Happy Monday lovers! I started my morning off with some meditation & intention setting for the week — my absolute favorite way to gather my thoughts and get my creative juices flowin’ for the week ahead!

I also started with some warm water & lemon (a ritual I’ve recently gotten back into that I LOVE, and my digestion loves it too… #tummyproblife), a beef bone broth (newest ritual that I am obsessed with) & a nut and seed soup from Soupure in Brentwood.

Soupure was kind enough to gift me a 3-day soup cleanse to do over the weekend because my stomach has been such a mess, and I can’t even tell you how good I feel. I am still working out my food allergies and all sorts of other issues (BIG blog post on my blood work & routine with my functional medicine doctor, Dr. Lekkos, coming THIS WEEK) but my stomach feels so calm and back on the right track for the first time in FOREVER.

I coupled the soup cleanse with an Alkamind “Get Off Your Acid” regimen started by Dr. Daryl (more on that TOMORROW), who is awesome & has also helped me a lot with my stomach probs, and between the two my digestion is so much better and I haven’t been waking up feeling like a sick inflated balloon every day. #score

Soup Cleanse Deets

A lot of you asked me after I posted about the cleanse on Instagram how I navigated doing a cleanse after my restrictive diet past and previous eating disorder.

WELL, that is a great question.

I used to do a LOT of cleanses. Like a lot, a lot. If you’ve read my book, or if you are a long time blog reader, then you know this. 30-day juice cleanses and weekly 1-3 day juice cleanses were my jam back in the day.

Now, I would never do a full-on juice cleanse. I realize that I was using cleanses as a method of control, and to try to ease my anxieties about food in general because there were so many foods I feared at the time would make me not feel well or make me gain weight. Ahhhh, the struggle — I don’t miss it.

Juice cleanses are rough on our systems because there is very little protein and fiber in cold-pressed juice, and there is typically a high amount of fruit sugar which spikes our blood sugar and leaves us feeling hungry, shaky and out of whack.

That’s not to say juice cleansing can’t work well for someone who really needs a reboot and needs to get back on a healthier track — but for me, and for the majority of you, who I know try to eat healthy & live an active and mindful lifestyle, it’s probably realllllly not necessary at all.

SOUP CLEANSES are way different than that. First of all, I’d like to take this second to rid the sentence of the word “cleanse” at all, because it just has a negative/starvation connotation in my mind.

Let’s call it a soup detox.

Soups are full of fiber, because they are blended so they maintain a lot of the natural fiber from the ingredients that go into it. A lot of the soups I’ve been having are also full of protein — like the bone broths, nut & seed soups and strawberry cashew energizing soup.

PLUS, soups can have a lot more texture and consistency to them so you’re not straight up only having liquid. My soups this weekend had lentils, kale, chopped veggies, blended nuts, sliced asparagus, and I added beans & avocado to some of them.

ALSO… I am at such a more stable place in my wellness journey than I was back when I used to juice cleanse, so I feel comfortable doing something a little more controlled at this point. My digestion has been so bad that it was recommended by my Ayurvedic nutritionist that I do a lot of soupy foods — so this was also a healing experiment for me.

Now, when I get hungry on a “cleanse” / detox, I add more food! I snacked on raw sprouted almonds all weekend, ate lots of spoonfuls of coconut butter and tahini, added beans & avocado to my dinner soups as I mentioned above, sipped on all sorts of energizing teas all day long, and drank tons and tons of fluids to flush my cold out of me (I was SO sick last week + this weekend, ahhh!).

Also, if I had been hungrier, I would have added more. I have learned after everything I’ve been through to listen to my body above all else and give it what it needs to feel its best, be fueled & energized, and to be satiated and happy.

I now know that being “starving” on a cleanse or detox is so bad for your metabolism, adrenals, digestion and mental state. (OBVI.) And also, it makes you bounce back and be hungrier than ever, so any potential digestive benefits that could have been had are totally squashed by that extreme back and forth.

Souping is also warming in texture which in Ayurvedic teaching is so much better for our tummies and digestion than raw food and cold juices/smoothies.

I wasn’t hungry at all on my soup detox because I had a soup nearly every hour, meaning I had tons of good fuel to keep me going throughout my day. I even ran a 10k with my family and my BFF!

And don’t even get me started on BONE BROTH!!! Bone broth is my lifeline right now — I am obsessed with it, and I feel like it is really, really healing my gut and I am so thrilled to have found something that seems to be working.

To name a few things that bone broth helps with… allergies, anemia, anxiety, bone fracture, bloating, brittle hair/nails, colds and flus, Crohn’s disease, GI problems, detoxing, fatigue, food allergies, hypothyroidism, menopause, muscle atrophy, muscle cramps, osteoporosis, arthritis, slow metabolism, PMS, ulcerative colitis, weak immunity, insomnia, IBS/IBD, leaky gut, weak immunity.

BOOM.

I am going to do a full post on bone broth either this week or next to share with you guys, and I can’t wait.

AND I already made a second trip to Soupure this morning to pick up bone broths & their Superhero Nut & Seed soup to keep sipping on throughout the week as I get back to my regular food routine!!

XO — PS, more on my Soup Cleanse on SNAPCHAT (@jojoyounger) — check it out, yo!