The green cleanse

Ok, it’s right after the holidays and if someone tells me you didn’t eat-drink-sit too much it will be hard to believe. Apart from the obvious physical impact of food and little movement, all the energetic load we’re taking on during the holidays is also a lot to handle; it being traveling, last min shopping chaos or - the one that affects most of us - spending too much time with family. Going on a cleanse is not just good for detoxifying the body, but also to shed some of the extra stuff we picked up during this hectic time of the year, energetically speaking.

After my two-week master plant dieta in the Peruvian Amazon back in September when I fasted on one totally bland meal a day of beans or lentils with rice, I ended up feeling better than ever, and at my thinnest body ever, which for me was a huge win as I’ve been dealing with body weight and image all my life.

I have found that what I eat and how I feel are hugely interlinked, and this dieta experience really confirmed this; of course it wasn’t just the fast during those two weeks, I also drank medicinal jungle plants daily and was in silence and isolation, but I can say for sure that the food dieting was a huge part of the total experience. Going on a cleanse, especially when I’ve not been eating so clean for a while is a way for me to get back on track, and so coming home I felt very inspired to look into the yogic cleansing mono diets for ideas as fasting only on water has always been quite challenging for me. My eye fell naturally on guru Jagat’s book Invincible Living as I’ve been attending her events in-person and virtually with conviction lately.

She writes, when fasting, eating once a day, or throughout the day on a mono diet, can actually balance your metabolism way more than not eating at all. That’s because when not eating at all the lack of nutrients and calories might end up slowing down your metabolic activity all together as the body may think it goes into starvation and start storing fat as opposed to burning it.

Now I know that is for sure the case for people with a somewhat depleted hormonal/endocrine system, and my guess is that is a lot of people out there living the current tech and stress filled lifestyle of poor nourishment, inadequate self-care, and no time for proper rest. I’ve personally come a long way restoring my hormones in the last three or so years with huge changes in diet, dedicating more and more time for rest and self-care and changing my mindset of always-having-to-do-things to being more relaxed and listening to my body and how I feel in the moment. Still though I can tell you, with all the stimulants from constant laptop/mobile use to city living (artificial lights, air pollution, sound pollution and the list goes on) I do feel like my system needs a lot of care, and not eating at all feels very hard for me, especially during every day life - perhaps if I was in nature somewhere alone it would be easier but that’s not every day reality unfortunately.

So with mono dieting you get to give the digestive system a much needed break (the body metabolises green vegetables the fastest so the break isn’t complete, but you do give the system way less work to do than when eating harder-to-digest things) and at the same time you keep the fibre going, which is what keeps the metabolism running so that you detoxify and end up losing weight.

There are many mono diets out there to choose from for different reasons, I decided to start with the green diet as it felt like all-round detoxifying and crucially quite easy to do with many varied options of foods. At first it might sound restrictive but actually for me it ended up being super fun and totally delicious. Greens can be so tasty, if only you just eat them on their own you get to realise that. So to do this diet, you basically eat only natural foods that are green in colour - that is all green fruits and vegetables, (for a list see at the bottom of the post) plus things like hemp seeds and olive oil that can make the diet actually complete and satiating with some protein and fat. You can do this diet from three to forty days, depending on the type of cleanse you’re after, I started with four as that is the time I had available between my travels and I could definitely commit to.

Here’s how it all worked out for me:

Avocados and olive oil totally saved the day(s) for me, if it wasn’t for these two I would’ve found it harder to do this. Plus I didn’t feel like skipping my morning coffee shot, and so that would be the only non-green thing I had plus a little bit of ghee which I blend with my coffee to make it easier on the stomach (and totally delicious).

Key point: I made sure I included a variety of different foods at every meal and always having some kind of a)fat, b)protein and c)herbs added in for an all-round nutritious, satisfying and filling eating experience. That meant mainly avocado and/or olive oil, hemp seeds or pumpkin seeds and any fresh green herb like parsley/mint etc. (herbs are packed with nutrients way more than plain salad leaves - I always add them in my morning smoothie and salads to eat raw)

Morning / breakfast

I started the days with a digestive cleanser of finely chopped orange peel (around 2 tablespoons) sautéed lightly in olive oil mixed with with turmeric paste (one teaspoon mixed in a little water). This is a great way to start any fast as it totally reboots the stomach and intestinal tract, as described in the book. It can be a bit tough to take, turmeric doesn’t taste very nice in the mouth, but surprisingly the orange peel in olive oil is sweet and fragrant so it makes up for the bitterness of the turmeric. Next time I intend to mix finely chopped fresh turmeric root in the orange peel instead of adding powder to it. I had this around 8am and let it sit in my stomach for a while before I started eating.

For breakfast I had a green modified version of my morning smoothie with hemp milk, avocado, pear, kiwi, broccoli sprouts, mint. You can mix in any green superfood powder like wheatgrass, moringa etc., and for sweetener perhaps stevia or a dash of honey (which is not green but..whatever..!)

During the day I had lunch anywhere between 1-3pm - that is my main meal of the day (I’ve consciously swapped dinner for lunch lately and it feels much better to eat a full meal earlier in the day), and had something small later if I felt hungry around 6-8pm latest.

Day 1

Super green salad with lightly boiled green beans chopped and mixed with fresh rocket, mixed leaf salad, parsley, green olives, avocado, hemp seeds seasoned with olive oil and sea salt. I can tell you, I couldn’t believe how delicious this combo was, I loved eating it so much I had the same for dinner with Joren and he also totally loved it.

Day 2

Salad with chopped and lightly boiled broccoli, asparagus, cavolo nero, and avocado, capers, olive oil, and sea salt.

Day 3

Salad with chopped and boiled snap peas, and all the veg that I had left from the previous days - cavolo nero, asparagus, mixed with rocket salad, green olives, olive oil and sea salt. Later for dinner I cooked some chopped leeks in a little olive oil, mixed in some lightly steamed broccoli, sprinkled some hemp seeds on top and dressed it with a little soy sauce.

Day 4

Doing this cleanse with the person you live with can seriously elevate the experience! The second time I did this Joren followed suit, and this was awesome not only because he would chop the orange peel really finely every morning (he likes doing that and it makes eating the mix much easier), but he also got to cook one day and that’s always great as he is so unpredictably creative in the kitchen.

So it happened, he got all these kinds of different seaweed from marqt, and he made the classic Japanese-style salad of thinly sliced cucumber and seaweed with lime and olive oil (who said seaweed is only to eat with soy sauce/asian condiments?) and a green pesto-type sauce with rocket, basil, cilantro, pumpkin seed butter, avocado, sprouts, olive oil and lime (all nicely blended in the blender!) which we ate with kelp noodles. Seaweed of any kind is sooo good for our diets, packed with all the fibre, vitamins and minerals, and especially iodine which boosts thyroid function and so many people are usually deficient in, is highest in seaweed, followed by eggs and dairy - especially good if you don’t eat these foods.

Drinks | I had a bulletproof coffee (coffee blended with ghee & coconut oil) in the morning and sometimes a matcha latte later in the day, also any kind of herbal tea, I like fresh mint, lemon balm and the super tonic healing concoction that is yogi tea.

Snacks | I had cucumber, green pepper with some pumpkin seed butter or those super delicious seaweed sheets they sell in little snack packets at marqt or planet organic - but then I stopped after reading the actual ingredients’ list at the back of the packet (dextrose, canola oil..etc. not good). When I felt like I wanted to eat/drink something I just had a matcha latte with hemp milk. Boom.

What I noticed:

For me some of the results were almost instant, towards the end of the first day even I felt lighter, noticeably less bloated (I did this right after I was back from a two-week travel staying at hotels with abundant continental breakfast buffets and dinner out every night..). This immediate ‘shrinking’ comes from lowering the inflammation in the body by not eating gluten and dairy - that is a fact for me, when I stop eating these two I instantly feel and look better. I’m about to write more on my eating habits on another post.

As the days progressed I felt my skin way more clear and hydrated than usual, and also my hair was less frizzy and more manageable and that is such a nice feeling and look than the old usual of totally unruly and breaking locks I’ve suffered for so long.

Finally, needless to say my digestion felt like going back to normal with less discomfort after eating, and regular visits to the bathroom, which does have the effect of making you feel more energetic, and much much happier with life!

Tips for success:

Know your why |

Become fully conscious of why you want to do this, what are benefits of doing it, what are you looking to achieve from it; it may help to write down your intentions so that you can turn to this list in a time of doubt or when your boyfriend comes home from the organic farmers’ market with the most amazing looking sourdough and three different types of raw goat cheese…..seriously it’s not easy sometimes.

Commit fully |

Choose how many days and when you want to do this in a way that you can fully commit to it. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you are somewhere out like the airport or a dinner out with friends or work where there’s little or nothing (at the case of the airport for sure) for you to eat. Set yourself up for success by making it easy for you; because it is crucial to…

Enjoy the process |

You want to really enjoy everything about doing this diet, from shopping at the grocery store, choosing the most beautiful appealing items, to looking up recipes or allowing for your creativity by just mixing things up intuitively, and finally absolutely enjoying loving what you’ve made, focusing on conscious eating, chewing properly, noticing the tastes from every bite, allowing time after for proper digestion, and finally feeling grateful for the gifts of the earth providing for us, what a joy to experience eating these magnificent foods in this life!

Notice the feel |

During, and of course at the end of your diet, you want to notice the way you feel, be aware of changes in your digestion, your skin complexion, your energy levels, your mood; feeling the results of your effort can be the most gratifying thing about it all, and it ensures that you will probably want to do it again, right.

Choose the best |

You want to choose only the best quality foods, I always choose organic/biodynamic wherever possible.

List of green foods for inspiration:

Fruits | apples, pears, kiwis, grapes, honeydew melon,

Vegetables | all leafy cruciferous greens (kale, spinach etc.), all salad leaves (rocket, purslane, watercress etc.), all green fresh herbs (parsley, mint, basil, cilantro etc.), all kinds of broccoli, green beans, snap peas, artichoke, asparagus, green peppers, cucumber, zucchini, celery, leeks, okra, and so much more.

Fat/protein | avocados, olives, olive oil, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, hemp milk

Superfoods | wheatgrass, moringa, matcha

Other | nori, spices, soy & tamari sauce

ABOUT ELENA STAVROS

Welcome to my online portal!

I am a former Googler reborn as conscious & self-aware living advocate.

I’m a speaker, writer and coach passionate about helping people live their best lives by tapping into the Source of their truth, power and true desire.

I offer individual mentoring and online programs, and I lead transformational expeditions in nature.