We have either heard of, done, or steered far away from the famous “cleanse.” Cleanses come in a variety of different forms, from juice fasting to fasting altogether, to avoiding certain foods, to only eating green foods (to name just a few). Cleanses in their harshest forms may make us feel amazing for a few days and drop a lot of weight (if we can stick to them) but often we bounce straight back to our old lifestyle of eating whatever we want whenever we want, gain the weight back and end up not really gaining all that much from the process. Cleanses are great ways to cut our cravings and little addictions, but it’s important to build a sustainable system that we can build from (instead of run away from screaming or drop halfway through).
This 7-day Beauty Bootcamp is designed to reorganize and to help you pay closer attention to the choices that you make so that you can clear space for your body to do what it already does on its own when we aren’t loading it with processed foods and refined sugar: detox. This 7-program is something you can (and probably should!) do every week for the rest of your life without any harsh side effects – it can only make you feel and look better if you stick to it.
In order to build this detox week, I interviewed holistic nutrition and business coach Krissy Leonard and personal trainer Lauren Schramm, both of whom are known for approaching health and beauty in a holistic, mind-body-spirit way. Both of these women know that health is not about forcing yourself to stick to a regimen that you feel is punishment; it is about being gentle with yourself, finding ways to be healthy that you love (a type of movement you love, healthy snacks you love), and focusing on those instead of all of the things you are missing out on by prioritizing your health (and feeling amazing!).
“Beauty amplifies the more you attend to yourself, show reverence and care for yourself,” says Krissy Leonard, “When you are present with yourself, you automatically make better choices and feel more beautiful because you’re paying attention. So often when we feel like we aren’t where we need to be it’s because we’ve been neglecting ourselves in some way. A cleanse is about being willing to create more consciousness around choices.”
For this Beauty Bootcamp, I will be introducing mind, body, and spirit elements. As a founder of The First House, a company that coaches women to approach their lives and careers holistically in order to find their purpose, I believe that a balance of all three is essential. If we want to make real changes in our lives, we have to create better habits that create self-awareness – the rest will bloom from there. I hope that this 7-day program helps you create some life-changing patterns.
To introduce the concepts presented here, I will elaborate on each component of the program before laying out the daily schedule:
Body – Food:For this cleanse, Krissy has presented us with a Kitchari cleanse – something she recommends to her clients regularly. Kitchari is an Ayurvedic dish that is made with rice, dal, vegetables, and spices that are great for cleansing and healing. Ayurveda, for those who haven’t yet come across that word, is an ancient healing system from India, and kitchari is one of its staples for coming back into balance. You can find recipes easily on the internet (and it can be as simple as cooking lentils and rice together with a few spices!).
The idea of this cleanse is that it feeds the body foods that are easy to digest and process. “The more you reduce the load on your digestion and begin to heal your digestion,” says Leonard, “the more you free up beauty energy - the energy your body has to repair cells, clear your skin.”
We are simply trying to free up the body to do the detoxifying it is designed to do naturally, rather than focus on processing the toxins we are so used to putting into our body: caffeine, processed foods and sugars, dairy and gluten, and alcohol are all things we should work to reduce if not eliminate from our diets.
If people don’t like the taste of cumin or certain Indian spices, Leonard notes, you can replace certain elements so it’s not so traditional – just make a dish that combines a grain, a legume, and a couple of veggies.
The daily schedule will walk you through what the day-to-day breakdown for the cleanse (eliminating certain key foods completely at the height of the cleanse) is and when you can graduate from strictly eating kitchari.
Some general tips for every day: drink more water, and start your day with a cup of warm water with lemon! Hot lemon water creates peristalsis, ripple-like contractions in intestines that push waste and toxins out: “We all know what we use coffee for a lot of the time,” says Leonard, “with hot lemon water you’ll get an energy boost and regularity without the side effects of caffeine.”
Body – Fitness:Lauren’s general tips on maintaining physical fitness:
- It’s more important to find types of movement that you enjoy than to follow a strict protocol — you’re attempting to create a lifestyle change, not add items to your to-do list; your experience of your workout will impact your results, your level of motivation and whether or not you do it at all
- Be mindful of your breath — you can positively or negatively influence your nervous system by altering the way you’re breathing: shoot for deep elongated inhales, spending 4-8 seconds sending the breath past the lungs and to the low belly
- Start each workout with some kind of movement prep: foam rolling, active mobility (like the worlds greatest stretch), dynamic flexibility, a vinyasa yoga flow
The different days will be marked for medium intensity workouts, high-intensity workouts, restorative movement, and rest. The different workouts you can choose from are:
RESTORATIVE: restorative yoga, maybe a yin yoga class, or take a vinyasa class at your own pace
MEDIUM INTENSITY: barre or Pilates class, hot yoga class, workout in the rep range 12-20 for weighted exercises, jog or a long walk, bike ride, pick up basketball game or tennis or softball or soccer
HIGH INTENSITY: Tabata: an exercise of your choice, 8 rounds of 20 sec on (all out) + 10 sec rest — repeat 3-5 times with different exercises, a HIIT group fitness class, boxing class, spin class, or a workout in the rep range 6-12 for weighted exercises
ON REST DAYS: catch up on sleep + rest/restore physically, mentally + emotionally (nap, guided meditation)
The daily schedule will walk you through what types of workouts you should do each day of the week. The most important thing is to start with something that feels sustainable to you and that you will want to repeat week to week. The important thing is to start by doing SOMETHING at least 4 times a week, even if it is just a walk on your lunch break or some stretching. You can build from there.
Mind:Try to begin the practice of meditating for 5-10 minutes every day. There is an app called Insight timer that is wonderful for this and allows you to either set a timer with a beautiful bell sound or to choose from an enormous range of guided meditations (you can search by amount of time you want to meditate for, theme, what you are feeling, and more).
Spirit:“Spirit,” to me, refers to doing at least one thing a day that is just for YOU. Make a list of all of the things that feed your soul, that you deeply love. Maybe this is reading a book in the morning or at the end of the day, taking a walk by yourself, playing guitar or singing, making a watercolor, simply sitting for a few minutes and thinking about the things you are grateful for (or writing them down!). Anything that feels a little luxurious to squeeze into your day but you know it will give you energy.
I recommend taking the following 7-day program and making it your own, writing it out as a schedule in your planner or calendar with the elements unique to you and the way you want to take it on.
DAY 1 (I recommend starting Sunday or Monday)
Body
Food:
- PREP day 1: work to reduce sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, meat, gluten, and processed foods from your diet. Begin to focus on simple whole foods, soups, veggies, lots of water and herbal tea. This is a good day to set intentions and mapping out your week.
- Coffee is usually a tough one, so cut this out gradually if needed. There are some herbal replacements that mimic the taste of coffee, and herbal teas are always a great option.
- Do a medium-intensity workout on this day.
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY
DAY 2
Body
Food
- PREP day 2: work to reduce sugar, caffeine, alcohol, dairy, meat, gluten and processed foods from your diet. Begin to focus on simple whole foods, soups, veggies, lots of water and herbal tea. This is a good day to set intentions and mapping out your week.
- Do a high-intensity workout on this day.
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY
DAY 3
Body
Food- CLEANSE day 1: Eat only kitchari or whole foods on these days. You can either skip breakfast or eat a porridge made with whole grains – oats, quinoa or rice with ghee, cinnamon, and nutmeg; or eat fresh fruit
- It is also important on cleanse days not to have many snacks – if you do, make it a whole food, so fruit or veggies (cucumber slices and hummus, for example)
- Do a medium-intensity workout on this day.
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY
DAY 4
Body
Food- CLEANSE day 2: Eat only kitchari or whole foods on these days. You can either skip breakfast or eat a porridge made with whole grains – oats, quinoa or rice with ghee, cinnamon, and nutmeg; or eat fresh fruit
- It is also important on cleanse days not to have many snacks – if you do, make it a whole food, so fruit or veggies (cucumber slices and hummus, for example)
- Rest day
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY
DAY 5
Body
Food- CLEANSE day 3: Eat only kitchari or whole foods on these days. You can either skip breakfast or eat a porridge made with whole grains – oats, quinoa or rice with ghee, cinnamon, and nutmeg; or eat fresh fruit
- It is also important on cleanse days not to have many snacks – if you do, make it a whole food, so fruit or veggies (cucumber slices and hummus, for example)
Movement
- Start with just 20 minutes
- Do a high intensity workout on this day.
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY
DAY 6
Body
Food- INTEGRATION (90/10 or 80/20): This is where you get to ease up a little (maybe map it out so this falls on the weekend or Friday-Saturday!). You should be eating a ratio of either 90/10 or 80/20 clean to “pleasure” foods (things you very intentionally and happily treat yourself to) – the ratio should be 90/10 if you are trying to lose weight.
- If you go out to dinner, order the cleanest thing on the menu that you can find and ENJOY yourself.
- Do some restorative movement on this day
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
- Self-care & community- Do something that brings you JOY each day
- IDEA: Start the day by taking yourself out to breakfast with a good book Elizabeth Gilbert posted about this on her Instagram recently and I think it is a brilliant idea for a self-care ritual.
DAY 7
Body
Food- INTEGRATION (90/10 or 80/20): This is where you get to ease up a little (maybe map it out so this falls on the weekend or Friday-Saturday!). You should be eating a ratio of either 90/10 or 80/20 clean to “pleasure” foods (things you very intentionally and happily treat yourself to) – the ratio should be 90/10 if you are trying to lose weight.
- If you go out to dinner, order the cleanest thing on the menu that you can find and ENJOY yourself.
Movement
- Rest day
Mind
10 minutes of meditation – right when you wake up or right before bed
Soul
Self-care & community – do something that brings you JOY each day
MOVING ON FROM WEEK 1:
This routine is meant to be replicable and sustainable from week to week. As you graduate from week 1, you can either repeat this every week or ease up a bit. Try to keep the same ratio of 90-10 clean to pleasure foods, but you can replace the kitchari if you have been eating it for every meal. The basic meal breakdown that Leonard loves to have clients subscribe to is half of the plate is veggies (mix of green veggies and orange/red veggies like sweet potatoes and beets), a quarter of the plate is whole grains, and a quarter of the plate is protein (chicken or a vegetarian protein like mung dal, urud dal, red lentils, French lentils, split peas garbanzo beans, black beans or pinto beans, or the occasional tofu or tempeh). It is okay to bring dairy and gluten back in as long as you continue to do so mindfully.
Continue to practice mindfulness and self-care each and every day and you will start to radiate from the inside out. Find rituals and practices that resonate deeply with you.
This process is not about doing a cleanse perfectly, but about paying attention and really taking care of yourself. “Being gentle is really important,” says Leonard, “Focus on progress, not perfection, because you get to live this way and eat this way for the rest of your life, so you might as well enjoy it.”
About Krissy Leonard: Featured on ABC and NBC, Holistic Nutrition and business Coach Krissy Leonard teaches women practical ways to eat well, make money, and change the world.
About Lauren Schramm: Lauren Schramm is a private personal trainer and yoga instructor in Brooklyn, New York. She recently co-founded The First House Collective, a creative collective for soul-searching women, with Olivia Dillingham.