Congratulations on Your Graduation to Maintenance!

Spring is traditionally a time for graduations. If you’ve been faithfully following Optimum Health Institute’s God-centered holistic healing program for months, and you feel completely energized, vital, joyful and enthusiastic, you might be ready to graduate to the OHI Maintenance Lifestyle

You can start adding fresh lemon juice to your first big glass of water in the morning. While pure, plain water is essential for adhering to the detoxification part of the OHI program, after graduating to Maintenance, that lemon juice will help alkalize the body.

Incorporate new foods into your diet one at a time, and observe your body’s reaction. Are you feeling any joint stiffness? What about bloating? Do you feel a headache coming on? Your body will quickly alert you if any new food is not an optimum choice for you. Take the time to listen.

After you’re a graduate, you can enjoy the delicious taste, smooth texture and nutritious boost of avocadoes. Jam-packed with heart-healthy monounsaturated fatty acids, fiber, potassium and a long list of vitamins and minerals, a serving of avocado is a favorite addition to a healthy maintenance diet.

Organic or homemade nut and seed milks, without added sweeteners or fillers, are allowed in moderation. The maintenance food plan also includes baked sweet potatoes and yams, lightly steamed vegetables, nut butters and soaked organic dried fruit, without preservatives.

Please keep in mind that graduating to maintenance foods doesn’t signal a total departure from the fresh, organic plant-based meals in the detox program. Instead, it’s a mindful, disciplined shift to slowly begin to include additional foods. A ratio of 80% raw, 20% cooked is optimum.

To help you stay on track, OHI Austin Kitchen Manager Amber Santa Cruz suggests taking a big picture view of each week, and visualizing your meal plan ahead of time. She cites studies proving that just the practice of meal planning improves our food choices, even if we don’t stick with our original plan.

Another helpful tip to help graduates make smart choices, Amber suggests, is to prep your dressings and veggies ahead of time. In a perfect world, we would not cut a vegetable until the moment we are going to eat it to preserve every nutrient. But in the real world, having washed and chopped veggies and homemade dressing prepped and ready in the fridge makes it a LOT more likely that those items will make it into our diet. With a little planning we can make veggies a convenience food. The goal is progress, not perfection.

As you’re graduating from the detox food plan to maintenance, remember to continue to nourish your mind and spirit, too. Meditation, prayer, spiritual fellowship, gratitude – incorporating spiritual disciplines into your daily routine will help insure that the holistic cleanse you launched in the spring continues to keep you in balance all year long.

There’s still time to invest in your health and save hundreds of dollars with special discounts through the week beginning 6/4/17 at OHI Austin, and the week beginning 6/11/17 at OHI San Diego. Find out more on our website at www.optimumhealth.org, or call (800) 993-4325 for details. Act now! Special offers are for a limited time only.