How to Reset Your Body After Vacation or Holiday Overindulgence
/Learn how to reset your body after vacation or holiday overindulgence. A few easy steps will have you feeling better quickly.
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I do my best to live a healthy life filled with nourishing food, energizing exercise, and positive thinking. That’s always the goal, but some days are definitely easier than others to keep it all in balance.
Then there are the holidays. And travel. And parties. And long weekends. These activities can be super fun and an important part of living a full life, but they can also be taxing on the system.
Instead of refraining from the fun, let’s talk about how to naturally reset your body after too much food, drink, or travel. (And if you haven’t already checked out my article on how to drink healthier, you might want to start there, if it’s not too late.)
How to Naturally Reset Your Body
1. Hydrate
Whether you’ve just returned from a week’s vacation or you’ve just spent a weekend overindulging, chances are that you’re dehydrated.
Dehydration will give you a headache and make your overall system feel tired. Lack of water also makes you want to eat (and not the healthy good stuff), even when you’re not hungry.
Start the day with warm water and lemon to wake up your system. It will get your metabolism moving again so it can start getting rid of the extra toxins in your body.
Drink water all day long. You can even add a little apple cider vinegar to your H2O before meals to help alkalize your body and improve digestion. Soon enough you’ll become hydrated and on your way to hitting the healthy reset button.
2. Move
You’re tired, maybe hungover (no judgment, but read this before you drink next time), and perhaps experiencing jet lag, the last thing you feel like doing is exercising, but it’s one of the most important parts of recovering.
Now you don’t have to hit a boot camp class at 6am the day after overindulgence. In fact, this can potentially hurt your already stressed out adrenals.
Instead, take a walk outdoors. Getting exposure to daylight first thing or even mid-afternoon can help jet lag sufferers acclimate to a new time zone.
A spontaneous dance party in your PJs can also get the blood flowing. If your body can handle it, a good sweat will start to rid your body of added toxins.
An added benefit of exercising after travel or too much food will be a hit of endorphins to elevate your mood. Those endorphins can help you deal with that post-vacation partum.
3. Nourish
You may feel like eating pancakes and waffles after overindulging but that will throw you deeper into an energy-depleted hole, unless of course they’re my gluten free, vegan banana peanut butter pancakes.
You want to start getting some energizing greens in your body to get your system back on track. My cilantro lemon detox juice will start you down the right path. I also have a dandelion detox smoothie if you prefer blending to juicing.
Your body gets inflamed from eating or drinking too much so try and stay away from processed, junk food, as well as caffeine and more alcohol. The old hair of the dog grabbing a drink to make you feel better only prolongs the long term pain process. Stick with my list of anti-inflammatory foods and recipes for a faster post-vacation recovery.
4. Oil Pulling
You’re probably aware that eating well, exercising, and hydrating are all good practices to help reset your body after overindulgence, but have you tried oil pulling?
I like to oil pull after returning from a trip, or even after visiting my dentist. I consider it a way of detoxing my mouth.
Your mouth comes in contact with a lot of foreign bacteria. It’s your first line of defense for taking anything into your body. You brush your teeth TWICE a day, but what about the rest of your mouth?
Oil pulling involves swishing an oil like coconut or sesame oil around your mouth for 10-20 minutes. The oil picks up toxins and bacteria that eventually get removed when you spit the oil out – and always spit the oil in the trash and not down a drain so you don’t create any clogs.
Oil pulling has also been shown to help whiten your teeth, promote good overall oral hygiene, and freshen your breath naturally. I do it regularly, and it also finds that it helps alleviate my allergies.
5. Open Your Pores with Dry Brushing and Showering
When you travel and overeat, you’ve very likely taken on added toxins. You want those out so you can start kicking butt again.
Oil pulling removes the bacteria from your mouth, but you also want to remove toxins from your body via the skin. The steps above will help, and then I recommend dry brushing and showering to open your pores.
The largest organ in the body is your skin. When you have toxins floating around your body, it will show in your skin. You ever take a look in the mirror after a night of drinking? Yeah, not the prettiest of sights, right?
If your body is up for a good sweat either through exercise or a sauna, start there, and then dry brush.
Dry brushing includes taking a long natural bristle brush (I like this one) and making long strokes across your dry skin. Start at your feet and work your way up, avoiding the more sensitive areas like your chest and face. You can make a clockwise circular motion around your belly to help your digestion as well.
The brushing exfoliates the skin, removes dead skin cells, improves your circulation, and may help reduce cellulite (bonus!). One of the best features of dry brushing is that it stimulates your lymphatic system. This is the system that assists with eliminating waste so you want to keep this moving freely, especially when you’re recovering from jet lag or too much food and drink.
After you dry brush, jump in the shower and wash off any dead skin. I like using a natural loofah to cleanse and fully open my pores.
If you’re up for it, another energizing practice is to end your shower with as cold of water as you can tolerate. The cold water will further help your circulation by stimulating blood flow. It also helps with muscle soreness and energy.
When you get out of the shower, make sure to hydrate your skin well. I use organic sesame oil in the winter. I also love Annmarie’s all-natural blend of body oils to hydrate my face and body.
I dry brush and shower like this daily, overindulgence or not. It’s a great way to keep your lymphatic system flowing and your skin supple.
6. Be Gentle
My last tip for naturally resetting your body after too much travel, food, and drink is to go easy on yourself.
The day after you come home from a long trip or a weekend of parties may not be the best day to create a business plan for the next 12 months.
Give yourself some time to ease back into things.
If you’re recovering from a food or drink hangover, take the steps above and then give yourself permission for some Netflix time. Don’t beat yourself up over what you ate or drank the night before. There’s no changing the past, but it never hurts to make notes if you’d like a different outcome in the future.
Life should be a balance of fun experiences filled with great travel, meals, and beverages. If you hit excess on any of them, follow these steps to get yourself back on track, and ready for more adventures.
