New Year, New Start

I know talking about detoxing and clean living in January is a bit obvious.  I've actually never done it before and usually, come January 1st, find myself very happily, knee deep in Quality Streets, a million miles away from anything remotely healthy.  This time though I have a real urge to clean up my act.   

To cut a very long story short, after years of endless doctors and neurologists appointments, six months ago, Chaz gave up on traditional medicine and took himself off to see a Chinese doctor;  A magical man called Mr Lee who lives in Uxbridge.  We didn't have a lot of hope and thought he would probably send him packing with some 'magic' herbs.  Instead, he put him on the world's strictest diet for two, long months.  He was allowed no sugar, no diary, no yeast, no alcohol, no gluten and no fruit.  Basically nothing remotely enjoyable.  It would actually be quicker to list the foods he was allowed to eat.

It totally transformed him - mentally and physically and so far, touch wood, his mystery pains are no where to be seen.

We then went to a wedding this New Years Eve where I met a nutritionist.  She gave me a mini consultation telling me what I should and shouldn't be eating and funnily enough it was pretty much the same as what Mr Lee had said.  Her parting words were for me to have a look at the website Deliciously Ella. 

Feeling more than a little worse for wear on January 1st I logged on and have not looked back since. I am well and truly hooked. The oh-so-beautiful Ella Woodward was diagnosed with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome in September 2011 and after six months of traditional medicine not helping she decided to turn to holistic, natural methods instead.   Changing her diet over night, she cut out meat, sugar, diary and gluten - anything processed and full of chemicals.  She truly believes that it is eating this way that has given her life back, leaving her full of energy and pain free. 

I thankfully, am not ill but am quite keen to keep it this way so this year, I am going to try to follow some kind of diet loosely based on ideas taken from both Ella and Mr Lee.  

As I write there are two enormous tins of Quality Street winking at me from across the room;  it's the no sugar part that I'm going to really struggle with.  I'm going to start off now by making raw brownies with this recipe of Ella's.

I'll keep you posted!