You’ve heard of juice cleanses – consuming only very specific juices over the course of 1, 2, 3 or more days – in order to provide a detoxifying and cleansing effect for your body. While this type of cleanse continues to be popular, we are seeing the benefits of “souping” – nutritional cleanses based on soup and broth.
Like juice, soup is very easy to digest, giving your body a break from heavy digestion. The bonus is that soup provides more protein, fiber and variety of nutrients to your body than most juice cleanses can offer.
So how do you “cleanse” with soup? While there are many soup cleanse programs available, you don’t have to get complicated, or costly, in order to perform a soup cleanse. Here are two easy options developed by The Kitchen at Woodside to get started:
#1 The 1-Day Soup Cleanse
Simply replace all meals for one day with soup. Soup for breakfast may seem strange, but bone broth is an excellent way to start the day. It’s warm and savory and comes in a cup, perfect for sipping just like your morning tea or coffee. For lunch, a light vegetable-based or vegan soup can offer a filling effect from the liquid base and deliver easy to absorb nutrients to your body without much effort from your system. If you like, you can opt for a heartier soup for dinner, like our carnivore soups, to feel fully satisfied and stave off any late night cravings.
To make the most of your one-day cleanse, start eliminating fried foods, red meat, dairy, caffeine and sugar 1-2 days before your cleanse day. Do the same for 1-2 days after your cleanse, slowly re-introducing solid foods like lean protein, greens, whole grains and good fats like olive oil, avocados and fatty fish like salmon.
#2 The Soup Swap
For those looking to lower their calorie intake and get more nutrients into their diet, the Soup Swap meal replacement is a great option. Simply swap out one meal per day with a healthy soup. This is a great way to give your body a break once a day by delivering quickly absorbed nutrients with little effort and lose a few stubborn pounds (since a cup of soup is typically much lower in calories than most meals). Just be sure that your soup is vegetable based (even if it contains meat protein), not cream or cheese-based. All of the soups made at The Kitchen at Woodside are excellent choices, plus many are available by the quart.
