By: hamson on March 1, 2013

3/1/2013:
Last weekend I did a search on juice cleanses because they are all the rage right now. I found way too much stuff so I narrowed it down to “juice cleanse san diego” this was much easier to work with and I found Ritual Wellness which had good reviews and locations all over for me to pick up the juices (save on shipping costs).
I spent all of 15 minutes on the web site before deciding “yep I’m doing this.”
All I needed to know from the company in specific was the quality of their product and it’s all fruit, veggies, organic, vegan, raw… blah blah blah.
Good enough for me. As I told my friend, I’m not a big proponent of “cleanses” and “detoxes” for the body really, I’m of the general opinion that the body is pretty awesome and takes care of that stuff on its own. Though I do see merit in a cleanse helping the overall health of the body. My main goal with this is as much mental as physical. Attempting to get over the “psychological need to always eat” and for 3 days not have to worry at all about when and what I am eating. So I ordered the cleanse and let’s begin!

Day 1:

Day 1 went well. I had my first drink just after 8am. I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. The first sip was…. different and I perceived it as no good…. but by the third sip, it is as if my taste buds adapted and it was rather refreshing. I even liked it! I drink the bottles relatively slow. Its 16oz of juice and I take about 20-30 minutes to finish. I felt good about how it was starting.
About the time when my stomach started feeling slightly hungry , I noticed it was 10am and time for my next juice.
The bulk of the juices are green and consist of: spinach, kale, romaine, celery, cucumber and a green apple(thank goodness for that!).
Juice 1 of the day also adds lemon to that. But Juice 2 and 5 are just the plain green. So I drank my juice, this time being less fearful of the taste, no problem.
This morning plans led me to a hike at Torrey Pines. We didn’t go fast but did 45 minutes up the hill and down the trail to the beach. It was no problem.
Again, no sooner than my stomach started piping up, I noticed 2 hours had passed and it was 12:10 and time for the 3rd drink. By now I’m actually kind of liking this stuff. However drink #3 is that green juice, but has ginger in it. Ginger is super strong and not my favorite (which is weird because I thought I liked it) I feel very healthy drinking all this green and I am peeing so often its getting in the way!
I grabbed Drink #4 as I was leaving the house to pick up the kids. My first “different” drink of the cleanse. Strangely enough, this drink isn’t new to me. This is the “lemonade” drink basically the exact same as another detox: The Master Cleanse (which I tried long ago but didn’t complete). This drink consists of alkaline & ionized water, lemon, cayenne and raw agave. There was LOTS of cayenne and I wondered if I would be able to finish it. Its really important to shake this drink or you’re left with a big pile of the spice on the bottom of the bottle (not a good gulp!)
Now comes the time of day when I do my snacking! I have the boys home from school, they need their snacks and I am a huge fan of apples and pb or cheese, crackers and cheese and all the kid stuff like cheeze its and fishies! I wanted to eat their snacks as I was serving it to them (about 3:15) but I didn’t. I wanted to eat their snacks as I was clearing dishes and cups. But I didn’t.
It occurred to me, I wasn’t hungry. Not even a little bit. I just wanted to eat what they had. so we went outside. But here’s the thing… I wanted to eat. I just kept thinking of what I wanted to eat. BUT I WASN’T HUNGRY!!! It was the weirdest feeling/realization. At 4pm i wondered why the heck I was doing this juice thing and thought about eating, but, how lame is that. Not only did I want to finish the cleanse that I started and paid for, but this mental need/want to eat was the EXACT thing I am trying to overcome!!! So I went in and grabbed bottle number 5. Back to basic greens, nothing added.
It was strange to me how comforting the juice felt. After wanting so badly to eat and not knowing if I could stick with it… I took a sip, and just felt better. Yes. I could do it. I wanted to do it. And I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t tired. So far I feel unaffected by the cleanse (except for the number of trips to pee).
Dinner time for the family I decided to do something very easy… frozen lasagna. Its italian sausage lasagna which I don’t like even a little bit. But let me tell you, this lasagna smelled like it came right out of an Italian restaurant oven! I felt like I was trying to inhale it. After making plates, I let Norm take over and I left the kitchen. I was about to start my last bottle.
Bottle #6: way different from anything that I have ever had. Its important to note that the texture of my food/drink really makes a different for me. There are foods that I think have an okay flavor but I don’t like that they are too chewy or grainy or whatever….
This drink they call “mylk” and it consists of raw cashews, alkaline & ionized water, cinnamon, nutmeg, raw agave, and vanilla. The flavor was actually very sweet, almost like a desert (the smell of warm bread pudding kept coming to mind). It should have been great, but the texture. Oh man, I couldn’t get over it. I had to force it down to the very last sip! It was the cashews. They were all ground up but you could feel them. I tried to imagine that I had crunched and chewed them up by myself but I didn’t, and they felt pre-chewed! Ick. Flavor, good. Texture, horrid! I’m kind of dreading it for tonight.

I ended the evening with a BodyRock 12 minute workout and basic pilates routine. After the workout it was steam and shower and bedtime. Never did I feel hungry.

DAY 2:

I woke up today a tad hungry but I don’t think much more than I do on other days. I didn’t feel different.
I was expecting a tough day and, thankfully, that just didn’t happen to me. I felt no negative effects (though I wouldn’t say I’m over flowing with positive effects either) from this cleanse. The day was even a bit easier because I knew what to expect out of the drinks. I knew what tastes were coming and I had more trust that the company knew what it was doing after my first day I kept on the same schedule starting at 8am. AJ wasn’t in school today so we organized toys and played outside and somewhere in there I drank bottle #2. But by 11:30 I was going to put AJ down for a nap and join him. We watched part of a show and then went to bed and I woke up and I didn’t get out of bed until 1:45. At 2pm I realized I had only had 2 bottles and grabbed #3. I didn’t feel hungry and was doing good on any cravings to eat. I felt good and rested. But that did put me a tad ‘behind’ the rest of the day. I had bottle number 4 at 3:30, not because I was starving yet, but because after making the kids snacks I did kind of want to eat them. Plus I didn’t want to be super late on the last bottle of the day. I started making the kids dinner at 5pm and felt a bit of hunger set in with the smells of Tyler’s enchilada reheating. I made them their dinner and then sat down with them at the table with bottle number 5. Once I was drinking my bottle, it didn’t feel hard sitting with them while they were eating… though when I cleared AJs plate there was some bean and cheese burrito left and it did take a lot for me not to take any bites!!! Norm came home and I told him he was on his own as I didn’t think I could cook food and so he made himself dinner. He sauteed onions and Oh My Gosh did they smell SO good. Like mouth watering. I left the kitchen. We put the kids to bed and wanted to do a workout but I hadn’t had my last drink and didn’t want to be super late with it so we postponed the workout for about 20 minutes while we finished a basketball game on TV while folding laundry. The cashew mylk was still a bit hard for me to drink. It tasted better, but still didn’t care for the texture. Less than 30 minutes later I was done and we started our workout. I made it through the same workout from Day 1, BodyRock 12 minute and then pilates. We got in the steam, showered and off to bed. I was tired by the end of the night but not overly and I never felt hungry which was good.

DAY 3:

Day 3 has been interesting. I started the morning with my glass of lemon water and then had a workout with my trainer. It was a much harder workout than I have done in some time but I got through it and felt really wonderful when it was over. My workout was from 7 to 8am and then it was get the kids to school so I didn’t actually start my first juice until after 8:30am, and then I was working on the computer so it took me until 10am to finish it. From here, I’ve been taking 180 degree turns. My feeling after Juice #1 was that I wished I had done a longer cleanse. I felt good and happy could see progress in my mental struggles with eating so I wanted to have more time to overcome them. Just before 11am, I started getting a head ache. Not horrible, just minor throbbing, right around the temples. So I grabbed juice number two and got out of the house. Drinking the juice did help and I did some errands and picked up AJ and the head ache kind of became off and on. One of my errands was getting food for Post-Cleanse. I did some web searches on what to eat and Ritual Wellness also sent me an email about it. There seems to be a consensus…ease in to foods. I got stuff for fruit for breakfasts, broth based soups, and veggies. All sounded so good.
At this point I’m not feeling hunger or anything else other than the headache. I had juice number 3 and went back to doing finances. It was around 2pm when I noticed I had a tiny bit left of juice number 2 and I wasn’t hungry… but I also wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to go in the kitchen and look for something. I didn’t. I picked up the kids and (when I gave my two youngest their school reward of 1 gummy worm and 2 gummy bears, I realized that I didn’t want to eat the candy at all. Well, that wasn’t true. I did want to chew on the gummy bears, but I didn’t WANT gummy bears. That is kind of big for me. I wonder if all these days I’ve just popped a few because they were there. We got home 2:50pm and my head ache had turned from minor throbbing to full head ache. Was it the workout this morning? Calories? Water? I’m not sure but all I knew was I wanted to be done with the juices and find something that would stop my head from pounding. I wanted food. I did. Not just to chew, but I felt hungry. I wanted to eat. To make matters worse the kids wanted a snack. I cut up apples and cheese and put cheeze its on their plates and all I wanted was the apples and cheese. (I really had no interest in the crackers.) I wanted that apple. How bad could an apple be? Its in my juices anyway… I stood in the kitchen and contemplated what I should do, what I could eat. I grabbed juice number 4 – the spicy lemonade and drank a few huge gulps. Took the bottle out of the kitchen and finished it in about 10 minutes.
By 4pm my headache was still there but I was not hungry, I didn’t feel a need to eat and I was SO glad that I stuck with my final day.
We were having dinner at a friends house so at 4:30pm I packed up my two final bottles in a little cooler and we headed out. I still had a bit of a head ache when we arrived at the house just before 5pm. We started playing and chatting and I grabbed my drink at 5:15. More playing, talking, hanging out. The group ordered In and Out which smelled DELICIOUS but I was surprisingly fine with the fact that I wasn’t eating it. Even when Jessica brought out frozen chocolate chip cookies for the kids for dessert my first second instinct was… I want a cookie, and then, I decided I was fine without it. I drank my final bottle of the cleans at 7:20pm and it was the easiest time I had drinking the drink. I noticed the texture, and I still didn’t like it, but it wasn’t grossing me out anymore and I didn’t have to consciously gulp it down. At 8:45pm I realized I don’t have a head ache at all and I can’t remember having one since I arrived at our friends house at 5pm. Now I’m turning in for the night and feel really great about completing this cleanse.

Mar 01, 2013 | Categories: Daily, Journal | Tags: blog, detox, juice cleanse, teri | 1 Comment »