Green Queen Loves: Body Awakening One Month Cleansing Program- The Easiest, Gentlest & Most Effective Cleanse Out There

These days, the word “cleansing” often brings to mind a (cold-pressed) juice fast, not to mention the inevitable cravings for sugary and fatty foods that tend to follow so we were pretty excited to trial a cleanse with a different philosophy altogether, one that promises to approach detoxification with a far less extreme program. Body Awakening, the company founded by American nutritionist Jessica Simkin, offers a more sustainable and practical approach to improving your digestive tract’s and your body’s overall health by way of superfood powders, nutritional supplement tablets and healing teas.

Body Awakening offers a variety of solutions including just supplementing with their products a la carte but we wanted something more structured. Call us crazy but we need help being disciplined! We went for their One Month Cleansing Program, which according to their website, promises to “take a gentle approach to making lasting changes to your health. The program will detoxify your body, boost energy levels, improve mood, help you lose a few extra pounds and enable you to feel comfortable and happy in your body again.” So far, so enticing. Our favorite part of the cleanse is that it doesn’t require going on a pure liquid diet. Having tried several juice cleanses, we knew how hard that could be. The rigidity can be overpowering and some of us really need the satisfaction that comes from chewing! Also, when you have a hectic schedule and are running around a lot, it’s hard to always have access to refrigeration.

The Body Awakening program is basically a supercharging of your existing diet. The program comes with a very helpful outline and includes a box set of nourishing supplements: a greens powder, a probiotic powder, a magnesium and vitamin C powder mix, psyllium husk, flax seeds, spirulina tablets, chlorella pills, herbal tea and laxative tea. The only additional requirements on your end are water and lemons. Each ingredient has been specially chosen to provide your body with a targeted boost whether it be additional fiber for intestinal tract cleansing, laxative tea for smoother bowel movements, chlorella for heavy metal detoxification, magnesium for improved sleep or probiotics for building stronger gut flora.

We can’t overstate enough how well organized the program is: each week comes with a regimented schedule of what supplements to add during the day and the manual offers easy-to-follow advice like: cut out sugar, no caffeine after 12pm and our favorite, no TV or technology after 8.30pm. The way the cleanse works is fairly straightforward: you continue to eat your three meals a day with a focus on avoiding the usual nasties: sugar, caffeine, alcohol, fried foods, refined grains and too much meat. We did our best to stick to mostly salads, veggie bowls, soups and fish for the month’s entirety. The flax seeds were by far the easiest to incorporate into our daily diet- we sprinkled it most days on our breakfast. The seeds add some pleasant texture, not to mention the fiber boost, and works just as well with oatmeal as with scrambled eggs.

A simple daily dose of Probiotics+, a 25 billion bacteria formula made from bio-fermented wild plum and manuka honey, was a godsend for our skin. Facial dermatitis, something one of us has been trying to manage for years and which tends to flare up when we are overstressed, would calm down within 24 hours of taking it. If we skipped it one day, we could immediately feel a difference. Definitely going to be ordering a whole load of it for year-round maintenance! We also loved the beautifully packaged herbal teas- you can actually see the whole goji berries in the gauze sachets. The teas were soothing and so pleasant to sip on- we could definitely see making these a part of our daily routine.

The bottle we approached with the most trepidation was True Greens, the high-protein green food powder made of superfoods such as wheatgrass, spirulina, alfalfa grass and chlorella. We’ve trialed and tested a fair few greens powders in our time and we are usually scrambling to mask the taste with extra banana in our smoothie mix. Not so with Body Awakening ‘s version- the flavor was surprisingly mild and we were able to enjoy it in water only. On the nutrition front, the company developed the powder mix to provide your body with a heaping dose of bio-available (a.k.a. easy to digest) protein.

We ended up on the road for half of the month flying to the US and Europe and this is when the cleanse’s adaptability and convenience really shone. We loved the fact that the probiotics didn’t need to refrigerated. The powder and tablet format meant we could easily apportion our daily doses and bring just enough for the trip’s duration- no hauling around heavy bottles required. Obviously, without a blender in our suitcase, it was a little bit more of a chore to drink so many glasses of water mixed with powders but we could have been more creative in that department. Also, had we been at home, we would have just added the powders to our smoothie.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience. We are sleeping more soundly, our bowel movements are more regular and our stress acne has all but disappeared. Our energy levels seem to have stabilized too. Short of hermiting yourself at a health retreat where every single temptation is removed from sight, this is one of the best ways to nudge yourself to a healthier place. The Body Awakening system makes a nourishing diet that much more accessible. Rather than adopt an all or nothing approach, everyone can go at their own pace. We love!

Body Awakening One Month Cleansing Program, USD 160 including free delivery in Hong Kong, order yours here.