In recent years our understanding of the importance of sleep has increased dramatically. Its importance cannot be underestimated.

Again, sleep is important for weight management. Maintaining a healthy weight is so much more than just calories in, calories out. Hormones play a crucial role in weight management, and studies show that if you are short of sleep, the hormones that control your hunger levels are disrupted, undermining your best efforts to manage your diet and weight.

Aim for 8-10 hours of sleep each night, but if you are more tired than usual, get an early night, have a lie in, or take a nap. Try to listen to your body and take the extra rest when it’s needed. Try to avoid using an alarm clock wherever possible, if you need an alarm, you’re not getting enough sleep.

Usually people find their sleep improves on MNB, and there may be times when your body is healing where you need extra. If you have been in the habit of using an alarm clock or you’ve been having great difficulty sleeping for some time, you may also go through a period of sleeping a lot.

Some people find this very challenging with the demands of daily life and wanting time to themselves in the evening. My advice is to surrender to the need to sleep for a while, you will reap the rewards in the way you feel. As your body rebalances, your sleep needs will normalise.

Please avoid dieting or restricting your calories during MNB. Adequate calories are important for healing and good quality sleep.

Most people find that as their bodies come back into balance, weight issues gradually disappear. The body has complex mechanisms to manage weight which are easily disrupted by modern lifestyles and processed foods. As we move back towards a natural diet and lifestyle, the body’s own mechanisms start to kick in again and regulate appetite.

Many of us have spent years carefully managing our food intake, counting calories, dieting regularly, etc. The prospect of relaxing our controls can be daunting, but you can make this a gradual shift over time to avoid additional stress. The idea is not to let everything go overnight, but to slowly transition to a new state of trusting your body whilst the programme supports you.

Significant calorie restriction (anything over about 300 calories) signals to the body to downregulate metabolism, undermining your attempts to lose weight, and if done too often traps you into a double bind where you are more prone to gaining weight when you try to increase your calories back to normal. It also drives cravings which make it harder and harder for you to stick to your calorie goal.

If you have been severely restricting your calories for a long time, you will need to increase your calories slowly to allow your metabolism to return to normal and avoid weight gain.

The best way to do this is to use a tool like cronometer.com to track your current calories and increase by no more than 200-300 calories a week until you reach a more normal calorie intake. Once you have got to this point, please start relaxing any controls on your diet and avoid restricting calories.

The following tips will also help your body recalibrate:

Remember that your supplements have been carefully selected to support your body as it regains homeostasis.
As this happens, you will find it easier to manage your weight.

Modern culture has encouraged us to move away from healthy rest and sleep, instead rewarding long working hours, hard driving type A personalities, ‘work hard, play hard’ mentalities, and those that have a tendency to push themselves.

People with these tendencies often end up in sympathetic dominance, a state where they find it hard to physically relax, and the body tends to hold tension even at rest. These tendencies will slow your progress with MNB. Those who are able to gently release these old behaviour patterns will make faster progress.

The key here is allowing yourself to make changes not only to your lifestyle to allow time for rest, sleep, and self care, but to give yourself permission mentally to do so, and relaxing into it. Free yourself from old beliefs that may be limiting you, and cultivate compassion for yourself.

Your body is your vehicle through life and it requires a certain amount of maintenance to function at optimal performance. Just like a prize racehorse, if you push it past its limits, it will collapse. Self care is a prerequisite for living your best life.

This can be particularly challenging for those who spend time caring for others. In this situation, remember that putting your own oxygen mask on first must be the first step in caring for others, to ensure their continuity of care through your own health.

Movement Aids Elimination

Gentle exercise promotes the movement of the lymphatic system. This is a second circulatory system that carries waste products from our cells into the bowel to be eliminated. The lymphatic system does not have a dedicated organ to pump it, it relies on muscular contraction to work. Consequently, regular exercise is essential for the proper functioning of this system.

Vigorous Exercise Slows Progress

If you choose to participate in vigorous exercise, this will slow your progress on MNB. Like many other beneficial things, there’s a point at which exercise can become a negative stress on the body. Vigorous exercise uses up energy that could otherwise be used for healing and further depletes the adrenal glands and mineral stores.

Which Type of Exercise?

Daily walking is a perfect exercise for those on MNB, anywhere up to about an hour and a half. Other gentle exercises like yoga, tai chi, chi gung, and stretching are also good. Strength training / weight lifting is also acceptable as long as it is more of a maintenance programme than a bulking programme.

In MNB there are two types of reaction you might experience.
The first is a reaction to supplements and the second is a healing reaction.

Some people, especially those who have a history of reacting to supplements, may experience a reaction to one or more of the supplements in the programme. It is not that common but worth knowing about in advance.

Unpleasant reactions can be avoided by starting the supplement programme slowly and carefully. Start with one dose of one supplement on the first day, and each day, add one dose only until you reach full dose of all your supplements.

If at any point you experience a reaction, backtrack to a point you feel ok, stay there for a few days and then start increasing more slowly this time. Contact me if you have any questions.

In MNB, at some point, often soon after starting the programme, you may start to feel a bit better in some way. This could be old symptoms that disappear or an improvement in energy levels. Once your energy level starts to improve, your body will start releasing toxins and rebalancing.

When this happens, as the toxins circulate around your body, you may experience a healing reaction, which often manifests as a resurgence of old symptoms, or symptoms like a headache or a rash. Not everyone experiences healing reactions – children in particular find this process easier.

Whilst sometimes challenging, they are not a cause for concern. They are a sign that you are rebalancing.  As long as you have been mostly sticking to the programme & experiencing some improvement before the symptoms arose, your health is not deteriorating, it is almost certainly a healing reaction, and a sign that you are improving.

If symptoms become unpleasant, pause your supplements for 3 days. This will not stop the detox, but it will slow it and reduce the symptoms. Usually healing reactions don’t last more than 5-7 days. If you have any concerns, or need additional help, contact me and we’ll troubleshoot together.