Detox After the Holidays: Eliminating Stress and Bad Vibes
If you feel that your body hasn’t yet recovered from the holidays, we need to introduce you to ‘detox’. Holiday meals and celebrations often take a lot from our bodies, and we’re left feeling bloated and tired.
A detox is a plan to eliminate toxins and return your body to its normal, healthy state. In this article, we’ll explain how your body reacts to the stress of holiday bingeing and how it responds to it.
I’m not recovering from the holidays as fast as I used to
You can’t believe that it’s been over a month since you celebrated the New Year and still your body lives in a state of ‘continuous hangover’. This state doesn’t allow you to continue with your usual life, and you’re left feeling exhausted.
The ‘constant hangover’ state also makes it hard for you to sleep and when you do, you wake often. It’s also very common to spend your weekends in bed trying to recover all the rest hours that you missed in the last days.
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Nobody can deny that holiday periods are actually very taxing on a physical level. Dinners, farewells, celebrations and unexpected toasts are the order of the day.
However, the main problem isn’t the way you party, but the way your body finds it increasingly difficult to recover. Maybe it’s because you’re not 20 years old anymore, and, over time, hangovers feel so much worse. Maybe you wanted to party like there was no tomorrow!
Whatever the reason, the holiday season has passed and you’re still paying the consequences. What should you do now?
Why do we feel this way after the holidays?
In the post-holiday period, your body is intoxicated. Both alcohol and feasts have accumulated and that’s why you seem to lack strength. Intoxication is the reason why you don’t feel like doing much, except sleeping and resting afterward.
Another important issue that also affects the body during the holidays is strong feelings. It’s usual for people to reunite with family members they haven’t seen in a while during the holidays. Many times, these meetings come with a great deal of stress and leave you feeling emotionally exhausted.
Many of us stress over whether we’re buying the right gifts, or when and how we’ll accommodate visiting relatives. The holidays are an expensive season, even if you’ve carefully planned it all beforehand.
You’re probably aware of just how levels of stress affect your body. The main symptom is a constant state of alertness. If your body is alert for too long, and you add the malnutrition you are enduring, the final result shouldn’t be a surprise.
The post-holiday period should be about detoxification. Undoubtedly, it’s the best time to cleanse the body of any bad vibes. Plus, it’s an excellent way to face new challenges!
How do we detox in the post-holiday period?
While we can do this at any time of the year, the post-holiday period is the perfect time to purify the body. Detoxing also means you can start from scratch.
Many times, we take great pains to clean the house or to look nice on the outside, but the interior is left aside. The first step, then, is to detoxify and then nurture ourselves in a balanced and healthy way.
Thus, we remove the ‘old’ and give place to the ‘new’. You’ll have more energy, less stress, you’ll lose weight if you need to, you’ll sleep better and be in a good mood.
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After a great feast and drinking lots of alcohol, we recommend fasting from solids for one day. You’re allowed to drink water and infusions, as well as natural fruit juices, and vegetable broths.
An excellent depurative and diuretic tea is made with dandelion and horsetail in one liter of water. You can drink this cold or hot, throughout the day.
Another option is to prepare a green smoothie, full of vitamins, nutrients, and foods with depurative properties. Some ingredients that can’t be missing from your smoothie are celery, cucumber, kale, ginger, and apple.
Don’t forget that, for complete detox, you have to drink a lot of water. You must drink at least two liters daily, especially during your detox. Soft drinks, coffee or alcohol shouldn’t really count, and you should avoid drinking them during detox.
Don’t forget about mental detox
To detoxify completely during the post-holiday period, we also recommend that you make a detox plan at an emotional level. You don’t need to become a Buddhist monk or spend your day in the lotus position, but you do need to look for moments when meditation or relaxation become your allies.
It can be, for example, when you take a shower or an immersion bath while enjoying a delicious tea or before going to sleep. The idea is to breathe slowly and deeply, to close your eyes and to try not to think about problems, but to be attentive to your body and the present moment.
And of course, following the detox, the idea is to take on a more peaceful life, eat healthily and become aware of your emotions.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Aldana Antinone. 10 tips para no desordenar nuestra alimentación a fin de año. Programa de reeducación alimentaria. Swiss Medical Medicina Privada. Recuperado de: http://www.swissmedical.com.ar/smgnewsite/PDF/SMG_notas/2016/comida-fiestas/alimentacion-fiestas.pdf
- Lidia Mora. (2015). La Importancia de los jugos verdes. El Nacional.