FitnessCrew

I’ve decided to add to my detox diet with some supplements from the health store, so today I’ve bought milk thistle, Omega 3, dandelion root, and multivitamins plus multiminerals. The hot drinks I’ll be having are green tea and also dandelion root coffee, which I’ve tried and it tastes lovely, and the cold drinks will be plenty of water and freshly squeezed orange juice. The health store had a sale on so I was able to get the supersized bottles, plus a good stock of quinoa as I’ll be cutting out wheat during the detox. All of these ingredients were in my list of detox foods and supplements in yesterday’s article. Along with plenty of water, fresh fruit, vegetables, beans and nuts they form the staple ingredients for my recipes this week.

Here are some ideas for the daily meals in the early days of a detox diet. It’s good to concentrate on fruit in the morning, and a fruit smoothie is a refreshing way to begin the day. Some people like to drink hot water with a squeeze of lemon juice. For the early days of the diet a large salad is the best meal for lunch, concentrating on green leafy ingredients. Avocado adds some filling content to the salad and you can make a dressing of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Even better, you could use flaxseed oil in place of the olive oil. The portions are one part oil to two parts vinegar.

For dinner you can choose salad or a hot vegetarian meal. One option is a hearty vegetable soup, selecting the vegetables mentioned in yesterday’s article together with garlic and onion for flavour and for their detoxifying properties. You could try the Italian method of dressing hot vegetables the same way we dress salad. To do this you boil a good selection of your favourite vegetables then mix them well and dress them with oil and balsamic vinegar. The foods you must miss out are coffee, alcohol, sugar, wheat, processed foods, fried foods, salt, meat and dairy products. Some detox diets recommend organic eggs, but not more than three per week.

To make an easy vegetable soup boil enough water to cover two chopped garlic cloves, one chopped onion, and a variety of chopped vegetable including celery and carrot. The more of your favourite vegetables you put in the more tasty and varied the soup will become, and it can be reheated for more meals. Add fresh tomatoes cut in half and they will blend into the soup broth to give it a good colour, plus two bay leaves and some fresh rosemary. Some people like this as the base for a spinach soup, and it can also be used for cabbage soup, but I prefer a minestrone with a large variety of vegetables including courgettes and mushrooms. A meat substitute, such as quorn, can be added to the soup to provide protein.

Cutting out wheat and dairy can show if it’s an intolerance to these products that’s making you put on weight, especially if the weight is mainly around the waist as this can be due to wheat. As the week moves on you will be able to add quinoa to the meals in place of rice or wheat. For a tasty dinner with quinoa, boil it like rice following the instructions on the packet.

Combine the quinoa with an Italian tomato sauce made by heating a can of chopped tomatoes in a saucepan. Finely chop two cloves of garlic, or crush them, and throw them in, use the can to measure about half the amount of water compared to the tomatoes. As it simmers, throw in a good handful of fresh basil (or dry if that’s your only option) but the fresh basil adds a delicious flavour so I keep some growing ready for use.

Quinoa topped with this sauce is a great substitute for pasta, which needs to be missed out during the detox diet as it contains wheat. However, there are also wheat-free pasta substitutes in health stores and many supermarkets now. It may seem hard to imagine doing without wheat but there are also many bread and cracker substitutes if you want to carry on with detox-style ingredients after the main days of the diet. Quinoa also adds much needed protein to the diet.

Nuts are another main source of protein during the detox diet and I’ve stocked up on bags of my favourites. As a vegetarian I’ll be eating eggs and adding meat-substitute recipes, like the bolognese in an earlier post, to bring in much needed protein. Meat eaters generally find they need to have a good sized portion of meat after a few days, possibly steak accompanied by tomatoes, to boost their protein.

After the first day of mainly leafy salad, vegetables and fruit, you can bring in meals with baked potatoes – using fillings like the tomato sauce described above, or the Bolognese sauce, for a good detox meal. Bananas add some much needed minerals so they are good in the morning smoothie and also on their own as a snack during the day.

I’m feeling a lot lighter eating this rather than the rich food I’ve been having over the party season. It’s also best to combine it with exercise and I walked six miles this morning, shunning other transport and going everywhere by foot! I’ll be using that as my low-intensity exercise during this week, and moving on to swimming when the weather warms up – I’m writing this for you from a very cold London. Those of you in the warmer temperatures of Australia can probably fit in more outdoor activity than me, and if you want to stay at home and exercise remember you can call in the Fitness Crew personal trainers.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about the top foods for health and fitness and why they are so good for us. If you have any ideas for healthy recipes using the ingredients from the detox diet then do share them here.