Making my own things...full detox and cleanse...

I'm making all of holiday gifts this year. I've always liked to do that, but now that I'm knee-deep in a Master Herbalist certification study, I actually have the ability to come up with some pretty cool ideas. I like giving gifts that A) don't cost a ton of money I don't have, B) are actually creative and tuned in to the gift recipient, and C) will actually help the recipient and not burden them with more stuff. Now, don't get me wrong- I like stuff. I like stuff a little too much, so while I'm happy to accept any tidings of stuff I may receive this year, I won't be giving it out.

Unfortunately, most of the people on my Extreme Gift Giving Holiday Extravaganza List are readers of this blog, so pictures or methods will have to wait. In the meantime, I'm going to share with you a completed project I took on a few weeks ago: creating my own whole body cleanse.

I love doing detox cleanses. I feel that they are absolutely essential, not just for "sick people" but for EVERYONE. On the planet. Your poor body just can't keep up, even if you've got the purest diet in the world. I mean no offense when I say this, but it's a simple fact: American women who breastfeed have jet fuel in their milk. Why? Because planes fly over us all day long, and if you've ever seen one fly low enough, you know exactly what the trail of smog behind it really means for all of us. This is just one example of the complete inability to compete with a ravaged planet. But that doesn't mean give up. It means taking control. Just because you have less say over what accidentally gets into your body doesn't mean you have to let it linger there. Get it out! Do a full cleanse.

Good cleanses are hard to come by. I happen to like the full body cleanse at Trader Joe's and I sometimes recommend it as a starting point for people who have never cleansed before and aren't sure they're gonna like it or don't think they need it (ha). The price is right, there aren't any dietary restrictions, it targets all the body's main venues of waste removal, and it's just plain easy to use. For those who have never cleansed or just don't understand the process, this one will get you started and possibly hooked. It's good to do this at least once a year, and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! Hang on...the UPS guy just dropped off my new box of supplements from Vitacost!!!!!

Ok. Back to the story. I made my very first full body cleanse right in my kitchen. How? The magic of encapsulation!

A lot of herbs are nasty. They're amazing for your body and your mind, but they taste really, really gross. The particular herbs used to target liver cleansing are, in my opinion, super yucky. I decided to start encapsulating powdered herbs instead, which is when I came up with my genius plan to just make an entire cleansing system. I keep a LOT of herbs in stock, and I had most of what I needed to make a series of supplements that would target my liver and my colon, assisting them to get any lingering gunk out of my body.

I also wanted to keep things simple so I decided to start with a series of 9 herbs and three supplements: one to target my liver and assist with blood purification, one to both soothe the inner lining of my intestines and to remove build up, and a final supplement to seek and destroy any nasty critters that might have taken up residence somewhere down there (Lemmywinks). Each herbal blend had three herbs chosen to work in synergy with one another. I purposely chose to use no laxative herbs because I do cleanses often. First time cleansers almost always need them.

Grind, grind!



powdered herbs...



Grinding herbs is no problem. I keep a grinder on hand to zap them into powder within seconds, and any tough roots get the mortar and pestle treatment. Encapsulation, however, is a whole other set of problems. It isn't difficult, but it's very tedious and I've already decided to invest in an encapsulation tool, which I'll be needing since I really prefer to take certain herbs whole. It's also necessary if you need to take a particular herb or blend several times a day but can't stand around waiting for an infusion to finish steeping. I picked up these veggie caps at my local health food store, where they are sold in bulk bins.



Show of hands for how many people recognize that plate set.

Remember, if you're going to powder herbs, do it on demand. It's best not to buy powdered herbs unless you're going to encapsulate them or use them right away, since powdered herbs begin to lose their effectiveness much faster than whole, dried plant parts. The best way to ensure the powdered herbs are used immediately and aren't spending too much time on the shelf is to powder them yourself.

Now, once all your powdered herbs are mixed well, it's time to start encapsulating! Having a small, thin, flat tool, like the handle of a small spoon, helps here if you don't have a machine. Fill 'er up!



Once it's full, snap the top on. You'll hear it click into place. These are the smaller size capsules, called 0 size which hold around 500 mg, but it really depends on how much you shove in there and how powdered your herbs are. The 00 size capsules are much bigger and can hold over 1 gram of whatever. They're also huge and hard to swallow. I use them for colon pills because slippery elm is tough to powder, but for everything else, I use 0 size.



All done. Now just do that 59 more times, and you'll have enough for one part of a 30 day cleanse. This is understandably boring, and I only had enough patience and spare time to make myself a 2 week cleanse, but it tested very well, being very gentle yet effective. More importantly, it really gave me a much needed confidence boost. There a lot of pressure in our society to just "leave it up to the experts" and pay out the nose through things that can easily be created in your own home.

However, if you don't plan on making enough pills to encapsulate often, buying a detoxification system prepackaged is your best bet. I know of one in particular that will effectively reformat your entire hard drive, so to speak. Dr. Natura's line of products are extremely well formulated and safe, and you won't believe some of the horrors lurking in your tum tum that these products will remove from you. It's definitely worth a go. They even have a great cleansing system for children. Check out some of the pictures that people have sent in :) WARNING! Do not click if you are eating or at work.

Exercise, Beachbody, and Insanity...

It's no secret around here that I like to work out. Mommy Time at my house is between the hours of 2-4 pm, and it's usually during this block of time I can be found in front of my computer with the chair pushed over to the other side of the living room. I love working out at home. Gyms suck. They're expensive and filled with a whole bunch of gadgets that you don't need (and are all taken anyway).

Workout equipment can be fun and can spice things up a bit, but I'm amazed at the number of people who think that they are necessary. "I can't work out today because my (treadmill, elliptical, tube, ball, etc.) is (broken, missing, malfunctioning, etc.)" Excuses, excuses. Now, I'm just as susceptible to marketing as anyone else, perhaps even more so, but my exercise fanaticism isn't centered around gadgets. I'm all about infomercial workout programs. I seriously am die hard addicted to infomercials. I can't help it, I was born this way. My Dad, a plant loving cherry orchard growing outdoorsman, couldn't stand it when I'd spend an entire Sunday on the couch at 14 years old, watching repeats of Ronco Showtime rotisseries, George Foreman grills, and Oxyclean. Back then, exercise programs were few and far between, and to my recollection only the Tony Little machines and the Bowflex gyms really stand out. But now, in the future, we have something I like to call...Beachbody.

Me and Beachbody are like this (I'm hooking fingers together). Oh my god, I love Beachbody. I swear to you, I'm not on Team Beachbody or anything like that, I just have had genuine success with their programs. I haven't tried every single one, and a lot of them I only borrowed from friends so I wasn't able to continue them, but the ones I have tried, I liked. Some of them I even loved. Slim in Six is the one my sister likes, and through her I was able to give it a shot. Great for beginners and people who haven't worked out in quite some time. It required equipment, which it came with, but I'm a minimalist so the more equipment you need, the less likely I am to follow through. Why? Because equipment is EXPENSIVE. One hand weight at Walmart is 10$. ONE! You don't even get two! And with Beachbody, you get strong moderately fast and need to keep increasing resistance. Which means, yes, more equipment. Slippery slope, that one is.

Hop Hop Abs is another fun and variety adding series that I also borrowed short term and liked. It's especially appealing if you can't stand classic workouts or really, really like dancing. I'm not a dancer unless none of you are around, so I was halfway with this one. Effective for the whole body and fun, but if you lack confidence on the dance floor and can't let loose when no one's watching, you'll feel too retarded to give this one a chance.

Turbo Jam. At one point, the phrase "Turbo Jam" leaving my mouth was heralded with trumpets and singing Angels. This was my go-to program for YEARS. My incredible results with this program in particular led my sister and her SO to purchase it as well, and to date I've also collected many of the extra DVDs that came out after the initial program was sold to supplement the workout for TJ veterans. After my first pregnancy, which was before I studied nutrition, became a vegan or leaned what real health truly was...I was bummed. Yes, the awesomeness that is Kombucha Diva was not even conceived at that time, and I found myself very bummed, indeed. Still watching infomercials (which I still do to this day), I sort of took a liking to the instructor of Turbo Jam and decided to give it a shot. I lost 70 pounds, no joke. All on Turbo Jam. I was so hooked.

Since then, I've done all of the aforementioned workout routines interspersed with yoga, walking, and various other DVDs on Netflix, until I came across something that completely challenged me. Well, punished me, I should say, for ever even imagining that I was, in any way, fit. That workout is Shaun T's Insanity. I can tell you with confidence that I know why it's named Insanity. Because in the middle of the very first workout, I collapsed on the floor, in a mid-winter puddle of sweat, and screamed "THIS S#!T IS F*&#%@G INSANE!" I imagine the volunteers who tested this program before unleashing it's unholy fury upon the innocent public exclaimed something similar in test runs. Regardless, in that moment, I knew I was in love. I knew that this program was different, and it was going to be so awesome.

Insanity is everything I could ever want in a workout. There is not a single shred of equipment necessary besides shoes. No weights, no bars, no tubes, no balance crap...nothing. I suppose you'll need to actually want to be fit, but that's on you. No excuses, baby...you either want it or you don't. The instructor, Shaun T, is incredibly motivating, not silly or annoying, easy to take cues from, and familiar, since we already know him from Hip Hop Abs. More importantly, this workout means business. I have never in my life, in any workout I've ever tried (and I'm a flaky Gemini) been pushed this far or felt this good. It's not that I wasn't capable of delivering, it's that no workout has ever ASKED this much of me. So many programs are targeted at fat Americans sitting up late on the couch watching infomercials, and while there's a market for that, there's also a market for those who actually got up off the couch and are looking for the next step in total body fitness.

I have successfully completed Week One, after passing the fit test, and I am already feeling much more powerful, especially in my legs. This is the first workout that has targeted my calves so well that they're actually sore. Or as I like to call it, on fire and run through a meat grinder. This thing will whip you into shape no matter what's soft, loose, or fat on you. IF (and that's a big if, hence the big letters) you can pass the fit test, which is brutal in itself. If you don't pass, don't even try, because while I did pass, the test alone was one of the hardest things I've ever physically done in a workout, and it's really just there to see if you can handle the actual fitness program. Sometimes, I feel that the program itself is saying to me, in not so many words, "You're not fit at all. And now, I'm going to make you pay..." There's some maniacal laughter that usually follows.

I'm definitely not trying to scare you away from Insanity. But for those of you who are ready, my personal experience has led me to believe that it's definitely one of the many positive and effective ways out there to get results. Now, let's see if I can keep my attention span trained on the series long enough to complete the 60 day program. Hopefully this thing will whip me into enough shape so I can finally bust out some P90X! (if I can ever stand to own that much equipment, that is).