DIY: Aloe Detox Water

   In my never-ending quest to be about this fitness life, I work out with a group on Mondays. the workouts are INTENSE (I almost puked after the first one). Most of the participants are distributors for a nutritional supplement company that shall remain un-named (nobody's payin' me for promotion). We get to sample the products after our workouts and while I'm not really big on them I tried their Aloe concentrate in some tea after a workout one day and the next morning...I was literally cleaned out. Apparently aloe is a great way to clear out your digestive system. So I went to Trader Joe the next day and bought a gallon of their aloe vera juice. It was cool but the geek in me always wants to make things myself. So after some research, I bought an aloe leaf and made my own detox water. I learned about the process from here. The pictures are more artsy than the ones I'm going to show you but I wanted to give a layman's experience of making it.

I got my pitcher...

 

and my aloe leaf. It was $1.99 at my local grocer...

I split the aloe leaf down the middle. I would suggest doing this on a cutting board that's placed on some type of plastic or paper towel because the gel comes oozing out ASAP and you don't want to waste it.

I tried to cut the gel out but I kept getting skin and you do NOT want that. Apparently there's a yellow resin between the gel and skin that will chain you to the toilet. So I got a spoon and scraped out as much as I could.

I put the gel and the juice of a lemon in the blender with some water and blended it for about a minute. When it was done it was super frothy.

I poured it in the pitcher through a strainer to catch any unblended pieces and threw those back in the blender with some more water until it was smooth. When it was all done I filled the remainder of the pitcher with water and threw a piece of lemon in there.

There was still gel left on the leaf so I stored it in some tupperware. Not sure how long it will last but I'm hoping to make another round of this stuff in about a week.

 

It doesn't taste great but that may be due to the fact that I used more aloe than the recipe called for. You can use it in your smoothies or mix it in with some juice. I just drink it with water. Try it out and let me know how it works for you. Here's to your health!