Detox holidays. Everyone’s doing them, right? I call them “poo holidays”…you know.. the ones where people dart off to Bali or India or Thailand to detox and clean out their insides…if you know what I mean.

photo via chicksandbikes.blogspot.com

From what I hear they entail drinking clay (to grab’n’drag whatever’s clinging to their guts) and pumping all manner of things (coffee, herbs) up their you-know-whats. Oh, and then pooing everything back out again.  It’s Operation Eliminate…sitting by a pool. My friend Deb goes twice a year. “I come back scrubbed out and recalibrated,” she says.

I’ve never done such a retreat. I mean, you would’ve read about it if I had.

I guess I cling to the idea that our bodies have their own divine way of sorting out our (I promise this is the last mention) shit. I realize I’m about to sound like my Mum when she’d offer me a celery stick when I complained of being hungry. But I think a far better way to detox is to do stuff.  Stuck? Move a little. Eaten badly? Eat a stack of good stuff. We are dynamic beings, not passive vessels in need of a hose out.

Me. I prefer to keep things clean and simple. I do bike riding holidays. I always have. I’ve seen New Zealand, Spain, California, The Netherlands, Vietnam, Tasmania, vast tracts of NSW and Victoria by bike as well as the 3000km stretch of coast running from Brisbane to Cairns stopping off at all possible gaudy Big Edible Items en route.

Recently I was invited to ride around the Hawke’s Bay region in New Zealand. It came at a time when I needed to get clean and clear (just after I decided to abort my book project). It was perfect.

[Disclaimer: I was invited as a guest of Tourism New Zealand to experience their new Cycle Trails, a project of 18 new trails that zig-zag across both islands. They know I've ridden quite a bit of the country before and thought I'd like to check it out.]

Five reasons to detox on a bike

1. Head down and watching spokes spin, you have a lot of time to think. Actually, it’s more a purging of thoughts. After up to nine hours in the saddle, the toxic thoughts eventually peter out. They just do. And then sweet, Zen-like emptiness. Previously I’ve reinvented my career, had insights into my future, had emotional purgings…the lot! All atop a saddle.
2. The pedaling motion is also great for lymphatic drainage. So is the sweating. So is the sun.

It’s almost spring. Which, for all kinds of reasons, is a good time to get fresh with our foods and clean things up a bit.  Our bodies respond so well at this time of year to a “cleanse” – it shakes us from the winter heaviness and gets us digesting light and breezily ready for the heat. Oh yes, heat!

From an ayurvedic POV, it’s all about enlivening kaphic energy (spring needs an alert kaphic energy to withstand the dampness). (I’ve written rundowns on ayurvedic doshas, and the vata effect previously)

Personally, I’m not a massive fan of full-on, restrictive eating detoxes. And, indeed, it’s the principle behind the new show I host Eat Yourself Sexy, which launches THIS THURSDAY!!! Our bodies naturally detox far better when fed good food, aided with a few tricks. Honestly, eating our way through a clean out is soooo much more fun.

If you feel like cleaning things out ready for the warmer weather, a few tricks and recipes (and please add your own ideas at the bottom…these are just the things I’m going to be doing):

1. Get plenty of sleep – our bodies detox throughout the night. We need to get to bed by 10pm to align with the detox/cell regeneration processes throughout the night.

2. Eat ginger. And other digestive herbs and spices as much as you can: cumin, fennel, cayenne pepper, turmeric.

3. Drink digestive teas. Licorice, fennel, mint, dandelion…

4. Eat green. As much as you can. Green cleans. Silverbeet, spinach, kale, broccoli…and be sure to start to move into the cooler green things as the weather warms: avocado and cucumber, mint and parsley. I love this recipe for rawvocado soup from wholeliving (pic above). It pretty much combines the top cleansing ingredients in the one little package….

Chilled ‘Rawvocado’ Soup with Coconut Water

This recipe makes two servings.  If you want more soup, double the amounts accordingly.

• 2 large, ripe avocados
• 1 cup coconut water (you could also use nut milk or filtered water)
• juice of 1 lime (about 4 tablespoons)
• ½ cup coriander leaves
• ¼ cup chives
• 1 shallot, minced
• pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Cut open and pit avocados. Scoop out flesh, reserving a small portion of one half for garnish.

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend on high until smooth. If the soup is too thick, add more coconut water until the desired consistency is reached (it should coat the back of a spoon, but not be solid).

Pour into a large jar with a tight-fitting lid and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Serve when cold. Garnish with avocado cubes and chives or coriander.

5. Chlorella is great. The benefits are

Sunday Life: This week I detox my cosmetics

a little note: in my next post I will be listing the safe products I’ve decided to use as result of this week’s experiment, as well as those used personally by the top experts in safe cosmetics around the world. Check in tomorrow!

In 2009 Rick Smith & Bruce Lourie, two Canadian environmentalists locked themselves in an unventilated apartment and polluted themselves with household items like hand sanitiser and antiperspiran, which saw their triclosan levels rocket, and tinned tuna, which led to mercury poisoning after just seven serves. They offered themselves up as guinea pigs and emerged with a bestseller, Slow Death by Rubber Duck, their toxic tales influencing the Canadian government to ban BPA from baby’s bottles.

This week I share with you a similar experiment. This time I’m the intrepid guinea pig and my poison of choice is beauty products. My aim is this: to find out whether my makeup is making me sick. And what I should be using instead.

Remember my chat with Joi about oodlies from earlier in the week?

She made this one for me. With this note: “I was going to give you harry potter glasses but felt it would be too busy what with the dog hugging you and the other oodlie sniffing your hair.” She also asked if I have an obsession with cleaning my ears. Which I do. But unrelated.

Also unrelated. But useful. Remember I wrote about how to detox your apartment? (And I discovered my bedroom was a dungeon of EMF evil?)

Well, I found out you can HIRE a guass meter FOR FREE from the Government.

* This post has been updated. See below.

Following the toxic audit on my apartment that I wrote about on Sunday, two rather big things. I have to move out of my apartment. And I’ve tossed my frying pans.

I’m moving because my bedroom is on top of the fuse room for the entire block. I’ve always thought this was a bonus – my room is nice and warm in winter. Nicole the building biologist asked if I have immune problems because the crazy, schizophrenic magnetic field action in my room would be wreaking havoc, she’d imagine. Boy do I ever – I have auto-immune disease, and it’s taking an eternity to heal. “How long have you been living here?” Four years. “How long you had auto-immune disease?”. Three and a half years. Ahhhh….

I’m not a dramatic over-reactor. But I can’t ignore this.

But to the pans. Non-stick pans are coated in Teflon, which is what makes them slippery. Oh, how I’ve loved Teflon in the past! The way it cooks eggs. And nuts. No mess. No oil.  Problem is that a chemical that’s released when you heat up Teflon is leaching into everyone’s blood stream and is making us sick – cancer, birth defects, HORMONE DISRUPTION and high cholesterol (ironically, given non-stick saves on cooking oils) are the oft-cited effects.

Studies are going back and forth. For a full discussion, read Slow Death by Rubber Duck. They go through the arguments and come out categorically telling everyone to get rid of non-stick pans.

This week I happily and surely go sober.

You see, I’m the ambassador for FebFast, an initiative that invites Australians to go sober in February and raise money for a bunch of substance abuse charities.

If you want to join my FebFast team go to this link…here! The password is detoxme. We’re currently the leading team, so you might as well back a winner. My MasterChef crew have joined, as have a bunch of writer/magazine/actor mates. Stay tuned in February. They’ll be sharing their sober thoughts here.

It started when I attended this charity cocktail event.  It was a thoroughly ra-ra affair with much champagne flowing to keep conversation loose and women vertical (without the numbing effect of booze, I swear, we couldn’t stand as long as we do in heels). However, I wasn’t drinking.

When you don’t drink you confuse people.