How & Why To Love Your Liver

Your body works hard. It’s responsible for taking the fuel you give it and making something of it. It’s goal is to keep you alive and functioning optimally. And it’s through our food choices that we help it (click here for three foods I think every toddler (and mama!) should keep in their diet!).  And to be honest, we don’t always give our body the building blocks it deserves.

You liver, in particular helps not only with digestion and protein synthesis but it also helps remove toxins from your body.

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Note: Truthfully, I hate that word “toxins”. However, in the case of your liver it’s necessary.

You liver is one part of your filtration systems. It looks at what comes in and decides what to do with it. Unfortunately, some of what we take in stumps the liver and causes it to work overtime.

Things like alcohol and processed food we know aren’t the best for us. But much of the livers extra workload comes from taking things we don’t even realize. Chemicals in our water or on our foods cause the liver to work double time just to keep up!

Which is why, every so often I like to give my liver a little love. A detox of sorts (another word I HATE!). This doesn’t mean I’m rocking a juice cleanse for fourteen days but it does mean that I’m giving my liver (and kidneys) a bit of a break from their workload.

For me, January is a great time to do this because truthfully I drink enough over Christmas that taking a break from alcohol isn’t hard at the start of the year. HA!

Below are a few of the things I’m rocking (and you can do too) to help give my liver a bit of love.

Omitting Coffee & Alcohol

As I already said, alcohol I can do but coffee. Coffee definitely makes me tear up a bit! But it’s alright. It’s only four weeks. And the less work my liver has to do the better! This way it can relax, recharge and get ready to stay on top of everything!

 

No Processed Sugars

This one isn’t actually huge for me as I removed most of these a long time ago. I keep in both dates and maple syrup so again, it doesn’t really affect me too much.

 

No Deli Meats

I love deli meat. But I can’t deny that it does have a rather high content of nitrates. And since that would be one more thing for my liver to process they’re gone for the month.

 

No Dairy

This isn’t completely a liver thing. I find that dairy tends to alter hormones ever so slightly and I’ve had headaches lately. Thus, I figure this would be a good month to remove it along with everything else. This way I give my body a chance to just get back to baseline.

 

Light On The Meat

This is a hard one for me as I love meat. However, it does take a lot to breakdown and process so for the next month my meat intake will be a bit lower. Still present just lower.

Note: I’m rocking these tips for four weeks only before I start to wean some of them back in. I am definitely giving my liver some love but they’re not all something I can maintain

 

So if I’m removing all this stuff, what the hell am I eating?

Truthfully, the same thing I always eat: real, whole food! I tend to stick to a more unprocessed diet anyways so this isn’t a huge challenge for me (though I do fall prey to snacking). A few things that I’ll be bumping up this month are:

• Loose leaf green tea
• Dandelion tea
• Beets (I LOVE beets so yay!)
• Lots of leafy greens

That’s pretty much it, everything else in my regular diet will remain the same so for me, it’s not too big a challenge. And, it’s only four weeks 😛

This definitely isn’t something you need to adhere to all the time (Jesus I’d die without coffee!) but it is good to give your liver a bit of a break now and again. I promise your body will thank you and function much more optimally. Digestion alone tends to see the biggest benefits.

Don’t forget to pin these Liver Loving Suggestions!

What about you, have you ever given your liver some love??

 

Looking for some liver friendly recipes? Check out this Tangy Lemon Noodle Bowl