SuperSweetLife

As mentioned in my last post, (and I am a woman of my word) here are a few more natural alternatives to conventional medicine for treating your shitty moods…

Yoga

Yoga is by far one of the best things you can do for your mind and body. Yoga helps strengthen your muscles, eliminates toxins from your body, improves digestion and organ function, AND makes you happier. There is something about it that is instantly rejuvenating. Even if you don’t feel the cumulative effects of the many health benefits for a while, you can at least walk away feeling refreshed and revived, and maybe a little lighter.

Bikram yoga is especially awesome. For those of you who don’t know, this is the style of yoga where they heat up the room to about 100 degrees and you end up sweating your ass off. The theory behind this is that the intense heat will allow your body to be more flexible, while you sweat out all of the toxins. Pretty good idea, but it can be really intense. I pretty much fainted when I tried it, but did end up leaving the class feeling way better than when I went in. It’s expensive, but probably one of the best things you can do for your body and your health.

If you don’t have time to spend a whole hour in a yoga class, at least pick up one of the following books so that you can practice at home: Total Yoga: A Step-by-Step Guide To Yoga At Home For Everybody by Tara Fraser and Om Yoga Today: Your Yoga Practice in 5, 15, 30, 60, and 90 minutes by Cyndi Lee. Om Yoga is really good for giving you structured and sequential yoga poses. There are 15, 30, and 60 minute workouts to suit whatever time slot you can devote to it that day. Total Yoga kicks ass and is very inspiring. It covers yoga-related info, such as diet, how to breathe properly, how to detox, how to perform all of the postures, and the history of yoga. I actually recommend them both. They compliment each other well.

Detox/Fasting

As I may have mentioned in another post, I am an organic freak. It started just with the produce I bought, then grew into all food products, and now has moved into other things, such as organic lotion, shampoo, soap, etc.  It’s a lot more work to be living this lifestyle, but I predict that it will get easier as more and more people catch on. My point in telling you this is that I think its important for us to realize what we are eating. There are crazy amounts of toxins in our food. The World Health Organization says 60-80% of all serious disease and illness is caused by toxins in our food and environment. Yuck! Toxins take up energy that our bodies could use elsewhere, they interfere with body processes, and they make it harder for us to absorb vitamins and nutrients. So it should come as no surprise that they interfere with our moods as well.

If you are feeling a little blah, or unlike your usual self, try to detox for a while. There are different ways to detox. Some people simply switch to an organic diet, others go a step further with fasting. There are also several ways to fast. There is the vegetable juice fast, in which you only drink vegetable juice for 2-3 days, and then there is the water only fast. This is hard to do, if you really like your food. (I can’t say I’ve ever attempted it). But those who have claim that they see life in a whole new light afterwards. An article titled, “There’s a Little McDonalds In Everyone,” by Ron Lagerquist, discusses what exactly happens to our bodies when we detox. It can be found here. There’s also some good articles over at Toxin Blog, including the chance to take a quiz to help determine the level of toxins in your body. Check it!

Get your ass to the gym

I hate working out at the gym. It’s crazy boring and way too redundant for me. I think people who claim they love it are liars. There are many other ways I would rather spend my time than being stuck on the elliptical between a sweaty old man and a 20 year old girl on speed. But alas, I have no television at home and my local YMCA now has t.v.’s attached to all of the machines, so there is at least incentive to get my lazy ass to the gym.

It can be easy to fall into the routine of not working out. It starts when you skip a day at the gym one week. Then the next week you are remembering how nice it was to have that free time. Then you start telling yourself, “well one day won’t make that much of a difference.. I’ll just work out twice as hard tomorrow.” Then tomorrow comes and you start to have lower energy; you just aren’t in the mood to exercise. You hope the following day will be different.. not so much. You get the point. The more exercise you get, the better you feel. Everyone knows this, but we all seem to forget it. We wonder why we are so tired and lethargic. I know that when I am exercising regularly I feel so much lighter; not just physically but emotionally as well.

Exercise is hard work for sure. Take the time to find something you love to do, otherwise you won’t do it enough to benefit. My latest thing is hiking with friends on the weekends. There is no better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than hiking with a good friend on a warm sunny day surrounded by beautiful scenery. I think I’ll stick with that work out plan for a while : )

1. Jay Says:
   March 11th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

   This is some great advice. But you forgot to mention the fact that Yoga can also help with a good sex life! No, seriously, I wrote about it lol…

   Jay
   DatMoney.com

2. Linds1982 Says:
   March 12th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

   Haha, good point Jay. Yoga can be very sensual, not to mention it improves your flexibility I’ll definitely check out your post…

3. Mel Avila Alarilla Says:
   March 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

   Thanks for the article. I can really benefit from it. I’ve been practicing yoga before but no longer now. I have also done many fastings before and I even tried exclusive fruit diet to detoxify my body. So many things from your article brought back those memories to me. Thanks and I will do them again for my health. God bless you and your family always.

4. Jay Says:
   March 13th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

   Opps, sorry, I put the wrong website for you to check it out… go to http://www.datcurious.com/ and search for yoga. There’s a couple of pieces on yoga…

   Jay

5. Jennifer Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

   I love the information you provided about detoxing. I’m going to try the vegetable detox this weekend. It’s probably going to be hard physically but I’m sure the benefits will be great.

   Thanks for the tip

6. Linds1982 Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 6:53 pm

   Thanks Jennifer…good luck with the detox. Let me know how it goes!