Eat Pretty: Spring Detox with Jolene Hart, Week 1

Your free health coach check-in…

You feel it coming, right? Any moment now, spring— season of rebirth and renewal— will arrive. You’ll unzip your coat, shed a few extra layers, and feel the sun on your face. To get in sync with the powerful cycles of nature, this is also the time to support your body’s detox processes, ensuring that your energy soars, your skin glows, and your body naturally lets go of any winter weight that you’ve been carrying.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll guide you through the most effective nutrition and lifestyle shifts that you can make this season, to ensure that you give your body the spring detox it craves. Spring detox can be an annual ritual that’s refreshing and delicious—no juice cleanse necessary. My clients are focusing on these very same spring strategies that I’ll be sharing, so consider this your free health coach check-in, and be sure to check back in the weeks ahead! The goal, as always, is to get you looking and feeling your best this season, from the inside out.

Week 1: Go Green

At the very moment that your body needs detox, nature delivers. Pop into a grocery store or your local farmer’s market, and you’ll notice that the fresh foods beginning to emerge share a common color: green. Think asparagus, artichokes, spring onions, arugula, watercress, spinach, dandelion, green beans, peas, and sprouts. The many edible shades of green that you’ll find this season offer essential spring cleansing properties, and represent a stark change from the heavier, cooked foods that you’ve been likely eating during the winter. Incorporate some of these foods raw, in a smoothie or raw salad, and others lightly cooked, in a soup or sauté. The important thing is that you add more green to your diet this season.

What makes these spring green foods so highly detoxifying? Their spectrum of phytochemicals, like chlorophyll in greens, sulforaphane in sprouts, and silymarin in artichokes, supports liver health, boosts the body’s key antioxidant glutathione, oxygenates your blood, and aids the removal of toxic compounds. Their fiber content feeds the good bacteria in your body and helps ensure that you’re eliminating all the toxins you cleanse. If you’re not sure what to eat this season, just remember the rule to bring in more green.

You can start with this simple salad, which has mighty detox benefits for your beauty and body:

Tahini-Balsamic Beet Salad

This warm salad is packed with beauty minerals and cleansing phytochemicals, from the powerful betalains in beets to the chlorophyll in spinach and beet greens. The addition of tahini delivers skin-clearing zinc and healthy fats that help you absorb all your spring skin nutrition.

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

1 bunch organic beets (3 to 4), with greens

1 bunch organic spinach

1 tsp coconut oil or ghee

¼ cup tahini

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 tsp tamari

¼ cup warm water

½ tsp garlic powder

Unrefined salt

Ground black pepper

Sesame seeds

Method

Preheat oven to 400F. Remove and reserve beet greens, scrub beets, and wrap in foil. Place wrapped beets on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, rinse and chop beet greens, including a small amount of beet green stems, as well as spinach. In a sauté pan, melt coconut oil or ghee, and cook greens until wilted. Season with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, whisk together tahini, vinegar, tamari, water, and garlic powder. Set aside.

Use foil to slide the skins off of your roasted and cooled beets, then chop them into bite-sized chunks. Arrange your salad on individual plates by topping a bed of sautéed greens with beet chunks, and drizzling with a generous amount of tahini-balsamic dressing. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Be sure to check back in the weeks ahead to read more from Jolene!

+ Loving this recipe? Check out more recipes here!  

Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP is a Philadelphia-based health coach and founder of Beauty Is Wellness, a natural beauty and health coaching practice. Her coaching and Eat Pretty book series teach women to use nutrition and lifestyle choices to look and feel their best from the inside out. 

Text, images and recipes © Jolene Hart. All rights reserved.

 

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This is a challenge I need to do – goodness knows it’s time for a detox!

Charmaine Ng | Architecture & Lifestyle Blog
http://charmainenyw.com

7 years ago

I need to incorporate more greens into my daily diet, this post is inspiring

6 years ago

I definitely need to be eating more greens. Cannot wait for outdoor farmers markets to come back to Massachusetts!

6 years ago

YUM that salad sounds delicious! I am really excited about this series of posts! I love greens, I don’t understand how people can hate them!
XX -KK
http://www.KayleeKarcher.com
#ObsessedWithEverything