What to expect when you improve your diet & begin cleansing:
As you move toward a better nutritional program, you will be incorporating more foods that are closer to the natural state. These foods are higher in enzymes, vitamins & minerals, & are capable of reproducing healthy tissues. In addition, you will be omitting harmful substances such as sugar, coffee, white flour, tobacco, etc.
Now, what happens when a person starts following a program of this type? When we abandon lower quality foods & replace them with more nutritious foods, the body happily begins to discard the lower grade materials in favor of the new superior ones available. The body, in its drive to survive, always aims for health & balance.
As you can well imagine, this process does not always slip by without repercussions. First of all, your body becomes accustomed to stimulants like sugar, coffee, tea & colas. When these substances are discontinued, your body starts to release toxins from the tissues into the blood, heading toward eventual elimination. Sometimes these irritants leave, “kicking & screaming”. You can experience what seems to be, “the blues”, as the heart calms down & evens out to its normal level, verses an artificially stimulated level.
The same process occurs as we begin to cleanse. During the initial phase, from ten days to several weeks, the vital energies that are usually in the periphery or external part of the body such as the muscles & skin, begin to move in towards the vital internal organs to start reconstruction. This shifting of energy to the internal region produces a feeling of less energy in the muscles & we interpret this as weakening. Actually you may be increasing energy but are just using it for rebuilding so it is less available for muscle work. As this is a regeneration time, more rest & sleep may be needed. Pushing yourself will only defeat your body’s effort to stop ‘living from paycheck to paycheck’, so to speak, & start building equity in it’s vital energy. Remember, it’s not necessarily less energy as much as temporarily redirected energy. Have patience & coast along until this phase passes.
As one further improves the diet & cleanses even more, the body may also begin a process called ‘retracing’. This can be compared to the LIFO, (last in, first out), accounting method. In other words, your body starts dumping out all the old poisons & garbage, (from food, pollutants & stress), starting with the last assaults. Your body is not particularly choosy about how this is done. It is just thrilled for the opportunity & may utilize some unusual methods to accomplish its housecleaning. For example people who have past tendencies towards skin rashes & eruptions frequently will eliminate poisons through the skin with brand new rashes & eruptions. Also colds & flu, which have not appeared for a long time, may occur. Other symptoms include: bowel sluggishness, occasional diarrhea, lack of interest in exercise, nervousness, irritability, depression & frequent urination.
In general, the harder your body has been pushed in the past, the more drastic the cleaning process. The great majority of people, however, find their reactions more than tolerable because of the many improvements they experience at the same time.
Do not expect that you are riding on an ascending escalator to health. Instead, expect gradual changes. The body is cyclical in nature & health returns in a series of gradually diminishing cycles. For example you start the diet & feel great for awhile, but after a few weeks you suddenly feel nauseous for a day & have foul smelling stools. After 24 hours you feel much better & all is wonderful for a time. Abruptly, you seem to come down with flu symptoms. In a few days that improves & you feel like a million dollars. Eventually, you will hopefully reach a plateau of vibrant health. This is the goal. Smile through it knowing that good health is just around the corner.