lifestyle change as a process of growth and learning – learning about yourself, what foods work for and nourish your body and what doesn’t. It has a lot to do with nutrition and exercise, but also to do with balancing your emotional state – where you are in life and where you want to be in your career, relationships etc. With the New Year 2013, this is kind of a good time to reflect, meditate, detox/cleanse and be ready to take on what the year has in store for you.

Here’s what I do at the beginning of the year – I detox my body for about 3 to 7 days depending on how I feel and how much damage was done over the holidays (see my blog for last year’s detox, still working on this year’s)! This is a juice detox (green juices mostly) which has all the ingredients to cleanse and nourish at the same time. I also do yoga and meditate during the detox which calms me and also helps with the cleansing process. After the detox period, I start re-introducing other foods back into my diet, foods I have discovered actually work for me (more vegetables, whole grains etc.) and cut back a bit on the juicing.

The key here is to find out what works for you and in order to do that, you have to be open to trying out new things. Juicing is one of the best ways to get started – that’s how I got started and it’s now a huge part of my healthy lifestyle. You can find a lot of juice recipes including the detox/cleanse juice on my blog (Dare to be healthy), or in my book ‘Healing Foods Healthy Foods’ to get you started. Also, try to find an exercise or activity you absolutely enjoy – when you find an exercise or activity you enjoy, tendency would be that you would carry on doing it without having to think twice about it or talk yourself out of doing it.

Juicing will not only cleanse and nourish your body the natural way but will also aid in weight loss if done correctly. I have focused quite a bit on juicing and detox here but there are other aspects that go into creating a healthy lifestyle which I will address in other upcoming articles so look out for them.

If you’d like more information on my health programs, please visit my website. I wish you awesome health and success on your new healthy lifestyle!

Peace and Fabulous Health!

Gloria

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