So, it’s the day after the holiday weekend and you stepped on the scale and realized you overdid it! Of course, I have some tricks up my sleeves to help! I always suggest starting your morning with lemon water, but you should also drink it all day long, and drink a lot of it. Another favorite of mine is to drink cranberry water and detox tea – my favorites are Triple Leaf and Yogi. I also suggest you eat a lot of dark green leafy vegetables. Eat at least 4 cups. Their high fiber content helps the body eliminate toxins and helps you lose weight. Raw is best, so have a nice big salad and have some spinach!

But my favorite thing to do is take a relaxing detox bath! Not only is it good to do this at the first sign of illness but we should do it once a week to help eliminate what the body has accumulated through our daily routine. A detox bath isn’t as complicated as it might sound. In fact, you most likely have the ingredient in your home already.

Here is my favorite detox bath recipe:

2 c. baking soda (I buy the big bag at Costco)
1 c. of Epsom salts
1 c.  sea salts

Mix ingredients well and store in a glass jar with a screw-on lid. I use about 1/2 cup of the mixture per bath so this recipe goes a long way.

Draw your water as hot as you can comfortably stand. The hotter the water you use, the better, and the more thorough detox you will have. However, if you feel your heart beating fast, your water may be too hot. You don’t want the water to be so hot that your heart pounds like crazy, but hot enough that you really sweat. If your body is way overheated you will lose metabolic enzymes which we need to repair our bodies. You can also add the juice of one orange to help with this feeling and your body temperature will slowly go back to normal as the bath cools. Make sure you drink water while bathing to replenish the liquids you sweat out.

Use an exfoliating bath sponge, if desired. Twenty to thirty minutes is usually an adequate amount of time for a detox bath.

The best is to not rinse off when you are done; Bundling up and go to bed seems to produce the best releases. If you are dizzy after the bath, (This sometimes happens when you have the water too hot) you can bring your body back to normal temp with a cold shower. If you can’t handle the film it leaves on your body, you can do a cold shower and use loofa to remove the film, although most don’t even notice it.

How does this work? The combination of the hot water and ingredients work together to give you the detoxifying action. First, the hot water in the bath pulls toxins out of the body to the surface of the skin. The Epsom salts aid the detoxing process by making you sweat, which is the body’s natural way of releasing toxins. Epsom salt is absorbed through the skin in a bath and it helps to draw toxins from the body, reduce swelling, and relax muscles. Toxins are drawn out of the body as the water in the bath naturally cools. The other two ingredients, sea salts, and baking soda help to cleanse and purify the body of toxins. The baking soda is highly alkaline, it also helps encourage poisons to leach from your system. Sea salt is widely known for its powers of purification so, although it’s not necessary to detox, it is a great addition to a detox bath.