Toxins build-up in our bodies from all sorts of sources including junk foods, stimulants, stress, overwork, negative thoughts and pollution. This makes us feel tired, stagnant, bloated, negative, emotionally weak and irritable.

Once you start feeling like this it is natural to seek change. New detox diets spring up all the time to cater to this, by offering that feeling of a clean new start. The aim of these detoxes is to ‘cleanse the liver’. But detox diets are not necessarily good for you, or for your poor little liver.

Firstly, the thing about detox diets is that you need to be really healthy for them to be of any benefit, but it’s usually when you are feeling run-down, stressed-out, low on energy and generally unhealthy that you decide you need to do a detox.

And secondly, although you might feel different after a few days on green smoothies, or lemon juice and cayenne pepper, celery juice or whatever detox option you choose, you are probably exacerbating the problem as going from one extreme to another doesn’t eliminate toxins, it creates a toxic overload.

Plenty of people end up on what I call the detox / retox cycle too. They do a week-long detox but then resume their normal lifestyle. Some even indulge more in the high processed foods, alcohol, drugs or cigarettes, as a reward after a detox. Either way the toxins build-up again and the detox / retox cycle gets underway. This yoyo lifestyle is not fun and not good for you. It is not necessary either as we all have a natural and free detox, available to us every 24 hours.

Love you liver

It is a random lifestyle that creates the toxic build-up, so I have created a lifestyle that does the opposite. My chi-cycle lifestyle eliminates the factors that create the toxic build-up, and it naturally detoxes you daily.

The secret to its success is that it is based on nurturing and loving your organs, especially your liver. I’m a lifestyle therapist and I trained in Chinese medicine, which has a very different view of organs than the West.

In Chinese medicine our organs are truly amazing. Apart from their physiological functions, they also have emotional and even spiritual functions. They create feelings of joy, happiness, spontaneity, clarity and purpose.

Your liver, known as ‘The General’, is responsible for directing chi-flow, happiness, and your ability to follow up on your dreams. This is an organ you really want to treat with love and respect as it holds a key to your happiness. Your liver needs cherishing not scrubbing out.

But a detox is not just about your liver, that’s a limited Western way of thinking. We don’t look at organs individually in Chinese medicine, we look at the whole picture and the whole person. Your liver may be the director of your internal happiness team, but it works in harmony with all your other organs and together they keep you feeling connected to life and to your purpose and destiny.

Organs need routine, nice warm cooked foods, and lots and lots of chi, or energy, to do their job properly. And part of their job is to eliminate the toxins that build-up daily from the normal stresses and strains of life.

My chi-cycle lifestyle enables you to live in a way that reduces stress and gives the organs everything they need to make you feel healthy and happy, and to carry out the free daily detox. Follow the daily routine, toxins won’t build up, and you’ll rid yourself of any that do each day. You’ll naturally get the clear glowing skin and the bright shining eyes of someone who is truly happy and healthy.

Living on detox time

The secret is timing. There are two times each day when major organ detoxes occur, and there are lots of opportunities in between to do things to prevent toxins building up.

The first detox time is between 5am and 7am each morning. Your lungs and large intestine are geared up to get rid of all your old crap and create a fresh clean start to your life.

You activate this detox by getting up as close to 5am as possible, drinking some water, and doing some breathing, stretching, exercise, yoga or tai-chi.

‘Move, don’t think’ is the key. Your emotions are closest to your conscious mind in the morning and thoughts can quickly turn toxic. This is why you should never ever lie in bed thinking.

Get out of bed and stay out of your head

Never wake up and immediately check your phone, emails, texts, social media, TV or news first thing in the morning either. Thinking about gossip, work or bad news now is just going to top-up your levels of toxicity.

5am to 7am is the time when you can permanently delete unpleasant, negative or ‘toxic’ thoughts. It is the time when you can get rid of ‘trigger’ people, those people who you argue with endlessly in your head over things that happened in the past.

This is the time when you can bring in some positivity and love for life. All you have to do is move, and your organs will take care of the rest. Don’t let all your old crap hold you back in life.

It’s a mind, body spirit detox on offer here! Start every day like this and you’ll begin to look and feel better, and you’ll be a better person and make the world a better place. Now that’s what I call a detox!

Slim down with breakfast

Breakfast is an opportunity to support that feeling of a clean start. Somewhere between 7am and 9am eat a nutritious breakfast, something like oat porridge that will provide high quality fuel for the morning ahead. Avoid the ‘toxic-bomb’ of toast and jam, sugary cereals or highly processed foods. Have your coffee after you eat.

Sit down and eat in peace. This is a key to a slim and trim waistline because it enables maximum uptake and distribution of nutrients. If you rush around while eating, texting and emailing, or skip breakfast, or have coffee first, nutrients will be stored instead of distributed.

This leads to bloating, abdominal weight gain, the ‘muffin-top’, or the pear-shaped body. Stored fat creates stored toxins, we don’t need this hanging around, affecting our productivity and health.

Good stress detoxes you

Work really hard between 9am and 1pm. Challenge yourself to achieve and do the tough things of the day, because beneficial stress at this time moves stagnant energy or chi, it prevents stress turning toxic. You’ll feel good just from being productive.

After 1pm slow down, eat a nutritious lunch, like rice, vegetables and meat or some from of protein. Take time to sit, de-stress, celebrate your achievements of the day so far, and get in touch with your heart.

Don’t eat poor quality food at your desk, on the run, or while thinking about stressful things. It interferes with good digestion, creates chi stagnation and a toxin build-up, and it sets you up for 3.30itis and an afternoon toxic top-up of sugar and stimulants.

After lunch work on less stressful tasks and finish work at 5pm or by 6pm at the latest. Switch off from work and do some activities to de-stress yourself. This is the time for social media, TV or recreational sport. You want to get the work and stress vibe as far behind you as possible, so that you’ll be able to fall asleep by 10pm.

Sleep your toxins away

Sleep is the secret to detox success. The second major organ detox of the 24 hour cycle, gets underway from 11pm until 3am. All you have to do for this one, is to be fast asleep.

Your liver goes into action while you sleep. It does detoxify your body, which is where that western focus on liver cleansing comes in, but toxins are naturally moved on from your liver and eliminated if you do your part by following the chi-cycle lifestyle.

This lifestyle also cures insomnia so you’ll always get a good night’s sleep. This is one of the nicest things you can do for your liver instead of torturing it with a week of weird juices.

Your liver is super special. Between 11pm and 3am your liver works with your gallbladder to not only detoxify your body, but to provide you with the ability to plan your life, and the guts, or the gall, to live up to your dreams. Go liver!!

Avoid the retox lifestyle

If you stay up working late into the night, or on social media, or wake up during the night to check your phone, your liver can’t do its job.

You will wake-up tired with a toxic overload. All those old negative thoughts or emotions will be backing up and right in your face, you can’t shake them. You’’ lie in bed going over and over what someone said or did to you, and getting increasingly  annoyed and frustrated.

All this negativity makes it hard to get up, or into exercise or breathing, so you’ll miss the 5am to 7am detox opportunity. You will crave coffee and stimulants and sweet or junk foods, to override those negative feelings. The toxins keep building.

By the time you do get going, usually around lunchtime, you have missed the opportunity to detox with some good hard work. You have to work late trying to catch-up, then you can’t sleep, miss the free overnight detox and the next day everything feels slightly worse.

This is an unsustainable lifestyle. It makes you ‘tired all the time’ and contributes to lethargy, bloating, irritability, itchy skin, blotchy or ‘dirty’ looking skin, dull eyes, anxiety, panic, insomnia and depression. You will feel stagnant and stuck, and as if life isn’t turning out the way it should.

Once people get to this place they start thinking about doing a detox. But right now your organs are unhappy and under stress and hitting them with a week of drastic doses of raw vegetable juices, pepper, lemon or whatever else is in detox fashion, is literally a shock to the system.

You might interpret the effects of this as thinking the detox is ‘working’, but shock is not beneficial change. Your organs are like a fine-tuned machine, designed for high performance, detox diets leave them reeling, confused and malfunctioning. They will be less able to detox you naturally.

Helpful detox hints

Choose love instead. Nurture your organs by taking the road of constant improvement. Add powerful nutritional supplements and Chinese herbal formulas to your diet to nurture and help your organs regain their maximum function and do their detox. Combine with rhythm and you will make a glowing comeback to full health, and create a sustainable future for yourself. You’ll naturally lose weight, gain time, feel better, look better and eventually develop an inner glow that will light up the room.

• Get some routine in place
• Drink more water
• Get up a little earlier every day
• Start the day with movement
• Swap a coffee for a green tea
• Eat organic fruit and veg (non-organic are saturated in toxins)

Tomorrow is a new day and another chance to start living the chi-cycle lifestyle.  If you want more information you can read my book Clock On To Health.