AKA. Why I’m cleansing this week..
I’m on the first day of my Gingersnap’s Organic cleanse, this is my very FIRST cleanse where I’m not making all the food myself and I’m beyond excited for this week. I’m in the process of writing my own detox and am savvy enough to put myself on my own sort of cleanse/detox/juice fast (hey, I even wrote a book about how I do it) but there is something quite delightful in having someone else handle all that for you and I was eager to give it a go. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to cleanse, sometimes you’re feeling gross from several weeks of eating processed foods, maybe you’re feeling sluggish and want to boost your system back in to gear and lots of people go on a cleanse because they want to lose an extra few pounds fast. My reasons are none of the above. I actually eat pretty healthy, feel just fine and have no desire to lose weight.
I’m cleansing mostly for my mind! See, my favorite thing about doing a juice cleanse is the crystal clear focus that comes from it after the first few days. I love that excessive amount of clean energy that just oozes out your pores and makes you feel like you can take on the world. I’ve decided to do this cleanse to help focus. Writing my first big girl book about my entire lifestyle plan, creating a detox, planning lots of exciting events and handling some personal and family things that have come up have really made my brain mush. I forget dates, sometimes forget emails, and I’m just struggling to finish writing sometimes, to be really honest. Also, I’ve been under a lot of stress, a break up, family health issues, it’s enough to turn even this green juice drinking, meditating body into an acidic danger zone. Even the healthiest of us still release stress hormones that can turn our inner environment acidic, lower our immune system, slow us down and make our skin break out. So it’s always a great idea to focus on eating alkaline, organic and nutrient dense food when your world is spinning a little too fast for your own good, but you know what’s even better?! Having an amazing place like Gingersnap’s handle it all for you so that you can have one less thing to worry about and know that you’re in good hands getting the nutrients your body needs to function at it’s best. As someone who makes food all the time for my blog and for various cooking videos and appearances, it’s such a pleasure to have it all come to me for a change and be able to focus on my life and my work instead of worrying about what I’m making for dinner, or what I’m juicing for the day.
Of course, the other reasons for cleansing are also very valid so I don’t want to completely skip over them. Going on a cleanse is a great way to get back into the habit of healthy eating when you feel you’ve fallen off track for a few weeks, it puts you on a strict regimen so it’s a lot easier to avoid temptations that pop up and remind you of how amazing you can feel when you are treating your body right. I highly recommend it to my clients who are struggling with gaining motivation to make some serious changes. It’s also a great way to rev your body up if you’ve been feeling sluggish because chances are you’re feeling sluggish because you’re not getting enough nutrients in your diet or you’ve let stress bog you down and need a nice healthy rush to re-calibrate you. While I never recommend trying to do something drastic to lose weight quick, if you need to drop a few pounds for a special occasion, going on a cleanse is a great way to accomplish that by flooding your system with glorious good for you foods or juices and NOT depriving yourself! Plus, instead of feeding unhealthy behaviors like some crazy get skinny quick schemes do, going on a vegan, raw, organic juice or meal cleanse will actually influence you to start putting healthier, good for you foods into your body when you’ve finished.
Why did I choose Gingersnap’s Organic out of all the juice spots in NYC?
Gingersnap’s Organic is a raw, vegan, organic cafe in the East Village that makes all of it’s cleanses (and juices or food you can purchase) on site. I love that I know where my juice is being made and I can trust that it’s the freshest possible because it’s not being carted on a truck from a warehouse somewhere in Queens or Brooklyn. I also know that the juices are made as a whole, in other words if there’s a juice with kale, cucumber, pear and lemon, it’s being made all at once and there isn’t a massive container of kale juice, a massive container of cucumber juice, etc, that’s being mixed together to make my juice. This may seem a little crazy but there are actually some well-known juice spots that do this sort of mixing. The reason why that’s not so fabulous for your juice quality is that when they are mixing batches of juice like that you could be drinking kale from 3 days ago, cucumber from this morning and lemon from yesterday. Not an ideal situation. You should always be stickler about your juice, and even more so on a cleanse where you are drinking a lot of it. NEVER drink juice that’s not made with organic fruits and vegetables, you do not want all the nasty chemicals, hormones and antibiotics that can be found on non-organic produce inside your body. Also, never ever cleanse with pasteurized juice, look for cold pressed or high pressured processing like they do at Gingersnap’s.
I also chose Gingersnap’s Organic because of their kick ass founder, yogi and raw foods expert, Jamie Graber, she personally sat down with me and helped me customize this cleanse for my needs. Gingersnap’s offers a wide variety of cleanses from all juice to all food and they let you mix and match them. When I told Jamie about why I was doing the cleanse and that I was pretty open to whatever she wanted to throw at me, she encouraged me to do a combination of three. We decided I would start off on their Go Deep Sugar Free juice cleanse for two days, then move on to their half liquid, half solids Spirit Junkie cleanse (inspired by my guru, miss Gabby Bernstein) and finally finish off the week with their Go Cleanse which is all real vegan, organic and gluten free meals. I loved the idea of being able to experience a whole range of cleanse options and work my way from liquids back to solids over the course of the week. I also find Jamie totally inspiring and love how passionate she is about making the best possible juice and food for her clients. I know my body is in good hands with her this week!