Hello love!
I was asked this question recently and thought it would be great to answer, especially for someone who emotionally eats.
Is cleansing or fasting a good idea? Is it helpful or beneficial?
Before
I want to share a bit more about my own history with cleansing and detoxes and trying these different “diets”.
So on the one hand when you are an emotional eater and someone who is struggling with restriction and in this diet world you grasp onto the latest trend and fad. So, for me I know that when I tried to detox in the past or cleanse I wanted to lose weight and change the way my body looked as quickly as possible.
What I found would happen is that it would be so restrictive I would FAIL! I couldn’t make it through a day of a “cleanse” or a detox. It’s really mentally challenging and you are also not tuning into your body. At the time I hadn’t dealt with my emotional eating. I didn’t know what was happening I thought I needed to be a certain size and I had to do whatever it took. I also didn’t understand cleansing/detoxing/ resetting or what benefit they had to my body because my biggest issue was my emotional eating and using food as my comfort.
So if you take that away (the comfort of food) you’re in a really dire position so you have to look at what’s really going on (ahem coping). So, all my attempts lead to failures. You’d think it would be easy to just eat in a certain way for 1 day but after doing “that” for so many years it became very difficult to do it.
Each time you try a new diet or restriction it becomes so much more difficult because you end up failing and you feel like a failure. And that happened to me.
So if you are an emotional eater and are using food to cope it’s going to be really hard to jump into a cleanse or a reset. You’re going to be gripping your teeth and holding on for dear life.
BUT what I want to give you hope for where you CAN be!
Learning how to nourish your body (what your body really needs and strategies around that), looking at your body acceptance and emotional health are the 3 main components I look at with clients.
- Nourishing your body
- Relationship to Body
- Emotional Health
When you master this foundation it opens you up to actually using cleanses and detoxes more intuitively and in a way that promotes the health of your body rather than trying to fit into a certain “box” and trying to make your body look a certain way.
It becomes more about how you feel on the inside. For example we gain a bit of weight we can start to look at that to see how are we treating ourselves and nourishing ourselves. And now that can be an indicator that we are not treating ourselves very well or caring for ourselves.
Once you have a strong foundation you can start choosing things like cleanses and detoxes. If you are mentally open to it and you know it is for the benefit of your body and health rather than trying to punish yourself. The mentality of punishing and pushing is what makes these detoxes and cleanses so detrimental.
Yes and no…
So, I hope this answers the question is cleansing/resetting/cleansing good. The short answer is yes and no!
It’s no when you don’t have a healthy relationship to your body, to the way you nourish yourself, to the way you move through emotions.
It’s a yes if you get to that grounded place and you can really tune into your body and see what’s the next level and how much deeper you want to go. I do a 3 day digestive reset with clients which I think is important. It’s very nourishing, it resets you, it helps you have a deeper connection to your body but its coming from a loving place not a punishing and restrictive place.
If you have any questions let me know by leaving a comment below!
To vitality,
~Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert.
