Post Holiday Purge Begins

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Time for my annual After Christmas Purge of all things unhealthy or furry in my pantry and fridge.

After a festive Christmas it’s a blur of activity in my kitchen. No I’m not cooking. It’s my annual After Christmas Purge. Between my 2 pantries and refrigerator I’m discovering lots of strange items – some green and furry, some smelly and squishy. Others decidedly not low carb.

Two full trash bags later my kitchen is back to normal (other than all the food storage containers in the sink). And I’m starting to feel that way too. The mindfulness is helping with my stress levels. That doesn’t mean the rage monkey doesn’t escape the cage. Nor are those depressing thoughts fully at bay. But I’m working on both.

On January 1 I start a different type of purge — my 7-day fast begins. I can’t wait. After the rollercoaster of the last 6 months I can’t think of a better way to kick off 2017.

Healing My Body With A Week Long Fast

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I’m kicking off the new year with a 7-Day Fasting Challenge as a way to heal my body. Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhoto.net and phasinphoto.

I’m ringing in the New Year with a week-long fast. Crazy? Not really. I’m a believer in fasting and it’s many benefits like: lipolysis, boosting mental capacity, reducing insulin resistance, and resetting your set weight point.

Intermittent fasting helped me rediscover what it feels like to be satiated by stablizing the hormone leptin (the hormone signals the brain that you’re full).

However, the big driver behind this 7-day fast is autophagy – the cellular cleansing process. According to Dr. Jason Fung, autophagy is the “body’s mechanism of getting rid of all the broken down old cell machinery (organelles, proteins and cell membranes).”

Now all cells in our body are programmed to die after a certain number of divisions. That’s apoptosis. Autophagy takes place at the sub-cellular level. Basically only parts of a cell need to be purged and replaced. Dr. Fung compares this to replacing car parts rather than the whole care.

Fasting not only stimulates autophagy (clearing out the bad), but it increases growth hormone so our body can produce new cell parts. Double bonus! Read More