You know that fabulous feeling when you take a day to clean out your closet? You purge of all the old items, usually like nine seasons out of style, and keep all the good stuff. Well imagine you never cleaned it out, you just left it all to build up until you can no longer even walk in it, can’t find your good items, and it turns into a huge mess! 

Now take that visual and think about it in terms of your gut health. Every food, drink, and medicinal choice you make has an impact on what lives inside and, just like your closet, it’s important to clean house every once in a while. Beside a daily probiotic and multivitamins, John and I have found intermittent fasting and doing a bone broth cleanse ever so often, helps us keep our body’s own “closet” cleaned out for every season. 

Bone Broth is not a new idea, maybe a new trend, but its benefits date back thousands of years. I heard about it through a wellness challenge I participating in last spring,. After participating, doing my own research, liking the large array of benefits, I starting incorporating it into our own diet.

The major benefits of bone broth you can find with a quick Google search, besides weight loss, include healthy skin, immune system support, anti aging, joint health, reduce cellulite, treat leaky gut syndrome, and many others. Researchers say that the broth contains easily absorbable minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, and sulphur as well as healing compounds like collagen (hello anti aging!), proline, glycine, and glutamine. You are basically using every part of the animal to your benefit. Boiling and shimmering it over a long period of time allows the nutrients to be extracted from the bones and remains in the broth. Surprisingly it taste good too!

If you think it is something you want to try, below is our go-to recipe. It makes a lot so there are a few ways you could incorporate it into your diet. It is great to freeze and keep on hand for intermittent fasting (shorter periods of fasting more often) or another option is to do it as a 2- to 3-day cleanse like John and I just finished. During that time, we only had bone broth (anytime we were hungry), water, and coffee, for three full days. I would end up eating (or should I say drinking) about 3-4 quarts a day. 

After the third day, we eased into a low carb/low sugar diet.  I know most people will think this sounds like starvation, but it really isn’t. The broth is packed with nutrients that fill you up. The first day you might feel hungry just because your body isn’t used to it, but it is pretty neat to see how your body reacts after you realize you don’t need a supersized meal to nourish your body. It isn’t about starvation but rewiring your mind and gut to not NEED sugar like we are accustom to through what is packed in food these days. IF we ever feel weak or hungry, we snack on the pulled chicken that remains after cooking the broth and also plain avocado.

The following is our family recipe, but because it is a personal preference, so add whatever vegetables that you like. 

Chicken Bone Broth (can also do beef)

Ingredients

note: I pick all organic ingredients.

Whole organic chicken

1 Onions

1 Bunch of Carrots

1 bunch of Celery

1 bulb of garlic

1 tablespoon Apple cider vinegar

Peppercorns (as many as you like)

1 Bay leaf

Directions

1. Throw all your ingredients into a large stock pot and cover with water (about 3 inches above top).
2. Cook on high heat and bring to a rolling boil.
3. Cover and reduce heat to low.
4. Simmer for 16-24 hours (I do a full 24 hours)

After your simmering is complete, you will notice some fat on the top…this is good! Make sure to keep this with your broth. What I do it scoop out the chicken and get all the meat off the bone (it will melt off) and put it in a large container to eat throughout my cleanse. Then I strain all the other vegetables out with a colander (you can keep these to eat on later if you want) and pour into pitchers that I keep in my refrigerator. Then I just pour into a bowl/mugh when I want to consume. You can also pour into mason jars or into freezer bags to freeze to eat later. The broth stays good in your refrigerator for about 5 days.

Once it has been in your refrigerator and cooled, you will see the thick fat at the top. Once you heat it up the fat will incorporate with your broth and weirdly enough, makes your lips super soft! Try it out, you might just be surprised!