COOKING WITH MARIKA: A Spring Cleanse Will Make Your Body Cheer

As with most things in life —and especially around food and health—I advocate balance. I do not believe in taking extreme measures. When it comes to cleansing the body from the inside out, I am not in favor of “fasting,” be it a water fast, a juice fast or a vegetable broth fast.

I believe a safer way to cleanse is simply to maintain a plant-based diet for a period of time. This approach will gently nudge your body into purging toxins and metabolic waste. The beauty of cleansing with natural whole foods is that the process is kind to your body—there is nothing extreme about it. No starvation, no deprivation.

Cleansing or detoxifying the body twice a year is a sensible practice. You tune up your car regularly, so why not tune up your body as well from time to time? It may not be as simple as changing an oil filter, but we can support our body’s filtering organs—including the liver, the kidneys and the intestinal tract—by following a simple diet of plant foods and detoxifying beverages for a week or so. Our natural detoxification system gets compromised when it is overworked. This can happen when our lifestyle fails to honor a time of rest and we stay up late on a regular basis, hindering the liver as it tries to detoxify the body during the night. It can also happen when we consume more toxins or produce more metabolic waste than the liver can handle on a daily basis. Excess toxins that the liver cannot fully process are stored in the liver itself and in fatty tissues throughout the body.

By eating very simple, light and clean plant food for a period of five to eight days, you give your digestive system a well-deserved break. Your body can utilize its freed-up energy to repair, rebuild and rejuvenate your cells, tissues and organs. You also give your liver a chance to catch up on processing stored toxins. Part of the liver’s job is to transform fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble toxins for easy discharge by the kidneys through the urinary tract. As your body relaxes into cleanse mode, fat cells, too, are gently nudged into purging stored toxins. A high fiber diet helps you to eliminate toxins and metabolic waste deposited in your colon.

Sleep is another important component of a cleanse. If you shift your rest period to an earlier schedule—starting at 10 p.m.— you will give your body a chance to rejuvenate, repair and restore itself fully.