How To Live Like a Rockstar And Still Be Healthy
There’s only one way to be a rockstar, right? It’s a lifestyle that’s associated with late, wild nights and all the excess that goes with it. Healthy living isn’t necessarily what comes to mind. Dr. Gabrielle Francis travels around the world treating rockstars in tour buses and backstage at festivals, and says that some rockstars do, in fact, live the industry lifestyle but defy the standards of unhealthy alcohol and drug use. Her book The Rockstar Remedy: A Rock & Roll Doctor’s Prescription For Living a Long, Healthy Life offers the tricks of the trade for treating your body well without sacrificing a few indulgences. At first, we were skeptical to follow a program sanctioned by the likes of Tommy Lee and Steven Tyler, but Dr. Francis’s approach to treating the stars applies to all of us: finding a balanced lifestyle amidst an imbalanced world. And since it’s for rockstars it doesn’t eliminate alcohol, which is a nice perk.
Dr. Francis’s approach to the body is a metaphorical one. It’s not the clichéd “your body is a temple” approach, although she supports that idea too. She believes that her program helps fine-tune your spiritual awareness in addition to your physical body. She diagnoses emotional and spiritual issues by looking at bodily ones. “If someone has an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, that person’s immune system is attacking her body, destroying her connective tissue and joints,” Francis writes. “What story is her body telling? She may discover she’s self-critical, judgmental, or even a perfectionist. Her body’s assault on itself may be, in part, a manifestation of her emotions within her cells.” Francis tackles these issues with a three-step process.
She begins with a 21-day cleanse, so that you can start with a clean slate, but she doesn’t recommend green juices. She suggests that green juice is effective in pulling toxins from cells into the blood stream, at which point they pass into the liver and gut. This is a successful cleansing mechanism for those with healthy livers and guts. But most of us (rockstars especially, we’d imagine) have compromised livers and guts and need to cleanse that part of our bodies first and foremost. Dr. Francis recommends her RxStar Remedy detox shake, or the functional food products it includes to avoid reintroducing toxins to the blood and putting free radicals into your body that will make you feel sick during your cleanse.
Next, Francis suggests cleansing your body with exercise, bodywork, and spa treatments; your mind with meditation, relationship management, and prayer (whatever your affiliation); and your surroundings with a sweep of your home, eliminating clutter and household toxins.
The most important part of the program is maintenance. Francis’ philosophy is the 90/10 rule, which allows you to do what you want 10 percent of the time so you don’t have to miss the party. “When you follow this simple guideline on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis – 90 percent of the time – you’ll discover that you feel so incredible living a healthy lifestyle that the 10 percent of the time when you do let your hair down, you’ll be keenly aware of the toll it takes on your body,” she writes. “Many of my celebrity clients… save their 10 percent ‘relapse time’ for parties, events, dinners, or vacation. Maintaining a strict adherence to the rules while they’re intensely focused on their work allows them to truly enjoy themselves and be sociable when they want to be. This is one of the main reasons my clients stick to my program. Your odds of success are far greater because you don’t sacrifice or sabotage your lifestyle to keep your mind, body, and spirit in check.” If 90/10 sounds like a lot of “on” time to you (the widely recognized ratio is 70/30 or even a weekly cheat day), Dr. Francis assures that you can set a balance that works for you, but if you’re doing it effectively, you will feel so good during the on time that you’ll likely want the off time to be shorter. Who wants to feel bad 30 percent of the time?
Once you’ve gotten the process down, you can keep the stages on rotate as needed, since life is a whirlwind and you’ll likely need the occasional rebalance. “It’s normal to overindulge in alcohol, junk food, cigarettes, and other vices… [you can] enjoy life without harming your health,” writes Dr. Francis. Here is the breakdown of her rockstar lifestyle plan:
Stage 1: The RxStar Detox – To let go of things that don’t serve you physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Stage 2: Food – Think of food as fuel for your performance.
Stage 3: Body – The goal is to improve beauty, performance, and longevity.
Stage 4: Mind and Spirit – Work through the impact of your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and environment on every cell in your body.
Stage 5: Socialize – Live life like every minute is a party surrounded by friends and fun, just don’t overdo it with alcohol and never use drugs.
And then do it all again.
Related:
Tired of Calorie-Restrictive Cleanses? Try a Teatox
Recipes From a Detox Guru To Help You Sip Your Way Through Winter
