Liana Werner-Gray is the founder and owner of The Earth Diet, author of diet-related books and an advocate for natural healing using a healthy diet and lifestyle. Check out her books: Cancer-Free with Food, Anxiety-Free with Food, The Earth Diet, and 10-Minute Recipes. Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram @lianawernergray. 

With every New Year comes a slew of new diet trends, workouts, and rituals that are probably filling your social feeds. While it’s always great to start something new to help optimize health, I believe in living a healthy lifestyle year-round and finding the balance in this lifestyle.

Instead, I recommend implementing achievable goals into a New Year routine, rather than diving right into an overwhelming program that will leave you crashing and trying to find the next best program. Here are my 7 ways to detox this New Year that are achievable and will help optimize health without feeling overwhelmed. 

Beet Juice for Liver Detox

Beets are highly detoxifying, especially for the liver. Which is highly important, since our liver is one of the most important organs in the body. The liver easily gets filled with toxins, as it is responsible for processing blood and metabolizing different substances for the body to properly function. Beets also offer an anti-inflammatory response for the entire body and can also aid in weight loss and boosting immunity. 

Green Juice for Detox

Twelve years ago I committed to drinking green juice daily for the rest of my life, and you can too! Drinking green juice is a great way to detox the body. By incorporating green juice into your daily routine this year, you may notice clearer skin, weight loss, more energy, clearer thinking, and more. One reason why drinking green juice is helpful to detox is due to chlorophyll.

Chlorophyll is a compound found in dark leafy greens like kale, spinach, and broccoli. Chlorophyll can help enhance our tolerance for oxidative stress which in turn can reduce anxiety. It’s also anti-inflammatory and has been said to be promising in treating inflammation and related diseases. It has anti-viral properties as well and helps with anti-aging, detoxification, and weight loss.

Ginger Tea for Detox

Ginger is a root vegetable that is well-recognized as a form of herbal medicine. It is a member of the same plant family as cardamom and turmeric, and drinking ginger tea is another easy way to detox the body. It aids in suppressing sweet cravings and also helps to drain the lymphatic system. Ginger is also known to have a variety of powerful therapeutic and preventive benefits. There is clear evidence of the effectiveness of ginger as an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agent which can also help to jumpstart weight loss. You can either make your own ginger tea or pick up an organic ginger tea at the store.

Bentonite Clay for Detox

Bentonite clay is ash that has accumulated from volcanoes over millions of years. This remarkable clay has magnetic properties that can assist us in expelling impurities, toxins, worms, parasites, and heavy metals from the blood, gut, and body. It is a natural chelator that absorbs toxins so they can be excreted safely. Bentonite clay contains an abundance of minerals, including magnesium, calcium, iron, potassium, and silica. This is one of the known benefits of drinking bentonite clay – it assists the liver in the natural detoxification process to ensure toxins are kept out. The clay absorbs toxins, which we then expel. The best way to drink the clay is to mix 1 tsp of clay with 1 cup of filtered water and use a wooden spoon to stir until there are no lumps. 

Sugar Detox

Refined sugar is in nearly every processed food on the market today. Refined sugar is known to be neurotoxic (toxic to the brain), anxiogenic (anxiety-inducing), and highly addictive. The majority of humans today are addicted to sugar and believe they cannot function without it. However, by cutting refined sugar the body will detox in just a few days and you will no longer begin to crave processed sweets. Although, detoxing refined sugar does not mean all sugar has to be cut out.

There are many great alternatives to refined sugar that are natural sources, coming straight from the earth that do not cause our blood sugar to spike the same way refined sugar does. This New Year, try swapping refined sugar for natural sugars like honey, maple syrup, fruit, coconut sugar, agave, stevia, or monk fruit!

Carcinogenic Foods Detox

That’s right, foods, just like cigarettes, can be carcinogenic and harmful to our health. By cutting out carcinogenic food, the body will detox and feel so amazing and high functioning. One way to avoid carcinogenic foods is to buy organic and non-GMO foods only. Foods that may be consumed whole in their natural state, like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, provide the body with vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that are healthy, unless we add chemicals to them.

Something that should be healthy to eat, like a carrot, can become carcinogenic if it is grown on a farm where the farmers spray it with pesticides and herbicides. We want to avoid all toxic chemicals in our food, so it’s important to buy organic produce that has not been genetically modified. Farmers grow a lot of foods these days with pesticides, so loads of chemicals are being absorbed by fruits and vegetables through their roots as well as through their leaves and peels when they are being sprayed. These chemicals deplete them of their nutrients and also make them toxic. Whether you buy organic produce or not, always wash your produce thoroughly in clean water to get rid of any possible chemical residue on it. Chemicals in processed foods, like preservatives, additives, and artificial flavorings can also be considered carcinogens.

So this New Year challenge yourself to detox by only purchasing organic, non-GMO foods when possible and avoiding processed foods as much as you can. 

Gut Cleanse for Detox

Another way to reset our bodies and feel our best is by doing a gut cleanse. The gut and brain are connected, so if our gut is off, it’s likely we will feel brain fog, be sluggish, have intense cravings, become anxious, the list goes on. Cleansing the gut reduces symptoms of anxiety by relieving intestinal distress and influencing the balance of good bacteria and the microbiome. There are a few different ways to cleanse the gut these days, however, the one I have found most effective is the aloe and silver protocol. 

Here is what you do:

• Drink 1 ounce of aloe vera and 1 ounce of colloidal silver (mixed together), 3 times a day on an empty stomach (morning, noon, and night). Eat 45 minutes later. Do this for 2 to 8 weeks. If you absolutely cannot drink the aloe juice because you do not like the taste, add it to coconut water or a Green Juice to mask the flavor.
• Take 1 dose of probiotics before bed.

This cleansing protocol makes me feel hydrated, energized, refreshed, and alive. I learned to do this when I wanted my digestive system to be squeaky clean of parasites and bacteria, to repair any leaks in my intestinal walls, and to get rid of excess candida, bloating, and a sensation of heaviness I often felt in a certain area of my gut. However, it is important to get high-quality aloe when doing this cleanse along with silver that is also great quality. I recommend purchasing Haley Nutrition aloe and Sovereign Silver Collodial Silver.