Fitness: Going Clean Is This Year’s Detox

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Kate Cracknell, Wellbeing Expert at Aspria says: ‘Detox? It’s so last year!’

This year, the buzzword is ‘clean’ – clean eating, clean therapy, clean products, clean mindset. Where detox focuses on a finite period of cleansing for your mind and body, purging yourself of the toxins that lie within – from caffeine to stress to lactic acid – the ‘clean’ philosophy is built around a more sustainable approach to healthier living. It’s about prevention and maintenance rather than cure.

How to eat clean: Where a detox diet might see you sipping lemon-infused hot water, or shunning meals in favour of freshly squeezed vegetable juices, eating clean is about real food. What matters here is the quality of the food you put into your body.

It’s about eating simply, choosing good, real food rather than food stuffs that are produced commercially. Lean protein, wholegrain carbohydrates, plenty of fresh vegetables. If you can choose organic, so much the better.

As part of this, we advocate cooking for yourself from scratch: it doesn’t have to take a lot of time and the benefits are huge. It ensures you know exactly what’s in all of your meals, allows you to cook food in a healthy way, and of course allows you to avoid all the sugar, salt and hydrogenated fats that are so often hidden in processed foods.

Choosing clean therapies: Most people think of detox when they think of clean spa treatments: detox wraps, body massages, scrubs and so on. However, although all of these are great and help cleanse the body and skin, they are mainly created to support detox or weight-loss programmes, medication clean-outs or a general internal cleanse.

Meanwhile, many treatments are on offer that can promote a holistic, 360° clean approach to wellbeing, and that have a broad range of benefits. Most Ayurvedic and holistic therapies originated from sourcing natural, clean products, for example, while mindfulness techniques and energy- balancing rituals can aid clarity of body and mind. Look out for treatments including aromatherapy massages and facials, lomi lomi massage, abhyanga massage and body wraps among others.

How to identify clean products: When you have a treatment in an Aspria Spa, you can be guaranteed that the products we use are all ‘clean’ – and that’s because we’ve chosen a product house, Espa, that has the same ethos as us in this respect. None of Espa’s products are allowed to fall below 98% natural ingredients, with many hitting 100%.

The list of ingredients it has committed to never using is therefore also very useful. From synthetic colours and fragrances to parabens, silicone, SLS and SLES – these are the ingredients you should look out for and avoid if purchasing your own homecare products in the shops or online.

Creating a clean mindset: A clean mindset is perhaps the most complex concept to grasp, but in a nutshell, it’s about uncluttering your mind, learning to give yourself some vital moments of mental and emotional peace.

Those moments can look different for each of us; yours could be timeout in the spa, participating in a mind-body class, enjoying 15 minutes of meditation or simply unwinding before bed by relaxing in a candle-lit aromatherapy bath.

It could equally be a high-intensity circuits, boxing or indoor cycling class, if what you need is to blow the cobwebs away and rid yourself of the stresses of the day – if that’s the way you find you’re able to step away from everything.

And what it will almost always be, will be time away from your devices; these might put the world at our fingertips, but they inevitably ensure stress isn’t too far behind! Ultimately, in our increasingly busy lives, it’s so easy to let our minds become overwhelmed – but if that happens, we suffer physically too. A clean mindset is about scrambling back time for ourselves, in the interests of our holistic wellbeing.

For more great wellbeing advice – tips on nutrition, exercise and other lifestyle changes to keep you on top form – read more on www.aspria.com