A few months ago, I started seeing a functional nutritionist. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a doctor that focuses on diet and lifestyle changes to help the patient feel their best, instead of using medical tests and procedures. I had been having major stomach problems, and I had been to every other type of doctor out there. When I finally found out about functional nutrition, I was ecstatic. I had heard these amazing stories of healed patients, and I couldn’t wait for that to be me. But I soon found out that healing wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be. The hardest part about healing through functional nutrition was doing a major detox in order to find out if I had any food allergies and to flush the toxins from my body.
This detox meant cutting out dairy, gluten, carbs and sugar while only eating organic food cooked at home. As a person whose typical diet consists of cheese, crackers and Dr. Pepper, I was freaked out and discouraged. There was no way in heck that I would be able to cut all of those major categories from my diet and stop eating out for a whole month. I started the detox on a Monday, and by Tuesday, I was crying and eating a double cheeseburger that I had delivered. I wanted to give up, but I knew that I would never find out why I felt so crappy if I did. So, I tried again. But this time, I was more prepared.
Every time I start some sort of diet, I always end up feeling constantly hungry and then blowing the diet on a huge meal. So, knowing that about myself, I went to the grocery store and bought every gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free and sugar-free snack that I could find. Plus, I got organic fruits and greens to make plenty of smoothies and sugar-free peanut butter to make them more filling. I was lucky to be living in Richmond during most of my detox because in my hometown, the only grocery store is Walmart, and there is no such thing as organic food, much less detox friendly snacks there. So I hit up Whole Foods, The Fresh Market and Kroger and found tons of Cassava flour chips and vegan cheese puffs to keep me full. Having things to snack on during the day helped me to stay on track better than just suffering from meal to meal feeling hungry.
So, how did my detox make me feel? Honestly, I still have stomach problems (still working on them), but I feel like I have lost my cravings for desserts and high carb foods like bread. I used to eat some sort of dessert every night before bed, but after fighting through the first week or two, the cravings slowly started to go away as the toxins left my body. While that wasn’t the main goal of the detox, I was very thankful for this change to my lifestyle. My sleep has improved, as well, and I have a tad more energy than I had pre-detox. In a perfect world, I would recommend everyone trying a detox just to rid your body of toxins, but it turned out to be incredibly expensive.
Buying organic food, both frozen and fresh, is insanely more expensive than regular, and organic and vegan snacks are just as bad. I’ve always heard people say that eating healthy is too expensive, but when you actually have to do it, you find out really fast that they are right. It is a sad reality because I would love to continue to eat organically, but as a college student, it is almost totally out of my budget. So, overall, I rate my detox experience as a seven: two points off because it was hard and one point for the price. If you ever decide to do a detox diet, make sure you do it safely, and I wish you the best of luck!