Whole Detox: A 21-Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life

by Deanna M. Minich

Combining her experience as scientist, researcher, and clinician, internationally recognized health expert Deanna Minich offers a comprehensive, integrative, and personalized approach to detox that helps you heal your unique physical challenges and overcome the life obstacles holding you back from total health and wellness. Most detox programs—from fasts, cleanses and supplements, to elimination diets, organic diets, and saunas—focus on ridding our bodies of the bad foods or chemicals that prevent us from achieving total health. While some people respond well, others find the benefits are short lived and do not result in transformational change. Experienced researcher and practitioner Dr. Deanna Minich discovered that to achieve true health and wellness, we must address all of the toxic elements in our lives. Going beyond previous programs, Whole Detox offers a proven plan to uncover all the obstacles that prevent you from feeling your best. Using Dr. Minich’s integrative, color-coded system that has successfully helped thousands, Whole Detox teaches you how to identify which of your seven “health systems” are out of balance, and provides a personalized prescription for diet, activity, and lifestyle changes that will make you feel better. Following her systematic, step-by-step twenty-one-day journey through all seven systems, filled with helpful questionnaires and charts, you can remove toxins, lose weight, repair existing health issues, boost energy, improve relationships, and find purpose and passion. Dr. Deanna Minich’s methods have resulted in jaw-dropping results. By ridding yourself of all types of toxins, your body will change dramatically . . . and so will your life.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Nutrition, Self Help, Cookbooks

432 pages, Hardcover

First published March 8, 2016

About the author

Dr. Deanna M. Minich (www.drdeannaminich.com) is a wellness expert and author of five books. Having had health issues in her teens and twenties, she looked for solutions to feel better and understand her relationship with food. She embarked upon a scientific path to study nutritional biochemistry, while at the same time, explored other disciplines like psychology, spirituality, and philosophy. Her journey to find answers ultimately led her to combine her studies to develop an integrated, complete, lifestyle system called Food & Spirit™. Currently, she offers training to practitioners of all types to learn this color-coded method for full-spectrum health (www.foodandspiritprofessional.com). She has applied this system to the practice of detox to create Whole Detox, a whole-life, whole-systems, whole-foods approach to feeling vital and renewed. In 2014, she led the Detox Summit, the world’s largest event on detox featuring 30 experts in the field. She offers online programs for those looking for guidance on healthy eating and living the Whole Detox way (www.whole-detox.com). Dr. Minich is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, a Certified Nutrition Specialist, a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, and faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine and University of Western States. Her passion is teaching a whole-self approach to living and bringing together the gaps between science, spirit, and art in healing.

Reviews

[Alicia Brear · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been following the recipes and it has made me use different fruit and vegetables than I usually use. I like the sauces and dressings and I’ve never used so much fresh ginger in my cooking before! I will definitely keep up to the routine of cooking extra for my evening meal to have for my lunch the next day. I liked the different smoothie recipes but some of them were far too sweet and I did get tired of having a smoothie everyday. Also, it was quite expensive getting all the ingredients and I went over my food budget. Usually American recipes don’t always work out for me but I will definitely be revisiting some of these recipes, particularly the chilli was the tastiest thing I’ve ever made!

[Lauryna Nelkiné]

.

[Samar Shadly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for wellness and health

[Tracie Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Whole Detox - A 21-Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life – An Integrative Health Guide for Mind-Body Wellness” by Deanna Minich (2017)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
PRINT:
© March 8, 2016; (448 pages) - Available
DIGITAL:
© March 8, 2016; (432 pages) – Available (for the diagrams and recipes, you’ll want to view this version or the print version.)
AUDIO:
© March 8, 2016; ISBN: 9781504717090; ASIN: B019PIJGE8; OCLC #: 934102397; HarperOne; 9 hours, 18 min.; Unabridged; English; Worldcat: https://search.worldcat.org/title/934... (for the book on CD. The MP3 isn’t in the catalog.)
SERIES:
No

FILM:
No, but here’s an article: https://responsibleeatingandliving.co...

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED:
I’m on a mission to read about the benefits of nutrition and a healthy lifestyle from various perspectives.
ABOUT: (Apologies for not creating my own take on what it’s about.)
(From the Worldcat record) “Combining her experience as scientist, researcher, and clinician, internationally recognized health expert Deanna Minich offers a comprehensive, integrative, and personalized approach to detox that helps you heal your unique physical challenges and overcome the life obstacles holding you back from total health and wellness. Most detox programs--from fasts, cleanses and supplements, to elimination diets, organic diets, and saunas--focus on ridding our bodies of the bad foods or chemicals that prevent us from achieving total health. While some people respond well, others find the benefits are short lived and do not result in transformational change. Experienced researcher and practitioner Dr. Deanna Minich discovered that to achieve true health and wellness, we must address all of the toxic elements in our lives. Going beyond previous programs, Whole Detox offers a proven plan to uncover all the obstacles that prevent you from feeling your best. Using Dr. Minich's integrative, color-coded system that has successfully helped thousands, Whole Detox teaches you how to identify which of your seven "health systems" are out of balance, and provides a personalized prescription for diet, activity, and lifestyle changes that will make you feel better. Following her systematic, step-by-step twenty-one-day journey through all seven systems, filled with helpful questionnaires and charts, you can remove toxins, lose weight, repair existing health issues, boost energy, improve relationships, and find purpose and passion. Dr. Deanna Minich's methods have resulted in jaw-dropping results. By ridding yourself of all types of toxins, your body will change dramatically ... and so will your life”
OVERALL IMPRESSION:
It will take some pondering about the idea of the colors of food benefitting the corresponding Chakra colors—particularly because I’ve also read that Chakra colors vary between individuals, but the book has a nice emphasis on the integration of spiritual practices with lifestyle and nutrition.

AUTHOR:
Deanna Minich
(No Wikipedia presence. From DeannaMinich.com) “Dr. Deanna Minich is an internationally-recognized teacher, author, scientist, speaker, and artist. She has more than 20 years of diverse, well-rounded experience in the fields of nutrition and functional medicine, including clinical practice, research, product formulation, writing, and education”
“Throughout the years, she has been active as a functional medicine clinician in clinical trials and in her own practice (Food & Spirit™), which has now become oriented towards groups, workshops, and retreats. She is the author of seven consumer books on wellness topics, four book chapters, and over fifty scientific publications. Her academic background is in nutrition science, including a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995) and a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Medical Sciences (nutrition focus) from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands (1999). For a decade, she was part of the research team led by the “Father of Functional Medicine,” Dr. Jeffrey Bland, and has served on the Nutrition Advisory Board for The Institute of Functional Medicine, as well as on the Board of Directors for the American Nutrition Association. Since 2013, she has been part of the faculty for the Advanced Practice Module in Environmental Health offered by the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been teaching a graduate level course in metabolic detoxification at the University of Western States. Over the decades, she has taught thousands of nutrition classes for health coaches, fitness trainers, and healthcare professionals, including for programs offered by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy, and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. In conjunction with her academic degrees and extensive teaching experience at the university level, she is both a Fellow (FACN) and a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS) through the American College of Nutrition. She is Chief Science Officer at Symphony Natural Health, where she leads the medical advisory team, oversees scientific communication, and provides educational leadership for the company’s plant-derived nutraceuticals. In 2025, she was the recipient of the Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Award in Functional Medicine from the Institute for Functional Medicine. She is passionate about helping others to live well using therapeutic lifestyle changes that impact their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.”

ME: This is the first book I’ve read/listened-to of hers. It looks like there are several others.

NARRATOR(S):
Tanya Eby
(From AudiofileMagazine.com)
“Tanya Eby’s work life seems impressively diverse: She’s narrated more than 650 audiobooks, she’s a novelist and an active blogger, and about two years ago she created her own company, Blunder Woman Productions. But she experiences these roles as part of a single mission.
“It’s funny. People perceive that I have a multifaceted life--that I’m doing all these different projects. But for me, it’s one life, one project. Narrating, writing, producing, blogging-- all the things I do--are actually one thing. And that’s telling stories.”
Eby says her story begins with a lifelong love of writing. “That was the first thing. I was a writer who didn’t make any money. I was a writer in spirit.” An English and theater double major in college, she began narrating for Brilliance Audio--an hour away from her campus in Michigan, which, after some adventuring years, she again calls home. She kept writing and narrating, eventually publishing novels--“quirky characters in strange situations”--which she produced herself as audiobooks. “My books offered me the first taste of production. Trying to get them out there on my own.”
She laughs, fumbling a bit, as she tries to recall the name of her first novel. “What’s the one with the sock on the cover? FOODIES RUSH IN? No, EASY DOES IT? She sounds certain, though, when recognizing that writing BLUNDER WOMAN was a turning point in her life. “I’m very socially awkward. I kind of attract chaos sometimes. I was always fighting against that and feeling low about it, but there’s also great humor in it. Writing BLUNDER WOMAN was my process in owning that awkwardness and all of those things that make me who I am. It’s got romance, but it’s ultimately the story of a woman owning herself.” Calling her company Blunder Woman Productions seemed natural. “It’s who I am on Twitter. It’s just become my brand.”
As a producer and publisher of audiobooks, Eby has begun to identify the ingredients of an excellent production. “All the stars have to align! It takes a great story told by passionate performers. I don’t know if that’s the key to it, but that’s how I’m working things.” Blunder Woman Productions has already garnered many industry accolades: THE BRINK won the 2017 Audie Award for Best Short Story/ Collection, and NEVERTHELESS WE PERSISTED was an Audie Award finalist for Best Original Work in 2018.
As editor and publisher of that collection, Eby marvels a little while explaining its inception. “I just was feeling kind of low, and I was looking for inspiration on what people get through, how they do it. I put out a call and thought maybe five or six people would respond. And we’d do this small thing. But I got over 100 submissions from all over the world! I put out a call out to my narrator friends--“Would you help me with this project”--and then I posted the stories. Thirty-five instead of the five I’d imagined responded. And I asked narrators to choose ones that they connected to. I cast it from that, not according to how I thought they matched vocally, but from pieces they clicked with. What was interesting was that no story was left unclaimed. It was a really beautiful process.”
Currently, Eby is collaborating on a popular new romantic comedy series with author Sarina Bowen. The MAN HANDS and MAN CARD novels are sexy new romantic comedies with an enthusiastic following.
As one listens to Eby, it’s clear she brings the same disciplined work ethic to everything she does. There may be a few superstar “A-list” writers or narrators who glow as they create effortlessly. But not her. She sweats. “But I feel--and this is not a bad thing--like a workhorse. I’m strong, and I plow forward in my work, and I do that with everything. I’m really structured about it and committed to it. That allows me to accomplish a lot of different things.”
That message, which is likely to resonate especially with increasing numbers of devoted listeners, is at the heart of all she does and animates her work at Blunder Woman Productions, where part of her mission is telling stories that are both by and for women. “I want it to be very clear that this is a woman-owned company--strong and funny and intelligent. I’m hoping to work with as many women as I can, trying to bring our stories to the forefront and publish them. I’m hoping we will find an audience.”--Jessie C. Grearson

ME: She’s a great narrator—but I can’t quite pinpoint why her voice seemed to contribute to my mild skepticism of the color theory here.

GENRE:
Personal Transformation Self-Help; Self-Esteem; Detox

SUBJECTS (Not comprehensive):
Energy systems; Lifestyle; Nutrition; Toxins; Color Connections; Meditation; Functional Medicine; Alternative Medicine; Chakras; 21-Day-Pan; Integrative Systems; Whole Body; Spiritual Healing; The Rainbow Diet; Nourishment; Functional Nutrition; Full Spectrum Health; Affirmations; Recipes

DEDICATION:
“To my father, who is healing the ancestral threads, and to my niece, Eleanor, who is creating healthy patterns for the future. To the healing of past, present, and future generations from the effects of all types of toxins and with hope for a planet filled with the full spectrum of health and vitality.”

SHORT EXCERPT:
“Chapter 1; Whole Detox For Your Whole Self”
“My patient Padma was confused—and skeptical.

“I came to you for nutritional advice, and to detox,” she said with her faint flavor of an Indian accent. “But you are talking to me about all sorts of other issues besides food. I am a person of science—a sociologist—and I want to focus on science and the facts.”

I smiled. I had heard these objections before, but seldom did my skeptical patients express their opinions so bluntly, and so soon.

By being so clear, Padma allowed me to be clear in response. “I am also a person of science,” I told her. “And what I’ve learned in more than fifteen years of research and clinical work is that the most scientific approach to healing doesn’t ever focus on just one small part of the human body, let alone ignore the role of thoughts, beliefs, and emotions in our health. You get the best results by addressing the whole person. That’s what this program is all about.”

Padma still looked doubtful. “Padma,” I went on, “you think that beliefs and emotions are separate from the physical body. But, in fact, every time you have a thought or feeling, it is expressed biochemically, as a cascade of neurotransmitters, hormones, or cellular responses. Therefore, your physical condition can have an enormous impact on your mood, your ability to think clearly, and your overall outlook on life—just as your mood, thoughts, and beliefs can affect your physical condition. Mind–body medicine isn’t some mystical mumbo jumbo. It’s Human Biochemistry 101.”

Most of us are used to making distinctions between our body and our emotions. We believe that “I feel hot” or “My foot hurts” or “My doctor tells me I’m at risk for a heart attack” are fundamentally different types of statements from “I feel scared” or “My heart aches” or “If my boss keeps me late one more night this week, I’m going to go through the roof.”

Of course, in some ways, those are different statements. While we can’t measure the subjective experience of heat or pain, we can take our temperature with a thermometer, x-ray our foot for broken bones, and run a whole range of tests to assess our risk for a heart attack. Fear, grief, and anger are harder to measure. And even though we turn to physical metaphors to express our emotional states, we know we don’t mean them literally. Your heart doesn’t really ache. Your blood isn’t literally boiling. You aren’t actually about to explode.

Yet in a very real sense, the contrast between mind and body is what my old professors used to call “a distinction without a difference”—a distinction that, at the end of the day, isn’t really very useful. Because, in fact, there isn’t really any such thing as “body,” “mind,” “sensation,” “emotion”—those are just the names we’ve come up with to make sense of our experience. What we really have, when we look at our human lives, is biochemistry: one big interactive network of hormones, neurotransmitters, synapses, and glands whose job is to respond to the challenges and opportunities of our environment. These responses all happen through electricity and chemistry, and all of them are always both physical and emotional. That is, any thought or emotion is reflected in a biochemical event, and any biochemical event has its mental and emotional dimensions.”

RATING:
4 stars.

LISTENED FROM
3/1/2026 – 3/9/2026

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! A 21 day plan with meal plans, ingredients and recipes with vegan alternatives; journal prompts; and activity prompts!

There's a cool and helpful quiz near the start to help you understand where your biggest imbalance is, and you can re-do this throughout your 21 day process or after you're finished.

There are brief introductions to each chakra, along with handy colourful 'cheatsheets' to quickly look at.

All in all, 100% recommend to anyone who's looking for a reset; looking to discover where the imbalance is and how you can re-balance, even if you're not at all spiritual it's still a fantastic read/programme to help you.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been experimenting quite a bit with my diet lately and really like the idea of a whole detox to include nutrition as well as other holistic components such as movement, affirmations and meditations. I took the Whole Detox Spectrum quiz and know which systems I need to focus on for better overall health.

This was another audiobook 'read' and definitely a very productive way to spend my commute. Preparing for the full 21-day detox will take some time but I think it just might be the way I kick off the new year.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautifully crafted book. Whole Detox blends the wonder of spiritual life and the practicality of our everyday life. Dr. Deanna takes a holistic approach to health and gives tips on ways to restore balance. She shares tools for each chakra; including recipes, lifestyle practices, and spiritual recommendations. Many of the rituals I already do on a regular basis so this was a good reminder to stick with it.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

This outstanding, whole life improving model has helped me in so many ways. The recipes are delicious. The melding of movement, journaling, meditation and eating is insightful. I highly recommend this book for people on the path of wellness.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting recipes, nourishing program to follow. Have to say I didn't make it all the way through the cleanse, it's pretty intensive, but I was noticing some shifts in my body! Will have to revisit this program when it's a better time for me to stick with it.

[Sarah Brazell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't wait to ease into the detox. This book taught me so much and totally inspired me🌈

[Patrice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really could have done without the first 9 chapters. They were repetitive and drawn out. Chapter 10 is the most hands on.

[Inma · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful

[Elizabeth Ruth-Abramian]

Dr. Deanna Minich's research into the nature and psychology of the human body and its processes shows that detoxification is a continuum of actions that require not just your mouth and gut, but the whole of you, from your body to your brain and emotional state.

If a person doesn't, or can't, let go of toxicity, that toxicity will continue to follow them even though they might otherwise eat right and keep themselves fit. Minich points out that since the mind, body and emotions are interconnected, even a person who possesses a clean, healthy body, may suffer from toxic emotions or beliefs, preventing them from the radiant health they have striven so diligently to find.

Minch's plan to help you detox is called Whole Detox and the Seven Systems of Full-Spectrum Health. This plan has a number of facets that address the utmost in a person, finding the best they can be, their native beauty. Besides the actual diet, each part of the plan starts with naming the disturbances, doing affirmations for how to relate to the world and community, performing (usually yoga) movements daily, journaling on specific statements, meditations, and the art and science behind the seven colors of healthy food. Read more on my blog about at

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler - eat a variety of healthy foods and exercise to feel better physically and mentally.

[Catlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. I appreciate when people recognize how much our diet and thoughts affect our health. I learned a lot and am excited to start the 21-day detox diet.