By: teri on August 31, 2010
I’m doing it. Day 1 was actually yesterday.
After much reading, talking and thinking about a detox cleanse I chose The Master Cleanse by Stanley Burroughs. Its slang name is The Lemonade Diet, but that is the last time you will hear me call it that because I don’t think it should be used that way and that is certainly not my focus. My cousin does some detox cleanses, liquid fasts, etc from a box where you take pills and follow instructions, but for my own reasons, I was looking for something without pills.
My goal is to clean out my insides and start fresh with healthy living and clean eating.
The recommendation for this cleanse is 10 days but we’ll see how many I actually do. You make yourself a drink that has water, lemon juice, (Grade A Dark) Maple Syrup and some cayenne pepper. They would like you to drink this concoction 12 times during the day. Each drink has about 110 calories (so if you are doing what they say you get just over 1300 calories a day). In addition, to help aid detoxification of your body, you can take an herbal laxative tea in the night and morning and the first thing you do when you wake up is drink a quart (YES a quart!) of water mixed with uniodized sea salt. (I’ll get to that in a minute)
The purpose is to eliminate the waste and toxins in you body.
I bought the book (pamphlet really) years ago but never did it because, well, its a bit intense. Now I’ve decided I’m going to give it a go. Norm and I have talked about it and the negatives and what we need to watch out for and, with his blessing, I am proceeding with caution.
DAY 1 – 8/30/2010:
I woke up and decided today was the day to start. It was around 8am when I made my quart of salt water and started drinking. Oh my yuck! That is really all I can say. This, by far, is the worst part. By the time I got to the end of the glass I was afraid I was gonna puke. My stomach was not happy. It didn’t take long for it to start “working” and over the next 2 hours I went to the bathroom 5 times. My stomach settled pretty quickly after I didn’t need to go anymore and I started with my first “lemonade” at 11am.
I have to say, its not bad. I mean, I wouldn’t order it at a restaurant, but its fine. The pepper is not my because it is this sweet drink and then you get all that spicy. Plus if you aren’t constantly stirring it, the pepper goes to the bottom so your last few swigs are heavy with cayenne pepper.
I didn’t drink it fast, I more sipped so didn’t finish the glass for about 30 minutes. Then we had stuff to do and I even tried to nap while the kids were napping (which didn’t work because they woke up) so I didn’t drink another drink until 1:45pm.
We left our house for errands just before 3pm and I should have made another drink then, but I didn’t feel thirsty or hungry so I didn’t. While we were out there was a time in the car when I could feel my tummy growling, but it passed faster than I expected.
We got home around 5pm and I made myself another drink right then while I made dinner.
I left the house for yoga at 6:20 and I didn’t have another drink until I got home at 8:15.
So, I only got in 4 drinks the whole day. I’m not happy about that. That is under 500 calories and I know 1)its not healthy and 2)I can’t sustain that for any length of time. If the yuckiest part is the salt water, I think the hardest part will be getting in all the drinks.
Besides the time in the car when my stomach was growling, I had a hard time while making the boys lunch. As I made sandwiches and cleaned grapes, I soooooo wanted to eat them. Ty’s PB&J looked super yummy to me! It was healthy food and I battled a bit inside…. “come on, its good for you food, you can eat that,” “just grapes… fruit is natural sugars and blah blah blah”. But I didn’t. I really want to give this thing a go and see how I feel and if there are physical and/or mental effects.
Last night I got home from yoga and felt great. And while I almost always feel great after yoga, I was happy to see that my energy levels were high, my stomach was happy, and I felt….. normal, and good. I decided not to drink the herbal laxative tea because, based on what happened this morning with the salt water, I didn’t really think I needed to “loosen” things up any more.
My goal for Day 2 is to drink more “lemonades.”