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Too many of us accept too low a quality of life as normal. It’s true. We do.

We deal with headaches, exhaustion, weight gain and more but what many people do not realize is that these symptoms are not normal. Our bodies were built to feel amazing every day and the majority of us accept feeling tired, bloated and foggy brained on a daily basis. Throughout the last 10 years I’ve suffered from over a dozen chronic health issues including Lyme disease, PCOS, Hypothyroidism, Candida, C-diff Colitis, Leaky Gut and more. After spending many years without relief from western medicine on a cocktail of drugs, I chose a different path with Functional and Integrative medicine. I soon realized I wasn’t the only one suffering when, I started receiving thousands of emails from people who were also suffering and not finding answers to help them get to the root cause of their symptoms. That’s when I turned my life around and learned how to address the underlying imbalances in my body instead of treating my symptoms with a Band-Aid approach. I never want anyone to go through what I went through for 10 very painful, exhausting years trying to figure out how to be healthy in a real way, which is why I wrote my book,Eating Clean: The 21-Day Plan to Detox, Fight Inflammation, and Reset Your Body last year to shortcut your journey to wellness and save you time, money and suffering.

During my journey to wellness it dawned on me that if more people understood what an important role they play in their own health, they could change the quality of their life forever. We have so much more control than we realize and it starts with fighting inflammation by eating clean, whole and nourishing foods. Detox is not what you think. It’s not a juice fast, it’s not about deprivation, and it’s not about starving yourself to be thin! Detox is about living a clean life and removing the toxins in your environment and foods that are causing silent inflammation in our bodies. In my book, I outline how you can detox and fight inflammation on a daily basis starting with eating organic. When we eat organic we’re not pumping in growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and herbicides into our bodies, which is what happens when we eat conventional (non-organic foods). These toxins in conventional foods that we ingest are one of the main causes of inflammation in our bodies. The goal of detox is to lessen the burden that your body faces on a daily basis from toxins. In the last few years, we’ve become inundated with toxins in everything from our food to our tap water to car exhaust, plastics, makeup, cleaning products, personal care products and more. Why is cleaning up our personal care products and cleaning products important for putting out the fire of inflammation in our bodies? Our skin is our biggest organ and everything that we put on our skin gets absorbed into our body, which means everything that we put on our body is just as important as what we put into our body!

Inflammation is hot topic these days because it’s the root cause of unwanted symptoms and health issues. When our immune system is imbalanced, inflammation can lead to chronic health issues. Inflammation can be caused by stress, mold, pesticides, mercury, hidden parasites, bacteria and viruses as well as by eating an inflammatory diet filled with table salt, sugar, white flours, refined vegetable oils and processed foods, all of which lack nutrients that our body needs on a daily basis to function optimally.

How to Decrease Your Inflammation

The best way to protect yourself from (and decrease) inflammation in your body is by eating a clean diet filled with whole, one-ingredient foods that are full of fiber and phytonutrients. You can start by increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables you eat on a daily basis as well as add in more good fats to all of your meals and snacks such as avocado, raw walnuts and extra-virgin olive oil. Other ways to decrease inflammation are exercising on a daily basis, taking probiotics that feed the good bacteria in your gut, lowering your stress with meditation and deep breathing, and identifying what trigger foods are harming your health with an elimination diet. The main trigger foods that are inflammatory are all processed foods, gluten, dairy, soy, corn, refined sugar, white flours, table salt and refined vegetable oils plus a few more that are outlined in my book. Many people are starting to experience hidden sensitivities to the foods they eat, which is causing inflammation and serious health issues. Food sensitivities can occur a few hours after eating the problem food or up to a few days later and they manifest in symptoms such as acne, eczema, sinus issues, headaches, bloating, weight gain, muscle and/or joint pain, brain fog, exhaustion and water retention. In my book (link above), I walk you through a 21 day elimination diet and give you elimination diet recipes so you can remove problematic inflammatory foods and then slowly start to add each back one by one to see what foods are causing inflammation. There is a very specific way of doing this elimination diet and the reintroduction process so I suggest following step by step for accurate results.

Anti-Inflammatory Foods

Here are a few anti-inflammatory foods you can start to incorporate in your daily meals and snacks on a daily basis. Add these foods to your morning oatmeal, your afternoon salads and your dinner stir-fries for an added nutrient-dense boost of flavor.

1. Raw Walnuts
2. Flaxseeds
3. Fermented Vegetables
4. Dark Leafy Greens
5. Fresh Ginger
6. Turmeric
7. Cloves
8. Blueberries
9. Garlic
10. Cruciferous Vegetables (Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, arugula, Brussels sprouts)
11. Fresh Rosemary

I want to show you that eating clean and living clean feels good. Not because you should do it, but because once you see life this way, you’ll never got back. There’s not an inflammatory white bagel in the world that I’d eat to give up for as good as I feel right now.  When you figure out what works for you and makes you feel amazing, why wouldn’t you do that every day? Don’t you do what makes you feel good?

Think about that. Close your eyes and think about why you keep eating foods that make you feel awful and bloated and foggy brained and lethargic. You can do better and you know you can. Start adding in some of these anti-inflammatory foods today and you’ll start to see how easily you can transform your life.

I’m living proof.

xx

Amie