The Post-Holiday Purge

After all the pies, mashed potatoes and other sugary and starchy foods we’ve all enjoyed for the past two months, it’s no wonder so many people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, cleanse their bodies and get in shape.

But how do you purge—safely—yourself of all the sugar and fat you’ve been eating since Halloween?

It depends on whom you ask.

Some people swear by diets like Atkins, which calls for eliminating almost all carbohydrates, or even drastic measures like an all-soup diet or an all-orange-food diet. Ridding the body of those foods decreases tolerance—and desire—for large amounts of them, advocates say.

But most don’t have to work too terribly hard to make weight-loss gains, said Virginia Englert, obesity prevention coordinator for CanDo, or the Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity, based in Fort Collins. The new program is funded through the Poudre Valley Hospital Foundation and connected to Live Well Colorado, a statewide obesity prevention and wellness program.

Englert said for many people, simply eating less is one way to stem weight gain.

“Think about how you feel when you’re that full. Most people tell me that they feel uncomfortable, and they feel guilty, and is it really worth all that?” she said. “Listen to your body and say, ‘Am I comfortably full?’”

Another effective method is to layer on the self-imposed guilt.

Englert recommends keeping a food journal, and being as honest as possible—write down that handful of popcorn you just snatched from your coworker, or the seven gingerbread cookies you liberated from the office break room, and eventually you’ll start feeling bad about the bad things you eat.

“That really keeps people accountable for the food that they’re eating. A lot of people eat mindlessly, and when they start writing it down, that’s when they become more mindful,” Englert said.

Englert said her main healthy-eating tip is to divide each plate into four portions. One ought to have grains, one should have a meat, fish or other protein source, and the other two should be fruits and vegetables.

If it’s too difficult to introduce steamed broccoli and poached fish to your usual dinner menu, Englert recommends just cutting back—follow the rule of 75, she said.

“Whatever you’re eating, eat 75 percent of it. There are some people who like to go the route of choosing low fat or low sugar, and that’s fine. But other people don’t like those kind of products, and that’s where the 75 percent rule comes in handy,” she said. “Ideally, we’d like people to move toward more fruits and vegetables, but reducing portion sizes is a good way to go.”

The U.S. Surgeon General has said obesity is the single greatest public health threat to the nation, and that’s not too far off—poor nutrition and lack of physical activity are the second leading preventable causes of death in the U.S. and Colorado, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment.

Colorado is one of the leaner states and so therefore a little better off, with 45.1 percent of adults being at a healthy weight. But obesity in the state is rising with national rates, and could put more people at risk for cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, asthma and other ailments.



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Besides watching what you eat, detoxification has become a popular way to cleanse the body of pollutants in the processed food we eat, the air we breathe and the alcohol and smoke we consume.

Some colon cleansing programs use high amounts of fiber and other natural ingredients, and are commonly recommended by natural healing practitioners, according to Natural Healing Today magazine.

In a review of several products available online and in health stores, the magazine’s editorial staff said that programs which last at least 30 days are usually the most effective. Many of them work by cleansing the colon of toxic material buildup, combined with parasite prevention treatments and other elements.

Others recommend body treatments, available at several Fort Collins spas, that are also designed to rid the body of toxins.

Janet Sanders, owner of Cleopatra’s Day Spa, said one of the most important remedies is also one of the simplest: drinking water.

“We always recommend drinking a lot of water, especially after a massage, for instance. People who haven’t had a massage in a long time, there’s a lot of toxins in their system and the massage moves the toxins around,” she said. Water helps bring it out of the body.

Certain spa treatments, like algae wraps, a sugar body polish offered at Cleopatra’s and an ion cleansing offered at Atrium Health Spa & Inn, remove toxic materials through the skin. The ion cleanse uses negatively charged particles to draw toxins out of the body.

Sanders said she doesn’t sell any herbal or medicinal detoxification products—she used to sell a vitamin supplement, but it had niacin and a shellfish component, and she worried about customers who might react badly to those substances.

“Whatever people decide to do as far as cleansing, they need to make sure it doesn’t interfere with something they are already taking,” she said, especially prescription medications. “Too many people go head-first into these solutions to cleanse themselves, and they forget that by cleansing themselves, it’s not going to make their medication work as well.”

She, like Englert, said people just need to eat better and drink more water.

While some spa solutions are a good remedy, drastic, short-term diet solutions might not be the best for people who want to change their habits for good.

Englert said anything you don’t foresee yourself doing long-term could be “bad news.”

“Things like the cabbage soup diet, extremely low carb diets ... anything you only plan on doing for a short period of time is only going to work for a short period of time,” she said.

Adding one or two small steps, like a vegetable in one of the quadrants of your plate, is a more realistic proposition, she said.

“The majority of people, their (weight-loss) resolutions fail by Jan. 15,” she said. “The reason for that is they make these big extreme resolutions that are entirely different from their current lifestyle, and they are not sustainable long-term.”

So, start small, write it down and good luck—there’s only six months until hot dog and ice cream season starts.