Welcome to the Evan Alexander Grooming Men’s Detox Challenge!
Have you ever fasted before? What about participating in a 7-day detox? 14 days? Maybe you’ve fasted or detoxed for a month or longer?
If you fall under any of these categories, the Men’s Detox Challenge is for you!
Before you begin the Evan Alexander Grooming Men's Detox Challenge, we suggest reviewing the information in our complete guide to help support your detox.
Because detoxing, fasting and cleansing, especially if it's your first time, can be a hard journey, it's extremely important to understand WHY we're detoxing.
Did you Know….
The African American community is currently leading the statistical categories for heart disease, diabetes, and colon cancer. This staggering fact should motivate us to be proactive in regards to our health.
These categories are not the races we want to be leading in!
To help our community be proactive in regards to defending ourselves against the diseases that plague our community, Evan Alexander Grooming is hosting a monthly #MensDetoxChallenge!
Why Should I Detox?
The Evan Alexander Grooming Men’s Detox Challenge is focused on eliminating built-up toxins and waste that are stored in the tissues and cells. When you have these various toxins within your system, they can lead to minor and major health issues. For example, these toxins can break down the scalp and follicles and lead to issues with your hair. These toxins can also lead to acne, dry patches, oily or dry skin. These toxins, when excreting into your skin, can also lead to bacteria and viral infections. They can also have a negative impact on our mental health.
If you’re currently suffering from ANY of these issues, the Evan Alexander Grooming Men’s Detox Challenge can help you address this toxic overload.
What are the Signs of TOXIC OVERLOAD?
There are many signs that identify toxic overload within your body. Some of these signs include losing hair, bloating, itchy scalp, mood swings, love handles, fatigue headaches, food cravings, skin problems, acne, dry patches, constipation, oily or dry skin.
What are some of the Benefits of Detoxing?
In one of our recent posts, we explore the5 major benefits of detoxing. Detoxing can help increase energy levels by ridding your body of toxins that weigh on your immune system. These toxins make your body work harder than they’re programmed to work, which is one of the leading causes of fatigue.
Detoxing can also help promote fresh and clear skin. Remember, inflammation anywhere is inflammation everywhere! If you're currently using any of ourEvan Alexander Grooming products, like ourMY Hair Repair System and you're not fasting and detoxing with it, you're not optimizing your hair and skin repair process!
Detoxing and fasting are key steps to helping solve acne issues, promoting hair growth and addressing beard issues, treating ingrown cysts, and more. By detoxing and fasting, your body can repair, rebuild and restrengthen itself.
Also, if you find yourself suffering from mood swings or just feeling imbalanced mentally, this can also be a sign of a toxic overload within your body. Detoxing and fasting can help with all of these health issues and more.
New to Detoxing & Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is defined as an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.
Will this be the first time you are detoxing and fasting? If you have never fasted or detoxed before, the first time can be extremely challenging. In our experience here at Evan Alexander, you will have a headache during your first detox! Although you may feel these early negative effects, they traditionally last anywhere between three to five days while your body releases these toxins. Do not worry, this is normal! After 20 to 30 years of a regular diet with fasting, our systems need time to cleanse itself fully before the rebuilding, repairing and restrengthening can begin.
During the Men’s Detox Challenge, we recommend fasting for 31 days. However, if this is your first time, we also recommend starting with 7 days or 14 days.
In ourBeginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting, we’ve provided a basic blueprint to help you navigate your first fast.
How Long Do I Fast?
We recommend a 16/8 fast, meaning fasting for 16 hours a day with no eating. We suggest avoiding anything after eating dinner and skipping breakfast for 7,14, or 31 days. We suggest drinking PLENTY of water and hot tea, which helps lower the urge to eat.
What are the Benefits of Fasting?
By limiting your eating to a window of 8 hours, once again, we RELEASE our body to begin repairing, renourishing and strengthening itself. It’s important to know that 80% of our body’s energy is being used by our digestive system! So when you're sleeping, your body should be rebuilding, repairing and rejuvenating itself, healing itself for the next day. Anytime you're eating before bed, your body spends this energy breaking down the food you just ate. This leads to feeling fatigued after a "good" night of rest. Either you're building or breaking your body. These two processes CANNOT happen at the same time.
By allowing your body to return to its normal functions and empowering our system to repair and rejuvenate itself, we equip ourselves with everything we need for HEALING! This is how you wake up in the morning rejuvenated, feeling READY to go to work.
Some of ourfavorite benefits of fastingare reduced insulin levels, decreased inflammation, weight loss, increased growth hormones.
Mental Health Benefits
Besides the various physical benefits the Men’s Detox Challenge, cleansing our bodies can also help your mental health as well. One of our favorite benefits of the Men’s Detox Challenge is the mental strength developed while fighting your natural urges to eat and return to your regular diet and traditional eating patterns. Fighting the urge to eat those chocolate cookies, that voice telling you to eat those oreos, by doing this your disciplining yourself, your showing that you govern your domain and keeps everything honest. But if you’re giving into the urge to return to your traditional eating patterns, that’s when we have a problem! We have to be able to overcome those urges and put our health first.
Check out more of the mental health benefits in ourDay 2 Men’s Detox Challenge recap video on the Black Men’s Beard Youtube Channel.
What Should I Eat During My Fast and Detox?
If you’re wonderingWhat Detox Foods You Should Eat, we recommend various fruits, vegetables, herbs and meat to eat while detoxing. Whether you’re detoxing for 7 days, 14 days, 21 or the entire month, it's important to stay hydrated and eat nutrient-dense foods so the body can maximize the health benefits from what you’re eating.
Organic fruits such as apples, apricots, watermelon, blackberries, cantaloupe, cherries, coconut, figs, kiwi, kumquats, mangos, melons, nectarines, peaches, pears, blueberries, raspberries, and bananas.
Vegetables such as arugula, kale, spinach, avocado, asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, dandelion greens, onions, sea vegetables/seaweed, squash, zucchini, lentils, chickpeas, and all beans, except soy.
Organic herbs and spices like allspice, anise, basil, bay leaf, caraway seeds, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin, dandelion, dill, dry mustard, fennel, garlic, ginger, mint, nutmeg, oregano, parsley, saffron, sage, sea salt, thyme, turmeric, and raw cacao.
We’d also recommend nongluten grains like millet, amaranth, quinoa, black rice, wild rice, and brown rice.
Organic meats that are great to try during a fast and detox are free-range turkey and chicken or Beyond Meat.
You can also substitute dairy products with almond milk, hemp milk, hazelnut, coconut milk, water or quinoa milk.
We’d recommend staying away from fried foods, fast foods, additional sugars besides fruit,
On the Black Men’s Beard’s Youtube Channel, we’ve featured chefs like (Chef YouTube Video), cooking healthy meals that taste good and serve as great examples of meals to eat during the Men’s Detox Challenge.
What Should I Drink During the Men’s Detox Challenge?
During the Men’s Detox Challenge, we’d recommend drinking plenty of water, herbal teas and smoothies. Fasting for the first time is a difficult process; however, we’d recommend using herbal teas that help you fight those urges to eat outside of your fasting schedule.
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Ginger Tea
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Tumeric Tea
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Green Tea
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Chamomile Tea
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Ashwagandha Tea
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Dandelion Root Tea
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Rose Hip Tea
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Milk Thistle Tea
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Burdock Tea
For more information, check out our “Detoxing: 8 Herbal Teas To Drink” video for more information on the benefits of these teas during theMen’s Detox Challenge.
In addition to hot tea, having a smoothie is also super convenient and an extremely healthy option. On theBlack Men’s Beard YouTube Channel, we provide several tasty, but healthy smoothie recipes to make during theMen’s Detox Challenge.
Morning Vegan Banana Berry Protein Smoothie
Check out our the Black Men’s Beard Youtube Channel for more smoothie recipes to make during theMen’s Detox Challenge.
Remember, this is a journey for all of us! The purpose of this challenge is to heal and cleanse the body of built-up toxins and inflammation. Although our system naturally cleanses itself through the liver and the kidney; however, chronic inflammation negatively impacts these systems. If your inflammation system is up, then your detox system is down. Your kidney and liver aren’t able to optimally detox your body. Also, the body was never created to live in the environment we live in today. We live in a totally different environment than what our bodies were created for.
From the food that we eat to pollution to the containers we use to eat out of, the materials that we’re interfacing with on an everyday basis; our bodies weren’t built to withstand this impact. This is why detoxing is so important! If we lived in an environment that was 100% natural, clean, and healthy than our bodies and the systems and processes within would cleanse itself at the most efficient rate. The hard truth is we don’t live in an environment that is 100% clean which is why we have to support our bodies and the systems and processes within with strategies like detoxing and fasting.
The reason we stop eating after dinner is to help your body focus on breaking down the food overnight. When your body is breaking down your meals through the digestive system, it uses about 80% of your energy to complete this process. This takes away from the energy your body needs to heal, refresh and rejuvenate itself. Freeing up the energy in your body from focusing on digesting your food to focusing on rejuvenating itself is essential to realigning your systems to work properly and efficiently.
In addition to the Men’s Detox Challenge, we’d also recommend supporting your detoxification systems with a colon cleanse.
What products should I use during my Detox?
We suggest using a variety of Evan Alexander Grooming Products during your detox and cleanse.
Our new Supa Herbal Greens include the following ingredients that can aid and support you throughout your 31 Day Men's Detox.
Organic Alfalfa Grass (aerial)
Alfalfa is used to treat conditions related to the kidney, bladder, and prostate. It is also a good source of vitamins A, C, E, and K4; and minerals calcium, potassium, zinc, phosphorus, and iron.
Anise is believed to relieve an upset stomach, intestinal gas, “runny nose,” and as an expectorant to increase productive cough, as a diuretic to increase urine flow, and as an appetite stimulant.
The grain of barley is used to lower blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Additionally, it promotes weight loss. It is also used for digestive complaints including diarrhea, stomach pain, and inflammatory bowel conditions.
Organic Bladderwrack (aerial)
Bladderwrack is a seaweed, containing varying amounts of iodine, which is used to prevent or treat some thyroid disorders. Bladderwrack also contains algin, which can act as a laxative to help stool pass through the bowels.
Caraway is believed to aid in the treatment of digestive problems including heartburn, bloating, gas, loss of appetite, and mild spasms of the stomach and intestines. Caraway is also believed to kill bacteria in the body and relieve constipation.
Dandelion is used for loss of appetite, upset stomach, intestinal gas, gallstones, joint pain, muscle aches, eczema, and bruises. Dandelion is also used to increase urine production and as a laxative to increase bowel movements.
Fennel is believed to aid in the treatment of digestive problems including heartburn, intestinal gas, bloating, loss of appetite, and colic in infants among others.
Flaxseed is rich in both soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, and insoluble fiber, which does not dissolve in water. Insoluble fiber remains in the intestinal tract. It absorbs water and adds bulk to the digestive tract. This helps keep movement through the gut regular.
Garlic produces a chemical called allicin. Garlic is used to prevent colon cancer, rectal cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, and lung cancer.
The warming and stimulating effects of ginger work to increase the scalp circulation and encourage healthy hair growth. Ginger contains antioxidant gingerol, which helps to fight free radical – which can cause damage to the hair cells, and cause hair thinning and hair loss. Ginger is also a great hair conditioner. The rich minerals in ginger, it makes hair more manageable, softer and shinier. It is a useful remedy for dandruff and dry, itchy scalp. It contains natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties that help keep scalp healthy and clean.
Ginseng is believed to increase the dermal cells on the scalp which, in turn, strengthens the follicles and roots of the hair. This not only encourages the new growth of strands but also prevents hair thinning and breakage.
title="Men's Detox Challenge - Kelp (aerial) organic">Kelp (aerial) Organic
Sea kelp is a natural source of vitamins A, B1, B2, C, D and E, as well as minerals including zinc, iodine, magnesium, iron, potassium, copper and calcium. In fact it contains the highest natural concentration of calcium of any food - 10 times more than milk.
Organic Nova Scotia Dulce (leaf)
Nova Scotia Dulse contains significant levels of calcium and potassium which help your bones strengthen and become more resilient. Benefits of dulse include helping to lower blood pressure, improve eye sight and improve the health of the thyroid gland.
Parsley’s leaves, seeds, and roots have been used to treat urinary tract infections, kidney stones, gastrointestinal disorders, constipation, diabetes, cough, asthma, and high blood pressure.
It is believed that pumpkin seeds cause an increase in urination, which help to relieve bladder and prostate discomfort. Pumpkin seeds also reduce inflammation in the prostate. Pumpkin seed also contains a chemical that might kill intestinal worms.
Rose hip is the round portion of the rose flower just below the petals. Dried rose hip and the seeds are used to prevent and treat colds, flu, and vitamin C deficiencies.
Sesame stimulates the immune system and increases how quickly skin wounds heal. Sesame also slows the rate in which sugar is absorbed from food, helping people with diabetes. Sesame also eliminates bacteria that cause plaque. Sesame has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties as well.
Sunflower oil helps with constipation and lowering "bad" LDL cholesterol. Sunflower seeds are rich in the B complex vitamins, which are essential for a healthy nervous system.
Wheatgrass is primarily utilized as a concentrated source of nutrients, containing vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin E, iron, calcium, magnesium, and amino acids. Wheat Grass is also commonly used for a variety of conditions including inflammatory bowel syndrome, diabetes, and high cholesterol.
Our new Colonic Cleanser Herbal Dietary Supplement includes the following ingredients that can aid and support you throughout your 31 Day Men's Detox.
Dandelion is used for loss of appetite, upset stomach, intestinal gas, gallstones, joint pain, muscle aches, eczema, and bruises. Dandelion is also used to increase urine production and as a laxative to increase bowel movements.
Flaxseed is rich in both soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, and insoluble fiber, which does not dissolve in water. Insoluble fiber remains in the intestinal tract. It absorbs water and adds bulk to the digestive tract. This helps keep movement through the gut regular.
Marshmallow leaf and root are commonly used to treat stomach ulcers, diarrhea, constipation, swelling of
the stomach lining, and pain and swelling of the mucous membranes that line the respiratory tract.
Psyllium husk is a soluble fiber derived from the seeds of Plantago ovata, an herb typically grown in India. As a bowel normalizer, psyllium husk helps to reduce problems with loose bowels and diarrhea. Additionally, it helps promote normal regularity and easy elimination through their bulking action.
The Rhubarb herb is used primarily for digestive complaints including constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, stomach pain, gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, and preparation for certain GI diagnostic procedures.
Organic Senna
The leaves and the fruit of the Senna plant are used to make medicine. Senna is an FDA-approved over-the-counter laxative. It is used to treat constipation and also to clear the bowel before diagnostic tests.
Slippery elm bark is used to treat coughs, sore throat, colic, diarrhea, constipation, hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bladder and urinary tract infections, syphilis, herpes, and for expelling tapeworms. It is also used for protecting against stomach and duodenal ulcers, colitis, diverticulitis, GI inflammation, and too much stomach acid.
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