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Day 7: Nurture
Since I can remember, I have found myself eating unconsciously. How did I get to the bottom of that bag of chips or cookies? Where did that pint of ice cream go? I often eat standing up, or in the car, or while I am doing something else, and then I never really feel satisfied. It’s as if I am not really there while the food goes down. The Take-Five Breathing Break ritual of stopping and taking five breaths before every meal changed everything for me. I noticed how I felt and calmed my body down rather than eating in a state of stress (which always makes me eat more). I tasted the food instead of inhaling it and could actually notice when I felt satisfied. Amazing how such a simple exercise could do so much to change my relationship with food. I even noticed throughout the rest of the day how much happier and calmer I felt.
—JENNIFER GENARA
Morning:
Take your measurements and record your results in your Detox Journal or online tracking tool. Also record how many hours of sleep you got the night before and the quality of that sleep.
Begin the day with thirty minutes of brisk walking or other exercise.
Just before breakfast, take 2.5 to 5 grams of PGX fiber: 3 to 6 capsules or ½ to 1 scoop of the powder in 10 ounces of water.
Take the rest of your supplements with breakfast.
Make your Breakfast Detox Shake (see menu plan below).
Optional: Enjoy a midmorning snack (see menu plan below).
Afternoon:
Just before lunch, take 2.5 to 5 grams of PGX fiber with a glass of water.
Eat lunch (see menu plan below).
Optional: Enjoy a midafternoon snack (see menu plan below).
Evening:
Just before dinner, take 2.5 to 5 grams of PGX fiber with water.
Take the rest of your supplements with dinner.
Eat dinner (see menu plan below).
Spend fifteen minutes recording your experience and answering the Day 7 Journal Questions listed here. Write down everything you ate and did today, how you feel, any improvements or changes in your energy and focus, and how these changes make you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Practice the Take-Five Breathing Break for 5 minutes.
Take your twenty-to-thirty-minute UltraDetox Bath.
Get seven to eight hours of sleep.
Today’s Meals (see Chapter 21 for recipes):
Breakfast: Detox Shake
Midmorning Snack (optional): 10 to 12 nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts)
Lunch:
Core Plan: Soup with protein or Dr. Hyman’s Super Salad Bar with protein
Adventure Plan: Cucumber Salad with Sunflower Mock Tuna
Midafternoon Snack (optional): Dip or spread of your choice with fresh vegetables
Dinner:
Core Plan: Roast Chicken Breast with Rosemary
Adventure Plan: Beef with Bok Choy
Today’s Focus: Nurture
When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than perhaps any other. If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease, with longevity, and with weight loss. It doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in your doctor’s office—because it resides within you.
What is this critical factor that has so much to do with how healthy or sick, fat or slim you are? It is the health of your mind and spirit. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, the biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resilience—being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us. In other words: How we deal with stress dictates the length and, perhaps more important, the quality of our lives.
As I’ve said before, chronic stress causes your brain to shrink and your belly to grow. That’s because the main stress hormone, cortisol, damages the brain, making the memory center (the hippocampus) shrink. Stress shortens our telomeres, the little end caps on our chromosomes. The shorter your telomeres, the shorter your life. And, as you read in Chapter 5, stress also activates a biological response in the body that makes you hungry. It increases your level of insulin and cortisol, sparks an increase in carb and sugar cravings, and at the same time, also increases your body’s storage of abdominal fat.
But that’s not all. Chronic, unmanaged stress gradually breaks down virtually every system in your body, undermining your immunity and prematurely aging your cells even as it erodes your relationships and your pleasure in living.
The thing about stress is that it just keeps coming around, like the sun. Every day, we are going to be confronted with responsibilities and demands. We have jobs, families, mortgages to deal with. There will be conflicts to face and crises to handle. To some extent, the stuff of modern life makes stress inevitable.
That’s why I often tell my patients: “Stress finds you, but you have to go looking for relaxation.” Like it or not, it’s up to you to find ways to take breaks and manage your stress, for the sake of your health, your sanity—and your waistline!
I noted earlier that there are two parts of the nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is the part that gets activated in the fight-or-flight response, when your biology charges up to power you through challenges. The parasympathetic nervous system, by contrast, governs the rest-and-relax response—that sense of calm you feel when you can let down your guard, breathe calmly, and just be.
The problem is, for many of us, our sympathetic nervous systems are active way too much of the time. It’s as if they’ve gotten stuck in the “on” position. If you want to heal your brain, your metabolism, and your chromosomes, you need to learn how to hit your “pause button” to give your sympathetic nervous system a rest and activate that parasympathetic nervous system instead.
But that doesn’t mean sipping a glass of Chardonnay while watching TV or practicing retail therapy. For relaxation to have the restorative effect we’re looking for, it has to be active, not passive. Sitting on the couch may be enjoyable, but it’s not relaxing. I’m talking about a biological relaxation response in the body that’s activated by certain behaviors: breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, massage, even the UltraDetox Bath, all of which encourage deep breathing and profound relaxation of your nervous system.
The trigger for the relaxation response is your breath. When you take a deep breath, you stimulate the vagus nerve—a very special part of your nervous system that helps you calm your mind and turn on a cascade of healing. The vagus nerve runs from your brain through your chest cavity into all your organs, like an octopus stretching out its tentacles to every cell in your body. Your immune cells, your stem cells, and all the other organs and tissues in your body are connected to this nerve.
Stimulating the vagus nerve signals the production of hormones that calm your nervous system, reduce cortisol, help you metabolize your food, boost your brain function, and naturally regulate your appetite. Simply by breathing deeply and activating the vagus nerve, your body starts to boost metabolism and increase fat burning. Pretty amazing.
Science has demonstrated that by stimulating your vagus nerve (which connects directly to your fat cells and the gut), you can trigger all of the following:
Reduced appetite and food intake.
Reduced rate at which food is turned to fat.
Increased metabolism and energy expenditure or calorie burning.
Increased fat burning in your cells.
Reduced appetite-stimulating hormones.
Improved insulin sensitivity.
Reduced inflammation.
Increased number of and connections between your brain cells.
Reduced body weight.
Here’s the coolest part: You have the power to stimulate that nerve anytime you want. It’s low-cost, easy to access, and always available to you. You don’t need any special equipment or medication. You can literally change your heart rate, brain cells, brain waves, and weight just by shifting your breath. It’s that powerful.
Strategies for Self-Nurturing and Stress Release
Remember to do the Take-Five Breathing Breaks. If you haven’t been doing this, it’s never too late to start. Begin (or begin again) today.
Find an additional form of active relaxation that helps you reboot your parasympathetic nervous system. Choose a proven tool that gets you into a profound state of relaxation. Yoga, meditation, tai chi, qigong, biofeedback, playing music—find some activity you can enjoy that also activates the relaxation response. Watching television or reading a book doesn’t count. For me, being in nature has a profoundly healing effect. One of my favorite ways to hit the “pause button” is to be outside—by the ocean, in the mountains, by the river, in the forest. Just being outside in the stillness and beauty of nature helps me reset my mind, body, and soul. I’m lucky enough to live in a rural area with mountains, lakes, rivers, and woods, so all I have to do is go outside my front door. But even if you live in a city, go to the roof of your building or into the park and watch the sunrise or the sunset. It has awesome healing powers.
Move your body. Vigorous exercise is a powerful, well-studied way to burn off stress chemicals and heal the mind. Exercise helps to improve your mood, boost your energy, and reduce overall stress in your body and mind.
Use heat therapy. Take an UltraDetox Bath or a sauna to turn on the relaxation response. Increasing circulation and increasing body temperature have healing benefits and can reset your autonomic nervous system. Saunas increase heart rate variability, a measure of your stress resilience. The more complex and variable your heart rate, the healthier you are and the greater capacity you have to deal with stresses.
Connect, connect, connect. Our sense of meaning, purpose, and connection plays a huge role in determining our health and well-being. Who do you feel connected to? What gives your life meaning? What were you put on this planet to do? There are so many ways to connect: Spend real and quality time with people you love, join a group of like-minded people, get involved in your community, or volunteer and be of service to others. These are all wonderful ways to nurture yourself and strengthen the bonds of belonging and connection.
Try herbs. You can use herbs that have been scientifically proven to improve response to stress. Herbs have even been given to astronauts to help them endure the rigors of space travel. I often recommend to my patients the following herbs, most of which can be found in combinations (see www.10daydetox.com/resources):
400 to 800 milligrams of ginseng twice a day
100 to 200 milligrams of Rhodiola rosea twice a day
100 to 200 milligrams of Siberian ginseng twice a day
800 to 1,600 milligrams of cordyceps twice a day
500 milligrams of ashwagandha twice a day
Some of these herbs are available in combination supplements designed to help support your adrenals and create resilience in the face of stress.
Seek out stress-busting tools. Your smartphone may actually be a biofeedback machine! The iPhone 5 has a heart rate monitor built into the camera. The Huffington Post has created an app called GPS for the Soul, which has many simple relaxation tools (including one from me) that help you to reset and measure your heart rate variability (the more complex or “variable” your heart rate is, the healthier you are). Meditation, breathing, yoga, and even saunas all increase heart rate variability. This is directly related to your overall health and even to longevity. You can find other stress-busting and biofeedback tools at www.10daydetox.com/resources.
DAY 7 JOURNAL QUESTIONS
How do I feel physically?
What changes do I notice in my body?
What thoughts and emotions are present for me today?
What relaxes me most? (Remember, we’re talking about active relaxation, not passive.)
How can I schedule these activities into my life on a more consistent basis?
What events or circumstances in my life usually trigger stress?
How do I usually respond to stress?
How would I like to respond to stress moving forward?
How can I make that happen?
How can I remind myself to implement my stress-reducing practice in difficult moments?