Spring Cleaning - Inside & Out
There’s a renewal that comes with spring. A tentative excitement that the darkness of winter is over and the hint of warm days and vibrant colours will make their appearance again. Spring also brings a cultural desire for cleaning. It suggests pushing open the shutters and letting in some fresh air. Newness. Beginnings. Fresh starts. Sweeping out the cobwebs. But now, in this time of global pandemic and concern, it has become even more literal as we scramble to disinfect and sanitize everything we come into contact with.
The practice of spring cleaning can be applied to our inner and outer being as practically as it can be applied to our physical space. Internally, we can spring clean by resetting our palette or detoxing. We can spring clean our mind by tackling something that is bothering us to free up space.
The concept of detoxing is a familiar one. Cleanses and detoxes are a multi-million dollar industry typically involving replacing meals with liquids - juices, smoothies, shakes, bone broth, water or soup- to give the digestive system a break. Spring cleaning the palette is the concept of breaking free from or eliminating those foods that form addictions by resetting our taste buds. Addictive foods are often highly processed and very inflammatory. Think sugar, oil or fat and refined flours, pretty much all the high flavour foods we have grown to love in the standard American diet. In fact, these foods are scientifically designed to make you feel good and want more of them. They create cravings that bring temporary peace of mind but can become a chronic habit or addiction when they add up to physical symptoms and distress in your body as it begins to break down under the weight of them.
So how do we reset our taste buds?
Taste buds have a great memory. Just as they have been trained to remember the Doritos and the Ben & Jerry’s, they can be trained to remember whole, plant-based foods. It’s totally possible to crave the sweetness of an orange over a piece of cake. It takes time and consistency to rewire and retrain the brain to “forget” the unhealthy foods but it is possible. Arming yourself with information makes it easier to make the choices that serve ourselves and our bodies. Learn how to read labels and become a decoder - take charge of your health. It’s about progress, not perfection so don’t get stressed out about food. Making healthier choices more consistently is the goal.
Here are a few tools and tricks that can help keep you goal oriented and away from the less desirable foods that you crave:
Limit access - keep susceptibility at bay by keeping kryptonite foods out of your home. Don’t buy them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Brush your teeth - having a clean minty mouth is often enough of a deterrent to keep you away from troublesome treats.
Stay hydrated - we often misassociate hunger with dehydration. Staying hydrated rewires any signals telling us we need to eat.
Use your sense of smell - certain smells like peppermint and grapefruit have been linked to satiety and can suppress the hunger hormone, ghrelin, while others like lavender and bergamot are known to induce calm and suppress spiked cortisol which can lead to stress eating. Try infusing these essential oils in your home.
Substitute - if you are craving chocolate and typically reach for processed candy, try substituting with a few squares of less sweet dark chocolate instead. 70% cacao or higher is best.
When we spring clean our minds we purge our inner clutter and let go of what is weighing us down. By tackling something that is nagging at you, you mentally let it go! Aim for something simple here like an overflowing inbox or a thank you card that needs to be sent, not a huge project.
It’s the small things that add up and become energy and motivation drains and make you feel bad about yourself and heavy. Knocking some of those things out makes you feel lighter and brighter freeing space for new beginnings, ideas, conversations, and levels of relationship that wouldn't be there otherwise. Avoidance makes it worse and just takes up more mental space.
Try this exercise. Tackle a few things that have been dragging you down and knock them off the list. Schedule them like it’s an appointment. Make it a sacred task, a spiritual practice. Brew a cup of tea and light a candle. Get comfortable and get to business.
Spring clean.
