3 Ultimate Pre-Christmas Cleanses

08:00:00, by Erika A.

Christmas time is absolutely amazing because of so many things – from gorgeous food to great presents, to spending time with the people we love!

Sure, Christmas decorations, caroling and the overall excitement are with no competition when it comes to reasons why we adore this time of year.

Still, despite of everything wonderful happening at this time, this is probably the worst part of the year, health-wise.

How so? Well, this is when we don’t really actively spend a lot of time outside due to cold weather, we also don’t work out as much as we should and we definitely eat more than it’s advisable.

When you think about it, how can we resist that rich pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, the super tasty Christmas and New Year’s feast and then, obviously, all the leftovers that come after!

However, no matter how much you love the food, you’ll be sorry when the holidays are over and you’ve gained 5+ pounds!

This is why, we’d advise you prepare your body for all the food by opting for a pre-Christmas cleanse that works best for you.

To spare you the trouble of browsing through multiple cleansing suggestions and recipes, we’ve singled out some of our favorite guidelines to help you out.

READ: Christmas Gift Guide! Gift Ideas for Her.

Basic cleanse rules

Depending on what your goal is, there are some fine guidelines to help you out. For instance, if you are looking to loose a bit of weight before Christmas, you should follow the widely known cleanse rules: no solid food for three days, must include healthy fats and drink three liquid meals and lemon water all day long.

If you are looking to get a glowing skin, swap out one meal per day, don’t consume dairy products and exclude carbs from your diet.

In case you need a cleanse for instant energy boost you are not to consume carbs and caffeine for 10 days.

There are various recipes that fit these rules and they are all customized per person’s health and goals. Since cleanses aren’t really a norm for the body and you can suffer a deficit in vitamins, we’d always suggest consuming Herbs of Gold to compensate for the vitamin loss.

Our three favorite pre-Christmas cleanses

The Master Cleanse

The super popular 10-day program involves drinking six to twelve glasses daily of water/lemon juice/maple syrup/ cayenne pepper lemonade.

The cleanse is promising to not only detoxify your body but ditch extra pounds, too.

The Candida Cleanse

This one is designed to treat an overgrowth of yeast and fungus in your system; the so called candida cleanse can be practiced in two ways:

a) A seven to 14 day diet where you eat only raw veggies (no starchy veggies) or steamed ones; plus a detox drink and liver drink daily

b) A ‘colon cleanse’ diet, “a three to seven-day plan where you take in only detox drinks and vegetable broths and, optionally, incorporate colonic irrigations”

The Clean Program

This program is a three-week plan based on meal replacement shakes; you are to take program-approved supplements and drink flavored shakes twice a day.

Further, you may be allowed a lunch made from a pre-approved list of foods (brown rice, think mango and lentils).

A common misconception is that cleansing means torturing your body with no-eating regimens that often end with you binge eating or suffering terrible headaches; healthy options, however, are the best thing you can do to your body, believe us!

Guest Post an pics by Roxana Oliver, blogger at Style by Asia