1. You know you are really sick when shopping online totally loses its appeal.
2. When I get better I absolutely need to buy new bed pillows.
3. Can we possibly have enough fruit to see me through this?

1. That both the men I share the house with can cook….well, sort of.
2. My husband, who apparently felt I was missing a brilliant opportunity for spiritual growth, made available all of Deepak’s latest talks (link?).
3. My three children who each shower me with love in three unique ways; one delivered a juice at arms distance while she backed out of the bedroom, one called from Malibu beach to share how wonderful I would feel if only I was at the sea, and, alas, one who was delighted by the fact he finally had me as a captive audience to all of his undeniably amazing ideas.

• Went straight to bed and stayed there for 24 hours (and a bit more, truth be told)
• Cancelled all appointments the next day
• Started an acute gemmo protocol for flu-like symptoms
• Began pushing fluids such as ginger tea, Texas Medicinals Tonika tea, coconut water, and fresh juices
• Stopped eating solid foods for 24 hours
• Used a hot water bottle as needed for aches and chills
• Slept when I needed to
• Read on and off
• Made the first appointment available with our family acupuncturist to help my body drain off what it was trying to rid in the first place.

Last August we returned from our summer travels in Europe and made some dramatic changes to how we fed and cared for our bodies. Twelve months later not only have we kept up the changes we made—I think we have even improved on them.

Why we did it

• With my growing practice and longer hours I had felt increasingly overwhelmed by the limited time I had to prepare healthy meals in the way I had done in previous years.
• We began to compensate by eating out or turning to more processed food items to save time.
• We struggled to free time for a daily family exercise program, we believed in since we lost 1-2 hours pre & post meal in the kitchen each evening.
• Joachim had just read Chris Crowley’s, Younger Next Year and was motivated to get serious about exercise while I had read The Raw Food Solution by Mizpah Matus which came highly recommended by one of my mentors. Both books caught our attention and had us talking.
• With a preteen in the house we knew we only had a few limited years, if that, for him to experience a cleaner, healthier, and simpler approach that he may one day borrow from.
• Finally, and most significantly, was a week with my mentor Dr. Soescu in Romania where I was exposed first hand to a drastically simpler way to eat healthy. It was an approach she and colleagues practiced in her clinic and she carried out at home.

The changes we made

• Eliminated all dairy and packaged, processed foods other than bulk items such as rice, quinoa, millet, lentils, beans. (We already kept a gluten free and vegetarian kitchen.)
• Replaced our German-style fruit and muesli breakfast with raw fruit only smoothies, juices and/or whole fresh fruit.
• Added a raw vegetable salad as a first course to every dinner followed by variations of either roasted vegetables, vegetable soups, or vegetable & grain dishes.
• Lunch evolved naturally as leftovers from the evening meal or a continuation of breakfast fruits

What it required

• A new shopping strategy. More frequent but certainly quicker trips—mostly in and out to the produce section. We shared this task.
• Cooking/prepping ahead for 4 of the 5 weekday meals became a family event on Sundays.
• Setting up a smoothie/juicing station in our kitchen with all we needed right at hand—cutting board, knives, large bowls or platters. We began with this Vita-mix and have since added this Omega Juicer.

The benefits we experienced

• Improved our body’s ability to eliminate – our output!
• Able to get in a pre-dinner swim and after dinner walk!
• Happier Lauren each evening = Happier Family
• Eliminated cravings by 95%, nothing a piece of dark chocolate or coconut chia pudding can’t fix.
• Wake alert each morning, and clear headed. Reduced caffeine intake dramatically.
• All of us stayed flu and virus free all year.
• Our Clearer Heads = More Creative Minds
• Seriously loving what we are eating and we know we our nourishing our bodies not just filling them.

Three Challenges we faced

• Keeping enough fresh produce available without over buying and having it spoil.
• Increasing “warming” foods during winter especially this past exceptionally cold Austin winter.
• My German mother-in-law who is skeptically curious but occasionally states I am likely starving her son and grandson. ☺

Why I think this change worked

• We made a team effort. All of us got on board and stayed there.
• We believed in what we were doing. We had read enough and shared the same belief system regarding the body’s need to clean itself.
• We saw and felt the changes—immediately!
• It simplified our domestic tasks which gave us more time to play and be creative.
• There were also unexpected secondary benefits such as increased energy and motivation, a gradual opening to new perspectives on areas we had felt stuck, and the joy of being on this adventure together.

The concept of changing the input to improve the output is not rocket science and can be applied across the board to multiple scenarios. Today we will apply it to our bodies. I recently shared an updated 4 step process that I follow with my clients to restore the body’s natural ability to clean and heal itself. The first and most critical step in this process is optimizing of the elimination system.

Here’s what must be done for that to occur:

1. Change the input
2. Engage the help of your lymphatic system
3. Drain what’s blocking the output

Let’s deal with the first on the list, changing the input, which is something everyone who reads this is capable of starting tomorrow morning.

With the plethora of conflicting information regarding what to eat and how to eat, I want to make it simple. The goal is to eat in a manner that encourages 2-3 healthy bowel movements spread out through your day and one that does not produce any of the secondary symptoms I discussed in this article.

My personal and professional experience has led me to support a diet high in alkaline foods that primarily consists of fruits and vegetables. I eat and feed my family in this manner as well as promote this in my office. I have seen that this diet will engage and encourage lymphatic drainage and leads to healthy elimination through the bowels and kidneys with most people.

So what does this look like?

You can see the full graphic here.

In practicality, meals break down to this:

• Breakfast: Fruit, fruit and more fruit
• Mid Morning Snack: Green Smoothie or Green Juice
• Midday Meal: Raw Veggie Salads, Raw Veggies and Hummus or Guacamole, Green Smoothies or Juices, Cooked Vegetarian Meal (little to no protein)
• Snack: More of any of the above
• Evening Meal: Raw Salad to start, Cooked Meal with Veggies and Protein or Protein and Grains

What’s not on this list: Dairy, Grains with Gluten, or Processed Foods.

If your diet looks nothing like this, don’t despair! Shifting your intake to more raw and whole foods can be done in small steps and still produce noticeable results. Commit to just one week of eating nothing but delicious, fresh cut fruit or smoothies for breakfast. This change alone should have you feeling noticeably better on many fronts—just like it did for our family. Repeat the process the following week, again the week after and you’ll be well on your way to adopting a healthy new habit almost without realizing it.

If your diet already looks a lot like this, but you’re still experiencing secondary issues like these, this is where the homeopathy and gemmotherapy protocols can really help to heal stressed organs and get your systems back into alignment.

Lately, I’ve been having a few thoughts about your healing process. Every day I am asked at least once, “so, how long will this take?” And of course, the answer for each person is different. And the length of time will also be completely dependent on what lifestyle changes you are able and willing to make to support your own healing.

What I can tell you, however, is that I see five clear stages of anyone’s healing process and my experience has proven that skipping steps—just doesn’t give you the same results.

My hope is that by keeping sight of where you are in this process, you may be more willing and able to go the distance. So what’s the goal? The end result will be a body able to clean and heal itself as it was designed to do, as well as now maintain the harmony between physical, mental and emotional bodies up against all that life presents.

Here are the five steps achieved using individualized homeopathic and gemmotherapeutic protocols:

1. Open Routes of Elimination (Bowels, Kidney/Urinary, and for woman organs associated with menstruation) Last post, I gave you a checklist of symptoms that indicate these routes are compromised. If you missed it or need some reminding, [intlink id=”1167″ type=”post”]here it is[/intlink].
2. Support the Cleaning of Tissues and Cells—Only a body that can clean itself can heal itself.
3. Restore Normal Organ Function—when all organs are functioning we don’t get secondary symptoms like high blood pressure or migraine headaches; both perfect examples of other organs not doing their part.
4. Fortify Organs—Gemmotherapy is unique among herbal therapies in its ability to deliver nutrition to organ tissue while cleaning. This stage happens simultaneously with stage 3 & 4.
5. Maintain Harmony—where we want to be! This doesn’t mean we don’t “get sick” but it does mean we have a strong, effective immune response and recovery.

So now what?

Now is the time to become not only your own health advocate, but to be your own health ombudsman. That may be a funny term to use, but it’s really what I would want for you. Your body is producing symptoms, which are actually complaints. Your job as the ombudsman is to listen to and investigate those complaints.

I became my own ombudsman after my cancer diagnosis by investigating the complaints of my body and searching for practitioners who could support my body to heal itself. Eventually, those practitioners became my teachers, so I could in turn help each of you.

So start listening! Together we can investigate and move you through the five stages to restore your body’s ability to clean and heal itself. For many people the most important first step is to start changing the input.