Author: Julie Nguyen

Julie Nguyen is the founder of Aura.

Four tips to achieving all your goals

by Julie Nguyen, posted in Work

Even if you’re not someone who makes resolutions in the new year, you probably make some general intentions to be “better” at something this year. Doing things like eating better, reading more, or exercising more.

For the first half of January, most people stick to their plans and feel pretty good about their chances of finally keeping their promise to themselves. But then they find themselves starting to waver.

A missed workout here, a bowl of ice cream there, and by the end of the month they’re back to their normal routines wondering what went wrong.

Why does this happen and what can you do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you?

Loss of momentum and the downward spiral

For the first few weeks of January, momentum keeps you sticking to the goals you’ve never stuck to before. The reward system of your brain is firing because you’re achieving success and you feel great. It keeps you moving forward through the first week or two.

But after awhile, a day of success doesn’t pack the same punch. Your brain isn’t releasing as much dopamine for a job well done and you fall back on willpower and guilt to keep you going. After all, you promised yourself (and maybe a few loved ones) you’d be better and this year you’re going to keep that promise!

Unfortunately, willpower is a limited resource. The more you fight to stay on track, the more willpower gets used up, so eventually when you see that bowl of ice cream or you get too busy to go to the gym, you give in.

You feel guilty, so you try harder. You run out of willpower and give in. And then it happens again. And again. And, well, you get the picture.

How to stick to and achieve your goals this year

Humans have an evolutionary bias toward doing things that are easy or bring pleasure and a tendency to obsess over things they can’t have. These tendencies make forming new habits tricky.

What’s the good news? You can work with your programming and stick to your goals this year. It’s not necessarily easy, but with a few mindset shifts it’s absolutely possible. Even if you’ve never stuck to them before. Even if you’re starting to waver.

Take it from someone who used to binge on frozen pepperoni pizzas every week and now runs a wellness business — you CAN turn your life around for good! 🙂 Here are four ways to change how you think about your goals so you can keep tackling them into February and beyond.

1. Don’t beat yourself up over occasional slips

In fact, think of them as occasional treats.

When you tell yourself you can’t have something, you start to feel deprived and obsessively think about it. You’ve seen this happen to yourself. For example, you think about food a lot more when you’re “dieting.”

It’s time to get off that hamster wheel of deprivation and obsession. Instead, give yourself permission to treat yourself every once in a while to things that your body and mind tell you you really want. By doing so, you’ll take away the power that treat has on you.

And trust that if you really want to go out to dinner or take a day off from the gym that you can. Because nothing bad will happen in the long run, and now you’re playing the long game. Instead of worrying about one little treat and letting the guilt from it snowball you into back-to-back treats and a sense of failure and doom, go back to your new routine and understand that if you even change your behavior to be just 10% more consistent than it was before, that’s a huge win.

Every incremental improvement really does add up. Changes don’t need to be extreme or painful to create lasting and dramatic benefits. You see this in practices such as yoga. When you practice yoga, you might feel like nothing’s really changing from day-to-day because you’re not suffering the way you might in a boot camp class, but after months of dedicated practice one day you’ll find yourself easily sliding into poses that were once impossible. Yoga is a great metaphor for any area of your life where you’d like to see change.

2. Have a plan B for times when you aren’t feeling it

No matter what you do, there are going to be days when you feel unmotivated. And it won’t just be one day, but a series of days. Nothing deteriorates your desire to keep moving forward more than a week straight of moving backwards.

But getting off track happens to everyone and isn’t actually as big of a problem as you might think. What really prevents you from reaching your goals is that often at this pivotal point in your journey, you throw in the towel rather than getting back on track.

This is where a plan B comes in handy. Your plan B is what you’ll do to get yourself motivated again if you start to go into that downward spiral.

For example, when I don’t feel like doing an intense workout my plan B is to head outdoors for a 45-minute walk. It’s something I always look forward to because it relaxes me to move my body and get some fresh air, and at least I’m getting some physical activity rather than zoning out in front of my laptop. Usually, after a few days of walking, I feel in tune with my body again and am ready to resume my more challenging workouts.

And what about food? If you’re someone who craves sweets, come up with some ideas for sweet whole foods that are incredibly satisfying but aren’t insanely unhealthy. For me, that’s making oatmeal with bananas and drizzling some raw honey on top. Sure, it may not be ideal as eating eggs and veggies, but it’s better than downing chocolate cake and is equally as satisfying for me.

The important thing with food is to make sure that you find a plan B that doesn’t leave you feeling deprived. This usually means that weird diet food substitutes just won’t work. For example, if you really want ice cream, get it. Just get a high quality ice cream made with whole ingredients. It’ll satisfy you and you’ll be doing the best you can to nourish yourself. Whereas a fat free frozen yogurt would probably leave you still wanting that ice cream.

Having a plan B for the things that might throw you off course will allow you to take action as soon as you recognize old patterns settling in. It’ll also give you the chance to really listen to your body and keep yourself from feeling deprived and obsessed about anything. Pretty soon, you’ll be back on your way to meeting your goal. And if you falter again, you just get right back up and keep going.

3. Visualize how achieving your goal would make you feel

When you decide that you want to lift weights or read more, you’re not actually looking for sleeker triceps or more information in your brain. You’re looking for how those benefits will make you feel: powerful, sexy, confident, intelligent, relaxed, etc. Somewhere along the way, that goal became a representation of that feeling for you.

But the specific actions you take to achieve your goal by themselves are like going to meetings at work. You do them because you have to, but do you really want to be there?

That mentality changes though when there’s purpose and focus for that meeting. Suddenly you know why it’s important to attend. Not only do you want to go, you might even find yourself excited to participate.

The same is true when achieving your goal. The “what” by itself might start to feel like a chore after a while. And unfortunately, there’s no one there to make you do it so it’s easy to quit. But focusing on the “why” gives your goal a purpose and a reason to get excited. Whatever feeling you’re trying to produce is something you want more of in your life. And this new habit provides that for you, keeping you motivated to reach your goal and continue your habit long after because that feeling is something you’ll always want in your life.

4. Find what you’re really looking for

That feeling that you’re looking for is also a great compass to make sure you’re on the right path.

Sometimes we create a goal thinking it will help us feel a certain way, but it doesn’t. For many people, this comes with the idea of being the “perfect weight.” They think it’ll make them happy, but when they reach that goal they find that nothing’s changed. So they either give up (because they haven’t found happiness) or become obsessed with losing more weight (because then they might be happy).

When you’re creating a goal for yourself, be brutally honest and ask yourself if what you’re doing is actually giving you that feeling that you’re craving. You should be feeling it throughout the journey of reaching your goal, and not just at the end. If you aren’t, then drop that goal and find a new one that fills you up with what you need.

Because when you want to feel a certain way and you don’t, despite your best efforts, you feel even more deprived and try filling that gap in ways that aren’t great for you, like emotional eating, Netflix binge-watching, self-criticism, or obsession.

For myself, I stopped relying on reaching that “perfect weight” to be happy and instead started dancing, walking in nature, reading fiction, and running a business that helps people feel amazing. I’m not obsessed anymore with calories burned, macros consumed, or what I’ll have to do to counteract the one slice of pizza I’m eating because these other habits bring joy and purpose into my life that I never found in a number on the scale. And without even thinking about it, I eat less and move more naturally, keeping myself healthy and happy without feeling deprived.

The first step to living your dream life

by Julie Nguyen, posted in Work

Where do you want to be in a year?

It’s not a question that many of us stop to think about because it’s hard enough to get through the week or even the day without worrying about a year out.

But if we never stop to think about where we want to be, we wake up one day and wonder, what have I accomplished? Is it what I actually want to accomplish? Why haven’t I accomplished more?

Nurses and hospice workers say that one of the biggest regrets that people have on their deathbeds is not living the life they wanted to.

But it doesn’t need to be this way if you choose to live life intentionally and authentically.

Where do you want to go?

Think about your last vacation. How much time did you spend planning it? My guess is you spent a total of at least 10-20 hours deciding where to go, how to get there, where to stay, what to eat, where to sightsee, and what activities to do.

Why? Because you only get so much time off per year and want to make the most of it. And with at least a little planning and research, you’re more likely to have an amazing vacation.

If you can benefit so much from spending a little extra time planning two weeks of your life, imagine how much more you could benefit by planning the other 50 weeks of your life. You can go from living a life that feels like a hamster wheel to living a life filled with intention and purpose. Whether you think about it often or not, you only have so much time to live on this earth. Why not give yourself the best chance at living a life you’ll love?

The role of your subconscious mind

Even if you have a plan for where you’d like to be, you still might not be living that way. It’s not because you’re lazy or not good enough, and it’s also not because it’s too hard or you don’t have enough time. It’s because it isn’t ingrained in your subconscious mind yet.

Your subconscious mind is responsible for the automated part of your life: habits, automatic processes like breathing, reactions like the fight or flight response, forming memories, interpreting what’s happening around you, and creating beliefs about how we should live and how the world works. Up to 95% of what your brain processes happens in the subconscious mind so you don’t spend huge amounts of energy processing all the minute details of your day.

So any time you introduce new behaviors or beliefs into your life, it’s going to feel strange. Not only does it take significantly more energy to integrate these into your life, but they also might conflict with previous behaviors or beliefs already ingrained in your subconscious mind. And when that happens, your subconscious mind is actively going to fight against you.

So when you’re planning out where you want to be in a year, you need to figure out what you want to achieve and change and you need to get your subconscious mind to embrace that plan.

The personal vision statement

That’s where a personal vision statement comes in handy. It acts as your guiding force for who you want to be and what you want to achieve, plus it makes it easier for your subconscious mind to accept your new plan as the status quo.

So how do you create and use a personal vision statement in your life?

1. What do you want to accomplish in the next year?
Often when we think about what we want to do in our life, we think about something broad that might get done in the next 5 to 10 years. At first, that feels less stressful because we have so much time to get what we want done. But it also makes it harder to make concrete plans because it’s harder to wrap our brains around where to start and what steps we need to take.

By narrowing your focus to a year, you’re more likely to be specific about what you want to accomplish (i.e. I want to write and publish two books this year vs I want to be an author), making it easier to break your plans into manageable steps that can be performed over the course of the year. And with specifics, you’ll probably find you can get a lot more done than you thought you could.

So start by making a list of what you’d like to do in all areas of your life, including work, family, other relationships, health, and spirituality. Don’t be afraid if the list looks too challenging right now. We’ll come to that.

2. Write your vision statement
When you’re writing your vision statement, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind:

  • Write it in the present tense: When you write in the present tense, you’re telling your subconscious mind that you’re already doing these things, even if you’re not. The funny thing is, your subconscious mind believes you because it can’t tell the difference between real life and an imaginary visualization that it’s told is true. This is what concepts like the Law of Attraction and mantras are built off of, and amazingly they work as long as we pair them with action.
  • Be descriptive: The more descriptive you are, the easier it will be to see yourself as the person you want to be. Visual descriptions especially make it easier to solidify what you’re working to become.
  • Write them by hand: This isn’t absolutely necessary, but when you write your vision statement by hand, you use parts of your brain that don’t get activated when you type. This helps you ingrain the visualization even deeper into your mind.

So what does it look like when it’s finished? Let me show you with an example.

I am a multi-dimensional mom. I work a full-time job in a field I’m passionate about. Every day I come home at 5pm and put my electronics away so I can focus on my kids until they go to bed. Three days a week I wake up early to fit a workout in so I am on top of my game. Every night I write about my day in my journal to process and release everything that happened so I get the best sleep possible. Twice a month, my husband and I go out by ourselves to deepen our relationship. I model balance, love, and joy for my kids every day so they can grow up and know how to create those attributes in their own lives. 

Some of this might be true right now, and some or all of it might not. What’s most important is that this statement uniquely represents your desires for where you want to be in all areas of your life a year from now.

3. Read your vision statement every day
Writing your vision statement down once doesn’t make it magically come true. Just like a new habit, your vision gets integrated into your subconscious over time, which means you need to make sure that you’re using it every day.

Reading it out loud uses different parts of your brain (like writing by hand) and helps integrate it further into your subconscious. But if it’s difficult to read it out loud, just reading it every day and visualizing it as true is a great start.

Visualization can also be incorporated at the beginning or end of your daily meditation practice because it’s a lot easier to form a new habit by tacking it onto an existing habit. Or you can write your vision statement out again every morning to get those extra motor skills involved. The more you do any of these and visualize your statement as true, the more your subconscious will believe it and the easier it will be to actually become this person.

4. Find your action steps
It’s not uncommon to write a vision statement and then ask yourself, how in the world am I going to do this? If you’re challenging yourself, it probably feels difficult to plan all of this out and get it all done. It might even feel terrifying.

That’s why you need to list out what you need to do accomplish this year and then integrate those action steps into your days.

Start with a list of all the action steps you think you’ll need to do to make your vision a reality. Things like:

  • Going to the gym 3 times a week
  • Writing 1 blog post a week
  • Putting away work after 7pm
  • Getting 8 hours of sleep
  • Attending 1 professional conference every quarter

Break down any tasks that require multiple steps so your list reflects how tasks will actually need to be accomplished (i.e. If you’re writing a blog post, you’ll need to create tasks to research, write, edit, and publish).

Then, schedule all recurring tasks into your calendar. For tasks that don’t need to be done at a specific time, schedule them as early in the day as possible to ensure they’ll actually get done. The later you schedule tasks, the more likely something will come up to prevent you from doing them. So you want to make sure that the most important tasks for your vision get done first to ensure they get done the day they’re supposed to be done.

Finally, you’ll take everything else from your list and prioritize them from most important to least important. You’ll probably want to keep this list on a program that’s easily updated so you can continue to add to this list or rearrange it as necessary.

5. Integrate your vision statement into your daily life
As you read your personal vision statement each morning (or at night if you plan your days the night before), choose the 3 most important action steps you’re going to take for the day. For instance:

  • Get a 30 minute pilates session in at 5:30am before the kids wake up
  • Write out a proposal for a new project at work
  • Play soccer with the kids for 30 minutes while they take a break from homework

This includes any recurring tasks you already have scheduled for the day that support your vision.

Three doesn’t seem like much, but when we have more than that it becomes difficult to prioritize and finish everything. When you limit yourself, you ensure you’ll be making progress on your most important goals and have a much better chance at completing your most important goals every day.

Once you have those three items, schedule them into your calendar, giving them the appropriate amount of time to complete them. Again, make sure they’re scheduled as early in the day as possible.

Only when those are scheduled do you look at the rest of your day and schedule anything else that you want to get done. But remember, the only three things you’re absolutely committing to are the three items on your to do list. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

6. Re-evaluate on a regular basis
The beauty of your vision statement is that it’s yours, and just like you it can change. You should re-evaluate your statement every 6-12 months to make sure it still aligns with who you are and what you want to accomplish. If not, then feel free to tweak it until it feels right again and use that to guide the next 6-12 months.

I like to re-evaluate my vision every year on my birthday, but you can use any date that will act as marker to remind you it’s time for a re-evaluation.

You deserve to live a fulfilling life that you love, but you’re the only one that can make it happen. Even though setting up a vision can take some time, and maybe even create a big shift in how you structure your day, I promise it’s worth it.

The key to happiness? Self-compassion

by Julie Nguyen, posted in Love

If you ever heard someone say the following out loud to someone else, they’d be considered a huge jerk, right?

“You’re an idiot.”
“I can’t believe you messed up again.”
“You’ve gotten fat.”
“Why are you so lazy?”

But how often do you say things like that… to yourself?

If that is something you do, why do you talk like that to yourself? Maybe you’re scared that if you don’t, you’ll never live up to your full potential. Or maybe you think you deserve it.

Is that really true? And what would life be like if you were as compassionate to yourself as you are to people you care about?

What self-criticism really does to you

At first glance, self-criticism might seem to work really well in the short-term. When you make a mistake and you punish yourself for it, your disappointment prevents you from making that mistake again. Success.

But what if you’re in the middle of a big presentation and you make a mistake? Self-criticism keeps your attention on the mistake as you’re trying to move forward. When your focus splits like this, the more likely it’ll be you’ll make another mistake, which splits your focus even further. It’s a downward spiral that’s difficult to escape. And it can happen in any area of your life, not just work. Imagine this happening on a first date or in the middle of your workout class.

Even worse, it’s not just limited to one area of your life, even if it starts out that way. The more you tell yourself you aren’t pretty enough, smart enough, strong enough, talented enough, good enough, etc., the more that gets ground into your subconscious.

Your subconscious mind is responsible for up to 95% of what the brain processes, including making sure your actions are consistent with your thoughts. So by telling your subconscious mind you aren’t good enough too many times, you start to act that way as well in all areas of your life.

So what’s the alternative?

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion is the practice of seeing yourself the same way you see your friends and family: as a person who deserves empathy, love, and care despite your flaws and mistakes.

In other words, stop judging yourself so much!

It sounds so simple, but it’s hard for us to overcome the fears that keep us tethered to self-criticism, like:

I’ll screw up more if I let go of self-criticism
Perfectionists often believe that with a little more effort, they can be perfect. But that’s just not possible. So let go of that idea. All the energy and focus you put into being perfect is suddenly freed up for what you’re actually doing, which makes it likely that over time you’ll perform better. If nothing else, you’ll enjoy what you’re doing more, so you’ll focus on how much you love what you’re doing rather than on potential mistakes you’re making.

Putting myself first is selfish or narcissistic
Giving yourself what you need and putting up boundaries allows you to do your best work and take care of the people you love more easily. It’s just like using an oxygen mask on an airplane. If you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, you’ll be conscious to put masks on other people who might need your help. If you put the mask on others first, you’ll pass out and be left without oxygen.

I’ll become lazy if I’m not criticizing myself
Practicing self-compassion means recognizing what you need. And part of what humans need is to feel like they’re fulfilling their potential. It’s difficult to do that while binge-watching TV. There might be periods of more rest and less doing, but at some point you’ll want to get back up and start accomplishing again. You might even push yourself more when you practice self-compassion because now you don’t have a voice in your head telling you you’re not capable.

The most important thing to remember is that self-compassion is a process. It’s not something that happens overnight, but a series of lifelong practices that are applied over and over as you continue to grow and become more confident.

The benefits of self-compassion

The biggest benefit of self-compassion is that you’ll find yourself a healthier, happier person. And it’s not just because you’re not telling yourself how terrible you are anymore.

When you start to focus on your needs and desires first, you see how much impact you can have on the world. You spend more time on what you care about and the things that make you feel great and less on what you’re “supposed to do,” which makes you feel accomplished and engaged on a regular basis.

As you focus on your own needs and progress, you also spend less time comparing yourself to others. You realize that focusing on whether someone else is happier than you or more successful than you is only adding to your sense of lack. Self-compassion helps you focus on how much you’ve grown rather than how amazing you could be if only you were more like someone else, which will never happen.

Show yourself some compassion

As good as all that sounds, transitioning to a self-compassion mindset can be a scary process if you’re used to clinging to self-criticism. So how do you make that transition for yourself?

1. Recognize the moments when you’re being harsh toward yourself
Most people don’t realize how critical their inner dialog is because they’re so used to it, they assume it’s normal. When you actually voice those thoughts, that’s when it hits you how harsh those thoughts are. So write down your thoughts and read them out loud as if you’re reading them to a friend. Even when it’s pretend, it’s hard to believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. Seeing that is the first step to changing how you talk to yourself.

2. Change the message
Through a vision statement or daily mantras, start to change the message ingrained in your subconscious. Use the thoughts you wrote down to find the messages your subconscious needs to hear: I am worthy of love, I use my mistakes to learn and grow, I am beautiful, I am capable, I am enough. You might not believe the mantras at first, but the more you use them the more they seep into your subconscious, replacing your self-critical thoughts. It helps to say them out loud or write them down for 1-2 minutes every time your self-critical thoughts come up until you start feeling like they’re true.

3. Take time for yourself everyday
Whether that’s five minutes or an hour, make sure you take some time to connect with yourself, what you want, and how you want to feel. Practices like meditation or journaling can help you dig into your needs, as can meditative movement like yoga, tai chi, or walking in nature. Take note of areas of self-care you’ve been ignoring, actions you’ve been taking that don’t feel congruent with who you are, actions you’ve been wanting to take but haven’t, and areas of your life where you need to set up boundaries.

4. Start taking care of yourself
Take action on the items you’ve noted during your reflection time. The key is to start small. Unless radical change is absolutely necessary, implement one or two things on your list at a time until they start to feel routine. Then implement the next one or two things on your list. Small steps build up your confidence and make the changes in your life less overwhelming so that you’re more likely to build them into habits you’ll use all your life. 

The 6 best ways to detox naturally

by Julie Nguyen, posted in Eat

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Since there are so many toxins to be exposed to in the world today, supporting your body’s detoxifications systems is one of the most important things you can do to keep yourself healthy. Toxin build ups can lead to a number of issues, including fatigue, headaches, rashes, hives, increased inflammation (and therefore greater risk of disease), and more. So one of the best ways to feel your absolute best is to keep your detoxification systems running smoothly.

What are some ways to detox and how effective are they?

Juice cleanses

Juice cleanses are probably what comes to mind when you think of detoxification. The point of the cleanse is to give your body a break with something that is is easy to process and still gives you tons of nutrients. Afterward, you’re supposed to feel shiny and new because your liver and digestive system have had the chance to get rid of any toxins building up due to the fact you’ve only ingested fruit and vegetable juice for at least a few days.

However, juice cleanses tend to have a lot of side effects of their own. One of the biggest is thesignificant reduction of calories for several days. While vitamins and minerals are critical to functioning, calories are equally critical to ensure you have enough energy to get through the day. Without enough calories, you risk slowing down your metabolism tremendously and feeling lethargic or lightheaded throughout the cleanse.

And there are other parts of food your body uses as well, like protein (for essential amino acids and muscle building), fat (for energy, hormone creation, and absorbing certain vitamins and minerals), and fiber (to help food move through your digestive tract and slow the breakdown of carbohydrates so you don’t spike your blood sugar levels). So going on a long-term cleanse means you’re depriving your body of its building blocks, which can harm a number of your organs while trying to give them a rest.

Sadly, you might not even be giving them the rest you think you’re giving them. The last big issue with juice cleanses is the amount of sugar you’re intaking. Even if you’re fresh pressing the juice yourself, it’s still processed by your body like sugar. And without pulp and fiber to slow down the absorption of the juice, your blood sugar spikes and your liver has to process all that extra glucose in a short amount of time as insulin brings your blood sugar to normal levels. One glass of juice isn’t terrible, especially when consumed with other food. But when you’re drinking it multiple times a day without food for multiple days, that puts a huge amount of strain on your liver.

If you’re going to attempt a cleanse, a 1-2 day bone broth cleanse is a better bet than a long-term juice cleanse (since fresh-made bone broth contains so many nutrients and tissue-healing collagen). But cleanses aren’t meant to be done often, and you’re probably better off doing long-term maintenance work that isn’t as harsh on your boy than short-term cleanses.

Intermittent fasting

Unlike juice cleanses, intermittent fasting is a practice that happens continually over the course of months or years and doesn’t deprive the body of what it needs when done correctly.

Most people might think of fasting as a way to consume fewer calories and therefore lose weight over time. However, weight loss isn’t actually the main benefit of fasting. In fact, many people find they don’t lose significant amounts of weight (and if they fast incorrectly they might find themselves gaining weight).

The main benefit really is to give your body a rest. And with that can come many benefits. Some people have seen a faster metabolism, decreased blood pressure, increased insulin sensitivity, and decreased blood glucose after doing intermittent fasting for a few weeks.

Unfortunately, these benefits depend on a number of factors (like gender, health history, amount of time fasted, types of food consumed during the “feast” period). But one of the most interesting finds is that decreased inflammation seems to happen across the board.

There still isn’t a clear reason as to why this happens, but one hypothesis is that you’re consuming fewer toxins over the course of a week (because you’re consuming less food containing toxins), making it easier for your body to filter them out. Kind of like the idea behind juice cleanses, only with limited deprivation periods and much more support for your body’s needs.

So how does it work? There are many flavors of intermittent fasting, like:

  • Alternate day fasting – eat for 24 hours then fast for 24 hours and repeat. In the most popular version, you eat breakfast and lunch one day, then fast until dinner the following day
  • One meal a day – the first time you break your fast is at dinner time, with perhaps a few light snacks here and there during the day. This pattern happens every day
  • 14-16 hour fast – this is a “skip breakfast” model where you stop eating after dinner and don’t eat again until lunch time (some people still have 3 meals, they just start breakfast around noon and have shorter breaks between lunch and dinner)
  • 12 hour fast – the easiest fast of all, and one you’re probably already doing. This simply means you stop eating after dinner and wait 12 hours to eat breakfast the next morning

The more extreme versions of intermittent fasting tend to get the best results, but also tend to have the most risk of slowing down your metabolism and throwing off your hormones if things don’t go as planned. Extreme forms seem to work best for men, while women are recommended to stick to a 12-14 hour fast as they’re more susceptible to ending up with hormone imbalances. And skipping meals isn’t recommended for people with health conditions unless your doctor gives you the all clear.

But no matter who you are, if you’re looking to try intermittent fasting you should start slow and keep records of metrics like blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and weight to make sure they’re not getting thrown off. The good news is that studies have shown that if these metrics are thrown off, they tend to recalibrate after going back to a normal eating schedule.

Deep breathing

Your lungs are important detoxification organs that are often forgotten. When you breathe, they absorb oxygen from the air and expel carbon dioxide from your body to keep your red blood cells functioning. The better your lungs can take in oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, the more energetic you’ll feel and the better your body will function.

Deep breathing works in two ways to support your lungs. First, you’re allowing your lungs to fully expand and contract so they can work to their full capacity. And second, when you train your body to breathe deeply, you strengthen your lungs and make it easier for your body to breathe deeply in the future, even when you’re not thinking about it.

To start training yourself to breath more deeply:

  • Sit up straight or lie on the floor
  • Put a hand on your diaphragm (the stomach area just below where your rib cage meets) and the other on your lower abdomen
  • Take a deep breath in through your nose, focusing on filling your lower abdomen with air first, then your lungs (you’ll feel your lower abdomen rise first and then your diaphragm)
  • Hold the breath for a few counts (2-4 works well to start)
  • Exhale fully through your mouth
  • Repeat for 5 minutes

You want to make sure you exhale for just as long, if not longer than you inhale to make sure you’re fully expelling carbon dioxide from your body. Breathing patterns that tend to work well for people are:

  • Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4
  • Inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8

While you’re strengthening your lungs, you’ll also be reducing stress (and cortisol levels) and activating the parasympathetic nervous system (which helps you digest food better) so you’ll be detoxing your body in other ways as well.

Deep breathing is beneficial for everyone and something that can be done once a day or many times a day.

Bitter foods

For centuries bitter foods, especially bitter greens, have been used to promote good digestion. While ancient civilizations might not have known the science behind it, we now know that this is in large part due to how bitter foods support the liver.

Bitter foods help the liver produce bile, which is crucial for breaking down and processing fats found in food. Bile is also used to dispose of waste products produced by your blood cells.

When you add in that bitter greens have large amounts of fiber to help move food through the digestive tract, you can see why they’re so good for your digestive system.

How do you get more of these into your diet? First you’ll want to start small and get used to eating them if you aren’t already. It might take a bit of time, but the more bitter foods you eat, the more you’ll tolerate them and even want to eat them. Then you can work your way up to eating them a few times a week or even daily.

Bitter foods include:

  • Dandelion greens and dandelion tea
  • Radicchio
  • Broccoli rabe
  • Arugula
  • Collard greens
  • Chard
  • Coffee (without cream or sugar)
  • Nettles and nettle tea
  • Kale
  • Endive
  • Watercress
  • Spinach
  • Mustard greens
  • Chicory

And remember, you don’t need to eat large amounts of these to reap the benefits. Even adding a few pieces of endive or radicchio to a salad to start off supports your liver and can help you work your way up to eventually eating an arugula-based salad.

Water

Perhaps the easiest way to flush toxins out of your system is with good, old-fashioned water. Keeping hydrated ensures your kidneys work properly to process water-soluble toxins out of your body.

Water also supports other detoxification systems in your body. It’s used by your endocrine system to carry toxins out through your skin (aka sweat) and it’s used by your intestines to keep things, well, moving.

Making sure you’re drinking at least 64 ounces of water (or more) is one of the most powerful ways to prevent toxins from building up in your body and the most beneficial thing you can do for your body in general besides getting adequate sleep.

Exercise

Speaking of the endocrine system, exercise allows you to work up a sweat so you can release toxins through the skin and prevent them from building up in your glands.

On top of that, exercise helps lymph fluid to circulate through your lymphatic system. Your lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump to keep lymph moving through the different nodes, vessels, and organs in your body on its own, so it needs you to activate it to keep everything moving.

While more vigorous exercise (like running, weight-lifting, or boxing) works best to activate the endocrine system, less vigorous exercise (like yoga or gentle walking) works best to circulate the lymphatic system. So be sure to mix it up!

(What else circulates the lymphatic system? Staying hydrated and deep breathing. Pretty cool how it all fits together, right?)

Whole foods

Last but not least, keeping your body nourished with whole foods supports all the detoxification systems in your body by giving your body’s many processes and organs exactly what they need to function. Or if you’d rather look at the flip side, avoiding foods that create more toxicity in your body (like sugar and processed foods) helps keep your organs from working too hard and toxins from building up. So whichever way you want to look at it, you’re helping yourself detox.

This can be one of the harder items to implement because it takes a lot of time to either find a restaurant that serves high quality food or to make it yourself.

If you’re too busy to cook or find healthy food most days, try Methodology. Every meal comes with high quality protein and a full serving of vegetables (which sometimes includes bitter greens) to make sure you’re eating food that supports and nourishes your body as much as possible. And they’ve banned refined sugars, flours, and oils, preservatives, and artificial coloring from our kitchen so you never have to worry about the quality of the food you’re eating.