day 2 report; day 3 underway

wow i don't feel awful!
it's true - i'm not gonna lie. into the second day of the diet and i felt pretty good. the hunger was on and off, but not as bad as the first day. i got an hour or two more sleep than in previous days, enough to prove that every little bit counts. i woke up a little easier. the saltwater flush went down in two large gulps. i felt a little lighter and the scale confirmed it: i'd lost 3.5lbs!

it wasn't all fun and games. into the mid afternoon, i started to crash. if i wasn't at work i certainly would have taken a short (or perhaps not short) nap. instead i fought it and stayed awake and alert, for the most part. last evening i went to a concert. the same thing happened - for the whole first set, i continually nodded off and jerked my head up. i was in need of dinner!

after the concert, i made my yellow-orange liquid "dinner" in the back seat of my car. it brought me back to life. getting back into the city, i met up with a few friends in noho. i had bottled water at the club, while drinks and tortilla chips (my favorite snack!) were all around me. temptation was certainly present! if it wasn't for one friend i may not see again for three months, i would have headed home and to bed since it was already after 11pm. after the club, i drove home, made the tea, cleaned up a bit (the maple syrup leaked a little in my soft briefcase) and headed to bed around 2:30. long day!

the morning after
today it took me a while of battling my alarm to arise. i'm feeling pretty tired. big shock, eh? i took my swf, chatted with my housemate michael on the topic of lemons and the lemons that our cars seem to be! nothing too exciting has happened yet, just the "time to make the donuts" routine of rinsing, cutting and juicing lemons.

incidentally, for those in nyc considering the cleanse, buy your lemons at fairway if you can. i picked some up at westerly the other evening, and, while i like that store for many reasons, their lemons are smaller and less healthy looking. fairway lemons even cost $1 less, go figure. at the end of my cleanse, i will be making a list of the actual ingredients i used for the cleanse and the associated costs. it's not cheap, but costs less than food for sure!

what's up this weekend
i had ambitious plans for today, starting with half a day of volunteering with new york cares at the park a block from my house. i'm headed there soon, but i'm probably canceling my plans in upper westchester for this afternoon and evening. last night, friends pointed out i should be at home taking it easy instead of being out late at night. makes sense, doesn't it? i can't eat or drink when i'm out anyway. since i'm going out of town soon i've been making concerted efforts to see friends. i think though i'll try to make plans at least later on in the cleanse. perhaps i'll have a party between the end of the cleanse, just before i go. as for this afternoon? i'll be taking it easy...

end of day 1

i was going to skip posting tonight in favor of sleep, but i couldn't resist! besides i have a few minutes to brew my detox tea. i'll head to bed shortly afterward.

day 1 results
at the end of the day, i had 16 glasses of lemonade and i'm still a little hungry. other than that, i feel nearly the same as yesterday. it's too soon for the actual detox to have started and i fully expect to feel awful tomorrow! no, really, day 2 is rumored to be a hard day by most accounts. i'm glad i got off the caffeine a few days ago!

as far as other effects, the only thing so far is a film on my teeth. again, it's an expected side effect of the cleanse. think about it- you're drinking maple syrup all day. incidentally, licking the tablespoon after adding the maple syrup to the mix has become the culinary highlight of my day! now on the culinary downside, my body's been programmed so that every time i walk into my kitchen it thinks it will be fed. my brain knows it's not, not for many days. now it may sound basic, but really this is the reprogramming of the mind that is part of the cleanse. i know i shouldn't overeat -even if it's healthy / all-natural / low fat / organic- overeating is overeating. i am learning to control my appetite.

closing time
i've fixed my little time problem, and now blogger shows the correct time of my posts. happy news, eh? i'm headed to bed soon but do you know what? i already packed the maple syrup for tomorrow. i can be taught, even if it is the hard way!

day 1, in progress

the cleanse has officially started
...and man oh man am i hungry! first though, a little about my morning. i woke up 30 minutes later than intended (a regular occurrence) feeling, well, not good. i stayed up slightly past 2am posting last night. sure the last post shows up as 10pm, but consider blogger's time is set to pst. i haven't yet found a way to modify this behaviour.

back to the story, i woke up and begrudgingly drank my 32oz of warm salt water mix. i started with a straw but my housemate was in the kitchen advising me to chug it. it wasn't so bad, and drinking it brought back memories from college when i used to chug the same cupful of water (sans salt, thank you) after a night of drinking to combat dehydration.

the effects of the salt water flush were inline with what i expected. none too pleasant, but wholly necessary for the cleanse. while waiting for the effects to kick in, i started squeezing lemons. this is apparently my new way of life! i squeezed 22 halves of organic lemon. they smell fantastic. they'd better, though - after all, i'm giving up food to do this! i squeezed it into a plastic container (pic at right) and got the other items together. can you believe 11 lemons only yielded this much?

heading off to work
the weather today's too nice not to take the motorcycle to work. much to my surprise, the 128oz container of filtered water, my large lemonade container, the lemon juice, cayenne pepper and all of my stuff fit on the motorcycle with no problem. it wasn't until i arrived at work that i remembered the #2 ingredient: the maple syrup! doh!!!

a co-worker thankfully recommended a health food store here in new roc, so i left work and ventured over to pick up their last container of grade B dark amber pure maple syrup (this is what's specified in the diet). i was famished by the time i returned to work. i hadn't eaten much the day before and even went to bed with the grumbles. i made the concoction and it tasted good. i added a little too much cayenne and that, well, burned my mouth a bit. go figure.

it's now late afternoon and i've had about 8 glasses worth. my stomach's still starving, grumbling every few minutes. the cleanse calls for 6-10 glasses of the lemonade daily, with 10 being appropriate to someone of my size. to quell my hunger, i suspect that number will likely go up to 15 or more. if i understand this correctly, my appetite will subside as the cleanse continues. i sure hope that's true!

ready to go!

welcome back
first off, i neglected to mention my intended duration for the cleanse in my initial post. i was thinking 7 days would be good. upon further reading of Burroughs' book, however, i've upped it to 8. if all feels good then, i'll continue to the full 10 days. a few days after that i'll be heading out of town for a few months at which point the cleanse immediately becomes impractical. on the upside, if i can start a reduced diet, there'll be very little food to bring!

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the latest
i said i'd follow up later and indeed it's later - much later! i should be sleeping, but, well, i'm not.

i'll share my meal info, 'cause the food stops today anyway! i read somewhere i should be on all liquids for the day before. after i got to work in new rochelle this morning, i had an opportunity for a long break and walked down the street to the health food place, revealedfood.com

the sweet lady there made me a juice mix of greens while we chatted about the master cleanse. the juice was surprisingly enough to hold me over for hours. instead of my usual mid-morning caffeine break- i call it caffeine o'clock- i had herbal tea as a placebo. it, Twinings Herbal Revive, tastes wonderful*.

i was trying to make serious headway on the piece i was working on so i put off lunch about as long as i could - 3pm. i went back to Revealed for some freshly made vegetable soup. it wasn't completely liquid, as i ate all of the veggies within. there was also a meatball, which certainly seemed to be actual meat. i was (and still am) disturbed about that, and will ask the next time i drop in. they do serve some dishes with meat, but i'm clinging to my hopes that they wouldn't have put a meatball in vegetable soup!!

later on...
after work, i headed up to Trader Joe's, getting quite lost in scarsdale (this happens weekly). there i got oj for the post-cleanse experience, organic soup to make for dinner tonight, and picked out assortments of raw nuts and fruits. i think i am going to go for the raw vegan diet coming out of the cleanse. as i mentioned previously, i'm not sure if it will work with my lifestyle. however, how else will i know unless i try it?

i was famished on the drive home, and invaded a package of Bear Naked granola i had in the car. good stuff, if extremely messy to eat while driving! i arrived home around 9, exhausted but without set plans so decided i should hit the gym while i have the chance. came home, heated & ate the soup, prepared containers of filtered water and paraphernalia for the cleanse, made and drank the tea. i suspect it gave me an energy boost, as i was talking a mile a minute on the phone with my friend amanda. either that or overtired-ness came into play. ya think?

stay tuned- there'll be more tomorrow during the official day 1.

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random notes: big teas
*there's another excellent Twinings tea i recommend, which is their Pure Camomile. as intended, it's quite relaxing.





i hereby give props to my friend julian (his blog, becoming the baker) for introducing me to Rooibos tea - Madagascar Vanilla Red. as good as it sounds, it's actually better! Celestial Seasonings pleasantly surprised me with this one.

if ever you want to drink tea that tastes like a sweaty sock smells, try Twinings' Lapsang Souchong. i don't know why anyone would want to drink this stuff, but who knows! i bought a box based on the description of the flavor and promptly donated it to the office at work. it functions far better as a joke than something one might consider consuming!

the day before the cleanse

hi and welcome to my first official blog. this is episode one, so to speak, and in it i will discuss how i'm thinking and feeling prior to my cleanse. if you're not already familiar with the master cleanse you can read more about it at mastercleanser.com. i'll be following the traditional Stanley Burroughs' cleanse, with organic lemons, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. for detoxification, i will take a detox tea at night and drink salt water in the morning. wondering why i have choosen to cleanse my body? read on!

where i'm at now: health concerns
my biggest concern these days (and actually for many past months) is my sleeping habits. i do not get enough regular sleep. most of the time i don't get enough sleep at all, much less a few days in a row of it! i often wake up with headaches, and i rarely feel 100% awake until late morning. i'm not sure the headaches are purely sleep related as...

my allergies and general sinus problems need help. probably the headaches have something to do with the fact that i can barely breath in the morning. and yes, that 90s-era Duncan Sheik tune "Barely Breathing" pops into my head when i think about it. when my sinuses are clear and i can breathe uninhibited, it feels amazing. that's not something i feel often.

am i serious when i say i don't feel awake until late morning? yes, absolutely. caffeine does help, but is it necessary? i have serious doubts that i actually need it. it also works against me when i cannot drink my tea between 10:30 and 11:30am. i am nearly guaranteed a lasting mild headache if i go too long without it. do i want to be a slave to it? not so much.

another factor within the beverage realm is alcohol. i have definitely been drinking more often as of late. whether it's a few glasses of wine here, four or five beers there, a mojito or margarita every now and then, it all adds up. it brings up another point, too: i believe i'm slightly overweight. not a lot, but enough for me to notice and want to change. an interesting trade-off is that when i'm going out more socially, i'm spending less time at the gym. it's a double whammy to my physical health, even if it's great to get out and see friends.

post-cleanse lifestyle changes
to me, these are all excellent reasons to cleanse. in the end, my goal is to start eating more healthy - raise up the nutritional content and lower the quantity of food i'm ingesting. i stopped eating meat earlier this year for humanitarian reasons, but am now realizing the health benefits to that decision. i don't expect to start eating meat again. i do still eat fish, but am wondering ever more whether a raw vegan diet might be practical for my lifestyle. in any case, my consciousness of what i put into my body is raised and that can only be a good thing. i cannot wait for the cleanse!

that's it for now, but i may follow up later with how i've prepared for the cleanse so far.
cheers,
-c