Each year, I usually embark on a cleansing/detox program to set myself up for success in the New Year. The fact is, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, I let myself indulge a whole lot. Increased intakes of alcohol, takeout meals, rich foods, and partying tend to wear on me and by the time January 2nd rolls around, I’m craving a return to a healthier lifestyle. I can feel my body becoming more sluggish and slower as the junk piles up. This year, I wrote down my techniques for cleaning myself up and I’m sharing them here for anyone who wants to come along with me.
1. Workout 2x a day 5x a week
If you’re like me, your schedule is crazy. We’re all insanely busy, so this is just an idea. But if you can make it work, it yields some great benefits. The goal is to stoke the furnace that is your metabolism more than once each day in order to keep it constantly burning calories. 2 workouts each day keep that metabolism churning instead of slowing down after your main workout. If you can get to the gym for your regular workout and then do something else at another point in the day, you keep your metabolism cranking at a more constant rate. For example: if you workout in the morning and then again in the late afternoon. Your non-gym workout doesn’t have to be much, just enough to elevate the heart rate for a few minutes. 7 minute AMRAPs of burpees or a similar exercise is a great one. Tabata-style workouts also work wonders.
This program also includes two rest days each week. These are vital to recovery, especially if you are lifting weights. Your workout schedule might look like M-W on, rest Thursday, F-S on, rest Sunday or some combination thereof.
2. Increase Water Intake
Because we will be attempting to flush toxins and due to increased working out, it will be vital to make sure that we keep water intake up. Don’t drink so much that you get sick from it, but make sure you always have a water bottle with you. If it’s in front of you, it’s easier to increase your intake without much thought. How do you know when you’re drinking enough? Check out your urine. If it’s clear, you’re well hydrated. If it’s yellow or darker and starts to smell, you’re not getting nearly enough water.
3. Meal Prep
This can be a real pain-in-the-ass, but it’s incredibly valuable. Set aside a day each week to plan for the meals ahead. I usually only prep my lunches and do it on Sunday. I actually have two lunches each day so I usually make about ten servings of whatever meal I choose for the week. It doesn’t have to get complicated, although you can certainly make it so. I usually pick a dish I like and go with that. Then I portion the amounts into take out containers and stack them in the fridge. Each meal has a good balance of proteins and carbs and some fat. One of my go-to meals is a ground pork stir fry over rice with chopped red peppers, garlic, and ginger. It’s pretty awesome, although I do use some sauces that the Nutrition Nazis might not like. I can put some of the recipes together if anyone is interested in trying them. Cooking time is usually under 30 minutes.
Breakfast for me is pretty much the same thing every day: 3 eggs and some type of starch (Joyce makes a loaf of banana bread and I usually have that with a couple pats of butter for fat).
Dinners we plan out ahead of time, but we try to keep them really simple. Since we usually get home late from the box, they need to be easy and fast and healthy.
4. Reduce Sugar
This is tough for me because I have an enormous sweet tooth. But one thing I did a few years back was to stop drinking soda and replace it with seltzer. I used to hate seltzer, but now it’s my go-to drink. I still enjoy soda occasionally (or, like every damned day over the holidays lol) and there’s nothing like an ice cold soda fountain Coke every now and again. But if you can cut it out and replace it with seltzer, you’ll be so much better off.
I also used to dump tons of sugar into my tea. I stopped that cold turkey, and while I frankly miss it every time I drink tea, it’s been good for me.
Basically, if you can reduce or eliminate adding sugar to anything, you’ll definitely feel the difference. Like I said, this is always difficult for me, so don’t worry if you find it hard. Sugar actually triggers the same neurological pathways as opiates, so it’s not easy. This is just one reason why immediately ceasing sugar intake at all is so insanely hard.
5. Boozing It Up
I’m coming off another two-week bender. Seriously. Joyce has been on vacation and we’ve done some serious damage at the local liquor store. As delightful as it is, I’m cutting way back on the booze fest. No more than 1-2 nights each week while I detox. Again, it’s not necessary to eliminate it altogether (and why the hell would you want to?) but if you can reduce the volume, it’s probably a good thing. Don’t go nuts; if you enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, there’s probably no harm to it.
6. Take Out / Eating Out
I’m cutting way back on this as well. 1-2 times each week. I’ve been so bad lately, but this needs to dwindle because of all the processing that goes into the food you order.
7. Post-WOD Smoothies
The best time to get your body the stuff it needs to heal and replenish its stores is within a small window of about 45 minutes after you workout. This is especially true if you’re lifting heavy weights. My usual post-WOD smoothie is about six ounces of orange juice, one banana, about a cup of frozen strawberries, and a scoop of protein powder and a scoop of creatine. It really helps me feel better after a WOD. There are tons of recipes out there, but I like to keep it simple and since I can’t stand most vegetables, this is the recipe that works for me. I highly recommend adding a smoothie after your workout if you don’t do it already. The carbs in the juice and fruit help make your cells more accommodating to the protein you’re ingesting.
8. Sleep
I try to get 7-8 hours each night. Usually, I’m in bed by 10:30pm and I’m up by 5:30am. Some nights I’ll be in bed earlier and occasionally, I’m up later, but by and large I try to stick to a pretty set schedule. There are always those nights when I can’t get to sleep, however, so I’ll use a variety of techniques to help me fall asleep. Here are a few of them.
- Lie on your back, close your eyes, and roll your eyes back into your head. This is an old technique that Soviet commandos used to use to fall asleep quickly. I’ve used it to some success over the years, but it’s not a guarantee.
- Four-count breathing: Again, lie on your back with your hands on your stomach. Inhale deeply through your nose for 4 seconds. Now hold your breath for 4 seconds. Then exhale as much as possible (try to completely empty your lungs) for 4 seconds. Hold your breath for 4 seconds. Repeat. This works a lot of the time for me and I’m usually out within about six cycles of this.
- Breath Counting: basic meditation technique of counting your inhales starting with 1 and going up to 9 before returning to 1 again. Repeat as necessary. Most of the time, I’ll fall asleep from boredom lol.
9. Calorie Tracking & Scales
I think scales are mostly worthless. Mostly. Obviously, if you have a goal to lose weight or gain weight then they certainly have their place, but I think they do more harm than good. I think a more important indicator of your success is how you *feel* rather than what a machine says. That said, a scale will give you an idea of where you’re starting from. If I was using one, I would step one once, make a note of it, and then tuck the scale away for a good couple of months. Body weight fluctuates all the time and stepping on to a scale every day is self-sabotaging.
Calorie tracking, on the other hand, is valuable. I’m not talking about getting the pocket calculator out and adding every single portion, but you should have an idea of how much food you’re taking in each day and make sure it’s consistent with your goals. I tend to treat food like fuel and adjust accordingly. Supposedly if you’re trying to lose weight, you shouldn’t be taking in much more than 1000-1500 calories each day. And if you’re trying to add muscle, then you need more than that. Personally, I think those numbers are kinda BS. They don’t really take in your activity level and CrossFit, etc. That said, the old rule is pretty simple: if you’re trying to lose, you need to be burning more calories than you take in. If you’re trying to gain, you need a lot more calories than what you’re burning through. In the past, when I’ve been tracking this stuff, I would log things for about a week and that gave me a general idea of what I was bringing in. Again, you can drive yourself nuts over this, so take it in stride.
10. Work On A Goat
Pick something you suck at – a totally awful movement you hate and might not be good at – and start working on it every time you go into the gym. Every time. For about 5-10 minutes before or after class. Double-unders, push-ups, pull-ups, snatch, whatever. The goal here is to work on it until it’s not a goat any longer. This doesn’t mean you will be guaranteed success, but it does mean that it will become *less* of a goat. And that’s important because you’re programming yourself for measurable success. The idea being that you turn a weakness into a strength. Every time you do it, you’re getting better and that translates to every other aspect of your life. I’m tackling muscle-ups and kipping handstand push-ups (the kipping movement upside down terrifies me)
11. Have Some Water Immediately Upon Waking
This is a quirky thing, but it’s great. As soon as I wake up, I have a couple sips of water from my bottle that I keep next to the bed. It actually gets things churning again after being dormant over the night. It doesn’t have to replace coffee or anything, but just taking a few sips first thing in the morning is good for you. I forget where I read about it, but I swear it helps me.
12. Ginger Tea & Neti Pots
I hate shots. I hate needles. I blame the military for this: since I had to be “worldwide qualified” and able to be deployed anywhere, they pretty much shot me up with every damned antidote for every damned disease imaginable. Ask me about high-pressure air gun needles that they would stick on my shoulder and go full-auto with. On second thought, don’t. I still have PTSD from those things lol.
Anyway, the point is I don’t much like getting shots or taking pills if I can avoid it. So my frontline defense against getting sick is ginger tea and a neti pot. The ginger tea I drink is by a brand called Pukka and it’s a lot more palatable than most other brands. Ginger tea is awesome and works on head colds, flu, and ginger is also amazing for stomach issues. It’s brilliant stuff.
The neti pot is an old yogi technique for cleaning out your sinus passages, which is typically where a lot of the bad junk likes to set up shop. Basically, you get a small teapot, add a spoonful of salt and then warm water, stir it up until the salt dissolves, and then bend over a sink, tilt your head to one side and stick the spout up your schnoz until the salt water flows up one side and out the other, taking a lot of junk out. The salt stays behind, making your warm nasal passages very inhospitable to germs and crap. I’d never used one until I got a bad sinus infection about six years back. Two courses of antibiotics didn’t help and then my brother-in-law’s mother (a lifelong smoker of all things) told me about it. Cured my infection within days. Using a neti pot takes some getting used to, but it works really well – especially at this time of year. Who do you know if you need to use it? Blow your nose. If the yield is colored, you’ve got some junk that needs flushing. Mucus, like urine, should be clear and normally is if you’re healthy.
13. Warrior Playlist
This is pretty straightforward: make a playlist of songs that get you fired up and feeling like you can break down walls. Think of it as what you would play if you were going into battle – songs that make you feel invincible. Play this whenever you want to get fired up. Play it before a workout. Play it if you’re having a crappy day. Play it if you feel like you need some support.
14. Do Something New
Finally, do something new. Try something you haven’t done before. The idea here is to challenge yourself, keep learning and exploring, and mentally keep your mind curious. You don’t necessarily have to stick with it, nor does it have to be something that takes up a lot of time. But by seeking out something you haven’t done before, you may discover whole new aspects of yourself. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.
That’s it – this is what I’ll be doing in earnest starting Sunday. Let me know what works for you and any successes you have – it’s always awesome sharing in success!
Happy New Year everyone!
