The Detoxification program

Now that you have prepared your body, your living environment, and your mind, you are ready to begin to change your life.

Detoxification requires a fairly radical reorientation toward food, toward eating habits, and toward the experience of hunger. The Elimination Diet will have prepared you well for this. You will be in a clearer mind to begin and will have the confidence that comes from successfully changing some old patterns.

Ready to Start: Set Your Intention

Take a few moments to ponder and set your intention. Setting your intention is the root of success. Do you “have” to do it, or do you “want” to do it? A strong desire guided by the right intention will get you started powerfully. It is very important that you set the right frame of mind and the way to think about the program you are about to start. If you think about this program as something you have to do for your health it will not be as powerful as thinking about it as some­thing you want to do. Obligation isn’t nearly as strong a driving force as desire.

We always make time for what we want. When we have a burn­ing desire for something, we will go the extra mile or turn the planet upside down to get it. Think about it: whatever you have spent time wanting in life, you probably already have. But consider also how want­ing something is usually an unconscious impulse. You see something and have to have it. The “want” is triggered almost unconsciously, and the stronger it is, the quicker you tend to get the object of your desire. Yet there are ways to cultivate or build up that desire for something— even if you feel hesitant or resistant about it at the beginning. Setting an intention is how you actively cultivate desire, so that it can propel you to success and get you over hurdles. Though these exercises seem simple, I have used them many times with patients. They can be the secret to achieving in a few short weeks a goal that may seem difficult or even impossible to you now.

Envision a different you. Close your eyes and picture your life today. How do you look and feel daily? What aspects of your well-being are you disappointed with?

What would it mean to you to look and feel younger? How might that feel?

What would it mean to your loved ones if the health issues that limit you disappeared?

How would it benefit you socially, financially, spiritually, and emo­tionally to live in a state of vibrant energy and mental clarity?

Visualize these possibilities; sense what they feel like. Notice how the spark of desire turns into a wildfire when you begin to feel the pos­sibility of change. Set the intention to begin the program with commit­ment and to complete three weeks of it; make sure you have a strong idea of why you are doing it.

Make a Detoxification log. For added impact, take notes on your Detoxification expe­rience. I recommend you start a Detoxification log to record your intentions, your current state of well-being, and your experiences and progress as you follow the Program. You will also want to take notes about the effects of foods on your system when you reintroduce them in the Completing Detoxification phase. This doesn’t have to be a paper journal—you can make a single document on your computer to keep notes.

Note down what you visualized in the first exercise. Brief com­ments will be enough.

Then make a list of the results you would like to achieve by the end of the program, both physically and mentally.

This list should also include any new habits, especially around eating and drinking, that you would like to substitute for old habits that are simply not working for you anymore or are holding you back from expressing your full potential. Most people know what these are for them.