Detox Water Recipes for the New Year!

Hello and happy 2015!

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and vacations and what have you, and I celebrated another year of being 21 while away as well. Now that it's January (and spring semester starts next week) it's time to get back on track!

I'm sure most of you, like me, ate amazing awesome food this past month. Oh, the deliciousness. I'm also sure most of you, like me, saw the scale creep up a couple pounds. Not to worry! In fact, I plan for a 3-5lb gain from the end of December til the first week of January (when I visit Las Vegas for my birthday and eat at the best of the best with no regrets.)

Let's not do anything crazy now. Don't go jump into fad diets or crazy cleanses or the next popular pill hype. Let's do simple, easy things here and there that will produce positive changes along the way! Let's drinks more water!
And super charge it while we're at it!

Here are some ways you can get the most out of your h2o: 64 ounces a day is the goal!
Remember: When using fruit or herbs, it's best to let them marinate overnight in the water, or at least a few hours.

• Morning Detox: Green tea with honey, lemon, a dash of cinnamon & a pinch of cayenne

• Simple Detox: 8oz water, a shot of apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 a teaspoon of organic maple syrup 

• Spa Detox: Ice water with sliced cucumber and a squeeze of lime

• Afternoon Pick-Me-Up Detox: Water with green apple and cinnamon

• Better than Juice Detox: 2 cups water, 1 cup 100% cranberry juice, 1/4 cup lemon juice, sweeten naturally (honey, stevia, etc.)

• De-stress Detox: Berries & mint leaves in chilled water.

• Evening Detox: Hot ginger tea with 1/2 a shot of apple cider vinegar and honey

Being Healthy is Not a Part Time Job

And sometimes I forget that.

Sometimes I get so excited and comfortable with my happy contentment of health that I ease up a little too much. Sure, that cupcake won't kill me. Heck, I'm low on carbs, I can eat those free cookies at work. I love pizza. I eat healthy the rest of the time...

There's nothing wrong with these thoughts by themselves of course. The problem comes when you say these things to yourself more & more frequently. Then the next thing you know you're having the second caramel apple ever in your life two days in a row and haven't kept up your food logging this week and wonder why your body all of the sudden feels like you're coming down with something.

The caramel apple was pretty good though.

Halfway through my shift at work today my body was screaming for nutrients. My skin feels achy when things like this happen... That I know I need a high dose of veggies, some tea, probably some homemade soup, and definitely a decent amount of sleep with a day of relaxation. When it was time for me to clock out tonight, that's pretty much all I wanted to do. Planned gym-time had to be set aside as I stopped by the grocery store on my way home to pick up a couple essentials.

On my way a small light bulb came on: My detox drink. Now hold your horses: I'm not using the phrase "detox drink" as some magical potion that's going to make you instantly healthy or thin or clean you out like the million detox drink fads claim. Nature has its little helpers for things like this.

Let's start with the basics:
Water. Duh. Drink lots of it. Put stuff in it. What stuff?

Lemons / Lemon Juice: 
Lemons are high in Vitamin C, which helps your immunity to help ward off things like colds & infections. It is an antioxidant which helps prevent inflammation, heart issues and cancer. It is an assistant to our liver - which is one of our two main organs (the other being our kidneys) that actually does our body's detoxing. It is also a natural disinfectant.

When people say, "We don't need to take anything special to detox, our body does that on their own." Well, they are both right and wrong. Our body DOES cleanse itself, but it needs help, aka instructions on how to do this. It doesn't make sense to think you can chug as much alcohol as you want and your body will clean all of it out for you with no issues forever, right? Your body knows what to do, but you still have to help it, not hurt it.

Cayenne Pepper: 
I try to sneak this in almost anywhere I can on a daily basis: In my egg whites for breakfast, my quinoa for lunch, my chicken or pasta for dinner. It is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory ingredients for health, great for metabolizing food and digestion. This temporary increase in metabolism produces a thermal effect which naturally helps the body speed up its detoxifying process. Cayenne is also noted to help blood pressure & prevent the formation of blood clots.

Apple Cider Vinegar:
Fights bacteria, improves digestion & metabolism, strengthens the immune system and prevents UTIs.

And here is what I gather around my kitchen to make my own detox drink. It may not taste fabulous, but it does the job! I caught the flu for my first time in years this past January, and I was able to start getting over it within a matter of days after I started drinking this. More to follow!

Confessions of a Pasty White Girl

Technically I'm a mutt, but my skin seems to have faded away through the years. I used to joke that I was going to turn into Powder & become translucent. It probably didn't help that I lived most of my life in South San Francisco basically living in a cloud 360 days out of the year.

Next week I'm supposed to go to Great America. There were a couple times when I was younger (and naturally a lot darker) that I would burn on my shoulders from being out in the sunny amusement park all day. Being significantly lighter now, I thought it might be a good idea to "base tan." Yes, I admit, I have used tanning booths in the past, usually right before a vacation where I knew I was going to be showing legs that my dad used to call "fish bellies." He was the dark one in my family and my skin originally took after him, so when I started fading away I got some flack.

Fast forward to yesterday and I decided to check out a new tanning salon by my new home. Although I had some nice fancy-pants tanning lotion back at mi casa, I had just popped in to try this place so I used their sample lotion.

Everything after that happened so quickly...

New client discount. Stand up bed. Done this routine before. Put lotion on & get in.
I usually keep my eyes closed most of the time with the goggles on, and after a couple minutes I opened them & looked down.
"Hmm, that's a weird looking blotch on my leg. I wonder if that's the lotion, or maybe something beneath my skin from working out earlier?"
"Weird looking blotch on my arm too. Why are my shoulders feeling prickly? Is it getting hot already?" (Thinks for a few seconds; moves around.) "No, not hot yet, & it's only been a few minutes."
"This looks crazy, why does it feel like this? Should I see what this looks like in real light? No, I'm probably trippin..." (Thinks a few more seconds.) "I'll just get out real quick & look in the mirror & see it's nothing."

Gets out of booth.
Holy mother of god! What the hell is this lotion? The prickly feeling isn't going away! I'm a lobster! It was only a few minutes! Oh my god I have to put my clothes on! Need to get out of here now!

I couldn't even put my bodybugg back on cuz I didn't want anything touching me. I half-ran out of the salon with my head down semi-smiling saying thank you to the nice Asian lady that I'm sure had no clue what arsenal she had bestowed upon me. Envisioning my home 2 miles away - so close yet so far - I was lucky that the K train pulled right up to take me the first mile. My ass! I couldn't even sit down! Most of the time I walk the last mile because the 23 bus comes every 30 minutes (if it even comes at all) but thanks to the NextBus app I could see it was coming in 2 minutes. Fate or Karma or something must have felt sorry for me because I've never been able to get home that quick before. Those few minutes I spent looking up home remedies on Pinterest for allergic reactions & burns & anything related I could find.

Thank the Lord my roommate wasn't home because I started taking my clothes off the minute I walked in the door. I ran around my kitchen, bathroom and bedroom gathering things like green tea, Epsom salts, aloe vera gel, generic Benadryl and ice cubes. I had text messaged my boyfriend on the way home something resembling English related to skin reaction-tanning booth, and quickly followed up that text with, "I think need to borrow your bathtub."
"Lol really?"
"Yes. Can you pick me up please I'm packing right now."

I changed into the softest clothes I could find, which ended up being satin PJs and a microfiber bathrobe. Into a bag I threw the actual soft clothing I could change into when the situation became less dire. Although I had been tired all day due to it being my "early day" at work, I was running around like a chicken with her head cut off not knowing what to do.

(An hour later) my hands & wrists got the worst of it.

I put together the best Pinterest ideas I could find & threw everything I had into the bathtub, including vinegar and baking soda.
Two hours later, I was a 3 out of 10 on the uncomfortable scale, still in disbelief how it all happened so quickly.

The detox/ allergic reaction/ burn/ soothing/ green tea/ epsom salt/ vinegar/ baking soda/ aloe vera bath

Pasty white girl skin lesson: Never use the sample lotion from the cheapest tanning salon in town.
Also: My next home has to have a bathtub in it.