Our five-week transformation starts with an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new detox. “In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to detox,” says “The Inside-Out Diet” author Cathy Wong, N.D., who helped us design this cleansing week. But less-than-wholesome elements can bog down digestion and drain energy, undermining your best efforts to stay healthy. Detoxing gives your liver, the body's main natural detoxification organ, a break. Plus, it helps you start the year with a clean slate, boosting your odds of making changes that really stick during the coming weeks.
Don't worry — we won't ask you to fast or subsist for a week on maple syrup and cayenne. Instead, you'll ease in and out of the program. Throughout the week, you'll boost your efforts with exercise to “get blood moving through your organs more quickly and sweat out your toxins,” as Wong explains. An equally important above-the-shoulders media diet (no television, Web surfing) builds reflective downtime into your day.
Perhaps most important, you'll devote time to consider what, exactly, you want to take away from the Body+Soul Challenge. Daily writing exercises will help you explore and personalize its themes: nutrition, exercise, stress relief, and energy. By the end of the week, you'll be in a great position to clearly identify your goals. So take a deep breath and get ready–a new you is just five weeks away.
