Gee, Think.

It’s been 3 weeks since I started to come off Master Cleanse which I did for 7 days.  As with each cleanse I’ve done, the experience offered a new perspective on health and my relationship with food.  Since cleansing, my food choices have been vegan with few exceptions.  I am pleased with this transition.  The cleanse was a good way to mark a new beginning.  I could write a whole entry just on the topic of a vegan coming out, and I think I will.

Now I’d like to say a few things about the return to solid foods.  First of all, for all you cleansers out there, return to solids slowly!  My morning routine includes drinking a large fruit smoothie.  Before the cleanse, this was easily 40 ounces or more.  The smoothie also varies in consistency and thickness from day to day as I have a varied bunch of ingredients that I include.  On my first smoothie day after the cleanse, I drank my first glassful and felt quite full.  However I had another ‘glass’ to drink.  I use the term ‘glass’ loosely here because they hold more than a pint of liquid; roughly 2.5 cups.  So because I felt full I waited 40 minutes or so before drinking the rest of the smoothie.  I couldn’t stand to just pour it out.  I would have been wasting the most nutritious ‘meal’ that I make all day!   Drinking this second portion was against my better judgement, and I felt so sluggish afterward.  I felt ‘full’ in a whole new way.  I think that my body was not ready to digest or process so much food at one time, even though it was in liquid form.  The feeling of sluggishness lasted for an hour or more.

This is one example of the way that common food habits are brought into a new light after the cleansing process.  Since the cleanse I have reduced the amount of smoothie that I’ll drink in the morning from 5+ cups to 3.5 cups.  I think this is a better balance of both my need for high caloric intake and my body’s digestive comfort zone.

Return Schedule

In Tom Woloshyn’s book, which has been my primary guide to this cleanse, he has two schedules for coming off the cleanse.  They are 4 and 3 days in duration.  The four day schedule is more gradual and probably more ideal, but I’ve gone with the 3 day plan in order to be back to eating solid food on Saturday which is our first parade for Chinese New Year.  Abiding by the schedule, yesterday was a day of oranges, orange juice, and more oranges. Today I am drinking orange juice all day, with the privilege of a vegetable broth for lunch and, oh yes, vegetable soup for dinner!

Anticipating Solid Foods

I can’t describe the excitement and anticipation with which I await fresh steamed vegetables and brown rice for tomorrow’s dinner.  Even tonight’s dinner will be amazing:  vegetable soup with whole vegetables!  I can’t wait to bite into them and feel the texture of the food in my mouth.  Not to mention the feeling of fullness that comes from fiber instead of liquid.  Today I have the ultimate privilege and honor of drinking a homemade vegetable broth with a few vegetables for lunch.  Wow.  Here’s one guy that is beside himself with joy.

Mood & Emotion

Yesterday for the vast majority of the day my mood was ebullient.  I was having a great time, and so happy to be drinking my orange juice.  I have to admit that by the end of the day, I was feeling a bit frustrated and grumpy.  I’m not sure exactly how to place this, but I think part of it I will assign to hunger.  It seems that I am great about maintaining my ‘food’ intake during the day, but the end of day transition from the office to home is where I lose it.  I tend to let myself go a little too long and then I turn a bit sour.  But, this was nothing that a few oranges and a little mindfulness couldn’t rememdy.  It wasn’t long before I was once again counting my many blessings with gratitude.

I also gave myself a pat on the back for completing 7 days of the master cleanse.  The minimum recommended duration is 10 days, and so I have a little bit of remorse for not ‘going the distance’ there.  That feeling is compounded a bit by reading the testimonials of the people in the back of the book who were able to run 7 miles a day while on the cleanse.  That information really makes me curious about the limits of my own ability to subsist on the cleanse.

But the true and lasting feeling that I have is gratitude that this experience came into my life.  I think of this as the 3rd of many cleanses to come.  The Master Cleanse, all in all, was a rewarding and pleasant experience.  I think that later in the spring I will set my sights on the 10 day goal once more.  Perhaps at that time I will document the intensity and type of exercise which I complete each day as well.

I would imagine that exercise would assist in the body’s cleansing activities.  I know that physical activity, by elevating heart rate, moving the lymph, increasing respiration and perspiration greatly helps in eliminating toxins from the body.  I believe it also eliminates toxic thoughts from the mind.

Yesterday’s Totals

• 6 big glasses half and half OJ
• 2 cups half and half OJ
• 4 oranges
• 1 glass hot water
• 1 cup chamomile mint tea
  

I have decided to bring my cleanse to an early end.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and while I would have liked to go 10 days or more, I feel I must come back to solid food in time for the weekend.

Chinese New Year Celebrations

This weekend is the first of several weekends of Chinese New Year celebrations in which my gung fu school will participate.  This is a very important time of year because our entire association coordinates to meet up and march through the neighborhoods of New York City bringing the traditional Lion and Dragon to restaurants and merchants in the area.  This is a lot of fun and quite rewarding as well.  It is also quite strenuous.  We are out and about all day, with no regular access to water, food or bathrooms.  Of course, we are well taken care of, but there is no guarantee as to when that relief will come.  It is an all day effort and this year I will have a much more active role than last year.  Because person in the school is part of a team, and beyond that the schools work together as one team to represent the association, I want to be able to give it all I’ve got.  If I were to feel weak on account of the cleanse, the extra work would fall to my training brothers.  Reflecting on this, I think that the best choice is to move to solid foods by Friday so that I can be fully ready for Saturday and Sunday.

Future Plans

It is my full intention to finish at least a 10 day master cleanse in the coming months.  Perhaps I will pursue this in sometime in March.

I write this post on Day 7 on the morning of Day 8.  Life has been busy lately.

Day 7 was the first day that I felt any kind of internal discomfort while on the cleanse.  On this day, I remember waking with a sense of shall I say, emptiness and sagging, in my gut below my belly button.  This feeling continued and slightly intensified into mid afternoon.  The sensation itself is hard to describe since I’ve never quite experienced it before.  My guess is that I was feeling the effects of a higher concentrations of cayenne pepper in the lemonade.  I should note that for most of Day 6 and into Day 7 I was including just under a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper per glass of lemonade.  Over the previous 5 days I had adapted to the spicyness and became less and less sensitive to it.  As I became less sensitive to the taste, I began to add more.

On Day 6 I prepared 4 glasses worth of lemonade, cayenne pepper included, and drank them more than an hour later.  This gave the pepper time to steep.  It’s flavor really matured in that time.  When I took the first sip I got a “Wow” kind of surprise at the spiciness, but it was welcome since I love spicy food and it was a bit of variation in the midst of a mono-diet.  I can’t say for certain if the addition cayenne pepper had caused these feelings of discomfort, but my intuition says that it did.  It’s my suspicion that the extra amount of pepper that I added to each glass slowly accumulated over a 24-36 hour period to the point.  Mind you the recipe calls for a  tenth teaspoon of cayenne per glass and I was using 3-4 times that amount.  It was delicious.

Initially when this feeling was brewing my attitude was just to go with it and wait it out.  I thought that it would surely pass in an hour or so.  When it continued into mid afternoon I had become a little discouraged and actually wondered “what if this gets much worse?”  I was worried that it might intensify.  Happily, it did not.  At the suggestion of my wife I drank some hot water and almost immediately started to feel better.  I had been feeling cold in the office while wearing multiple layers including an undershirt, dress shirt, sweater, and blazer.  Our office can be cold from time to time, but I noticed that no one else was bundled up quite like I was.  I think that the chilled water that I included in the lemonade was just enough to push my internal body temperature over the limit and slightly away from equilibrium.  The hot water cleared all this up.  I drank two roughly 12 ounces mugs of it and felt much improved.  I think the water had a double benefit of both warming me up and diluting what may have become a concentration of cayenne in my gut. I was quite relieved to be feeling better, and celebrated by enthusiastically preparing for a night of exercise.

Totals

• 32 oz salt water flush
• 11 glasses of homemade lemonade
• 2 glasses of ~12 ounces hot water

Day 6 has come and gone and so I write this post in retrospect on what would be day 8.

On Day 6 I remember feeling completely at home in the cleanse, even more so than day 5.  It was the first day during which all aspects felt familiar.  I had the feeling of, is this “too easy”?  Previously I had associated hunger, weakness, headaches, and other conditions of discomfort with cleansing.  These are some of the symptoms I experienced while on the previous two cleanses that I’ve tried.  Oddly I would say that master cleanse was the most restrictive and most extreme yet it has also proven to be the most painless.

On days when I know that I’ll be exercising in the evening I’ve noticed that I drink much more lemonade.  This feels like an unconscious compensation for the upcoming exertion.

Totals

• 32 oz salt water flush
• 17 glasses of lemonade
• 1 mug of tea

Today was a great day!  At this point in the cleanse, I feel that I have fully adapted to this schedule and diet.  I’m now coasting through what has become a familiar routine.  In fact, routine is exactly what I plan to write about this evening.  I was thrilled to find an email last night just before 8:30 from someone that reads my blog asking these questions about the cleanse:

How has this impacted your normal routine?  Are you continuing to do your normal work schedule, and if so, how has it impacted you work life, and what response have you gotten from your coworkers?

This is a question I am delighted to answer.  It’s one that seems very much to the point for people who may be considering doing a cleanse of their own, but something I haven’t really addressed until this point.  Without further ado, I will explain the cleanse’s…

Impact on Routine

For one, I have more time.  There are two critical food preparation times in my daily schedule.  First thing in the morning I make a big batch (50+ ounces) of delicious fruit smoothie.  At night, I’ll make a nutritious, tasty, and satisfying meal on the stove.  My wife and I share the cooking responsibility so I’ll usually cook about half the nights of the week.  Cooking is something I love dearly, but it is also quite time consuming when you factor in the preparation and clean-up as well.  Now I don’t need to spend time at either the morning smoothie task or the night time dinner making responsibility.  I also don’t need to pack a lunch in the morning.  All this adds up to extra minutes of zen which I use to contemplate the boundless mysteries of the universe.

Actually, on second thought I must mention that the morning salt water flush does take some time.  It takes me between 10-15 minutes to drink the whole 32 ounces.  Then you’ve got to wait for the eliminations that inevitably follow with great urgency.  In this matter, you must be ‘on point’ if you catch my drift.  In the first days of the cleanse it would take 30 minutes to an hour for the flush to take its course.  Now, after being off solid food for 5 days, there’s not much waiting in the equation.  I am able to go about other morning tasks while drinking the flush such as reading email or news.  After the first elimination, I’m free to start drinking the delicious homemade lemonade and move on to the next part of my morning, which is exercise.

Exercise is an important part of my morning routine.  I find that it sets a good tone for the rest of the day.  In the first few days I wasn’t sure how exercise would mix with the flush and lemonade drinking but now I have it down to a science.  As soon as I am able to drink the first glass of lemonade, I finish it, then proceed to my exercise routine after giving the drink a few minutes to settle.

The Cleanse And My Professional Life

I am so privileged that the idea for the cleanse actually came from one of my coworkers!  How amazing is that?  Master cleanse was something that I had heard of from many sources prior, and was always curious to know more.  Then the opportunity to know more came when my colleague decided to do the cleanse himself.  I owe him a debt of gratitude for inspiring me to give it a try.

Of course, there are some coworkers who are skeptical, but luckily I am not alone.  Two other coworkers, for a total of 3, are also interested in cleansing.   On top of that, its possible that they will inspire others to do the cleanse with them.  Ever since the first cleanser did his master cleanse, the office dialogue has included cleansing and health related topics every single day.  I’m so pleased to be working in such a supportive environment.

I feel that the effect of the cleanse on my cognition has been wholly beneficial.  There was a little discomfort in the first few days as I grew accustomed to the lemonade and realized that I would need to brush my teeth at least one extra time per day, but that has been the only downside so far.  In fact, I feel that my blood sugar levels are much more even while on the cleanse.  I don’t experience the post meal grogginess that most people experience after eating.  That’s just not an issue while on the cleanse.  Since I don’t let myself become hungry, I’m never distracted by my appetite either.  All in all, I think its a win win situation.

Cravings

I do want to make a short mention of food cravings.  I read in Tom Woloshyn’s book that I would crave the worst foods, even those that I would not normally eat, while on the cleanse.  That prediction has proved true as today I craved, get ready… a hot dog… as we drove by a restaurant specialized in them.  Normally, I would balk at the mere suggestion of hot dogs, but I was hungry.  We were driving home from visiting friends this afternoon.  I found that I had packed just enough concentrate in order to make one last glass for the ride home, and I had been drinking conservatively while visiting because I sensed that I would run low.  I have found that if I allow myself to become hungry, the normal fanciful thoughts of delicious, homemade, organic, vegan meals turn to fantasies of the least nourishing and most detrimental food choices.  So cleanser be ware!

Now I would not actually follow through on any of these cravings because I know that since I have been off solid food for so long, to actually go from cleansing to hot dog in one bite would be an act of sheer tyranny against my G.I. tract.  I think that my stomach, intestines and liver would stage a revolt and run my out of town.  The correct way to move to solid food is to move first through a day or two of fruit juices (two days I believe), then move to raw food, then move to cooked food.  It is actually comforting to know that there is this long time barrier between myself and whole cooked food.

With that, thanks for reading and I wish you the best of health!

Totals

• 32 oz salt water flush
• 15 glasses homemade lemonade (from ‘concentrate’)
• 1 cup senna tea

It is late on the night of my 3rd day on the Master Cleanse.  What a wonderful cleanse!

With each passing day I feel more and more “in the groove”.  This cleanse is really a wonderful way to clear out the body.  Just today, I was listening to an episode of Gary Null’s podcast in which he interviewed a woman who had been sick with cancer.  She journeyed deep into the Amazon to be healed by a shaman practicing their ancient healing arts.  She wrote a book called “Black Smoke” and after being healed from her cancer, has lived to tell us about her healing experiences.  Believe it or not, cleansing is central to the South American indigenous healing practices.  Something so foreign to western culture seems to have been employed in many other cultures in order to heal the body of numerous ailments.

Going Raw

Tonight Kitty and I ventured to Shop Rite to pick up lemons, and then on to Whole Foods to buy maple syrup and organic cayenne pepper.  What a treat!  I made my first 2 glasses of natural lemonade tonight.  What a refreshing difference as compared to the “Vibrant Cleanse” mix.  Initially I thought that it would be too time consuming or complicated to actually make the mix myself.  Turns out that thought was completely wrong!  It doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to make up a batch of lemonade roughly 22 oz in size.  You can really taste the fresh lemon juice, and I am looking forward to putting some of the lemon pulp into the glass as well.  What a treat after having nothing but freeze dried mix for a couple days.

Although, I have to give some credit to the makers of Vibrant Cleanse.  They got me started, and I’m sure they provide the best alternative to fresh that’s available.  However I did email them to inquire as to the enzymatic activity in their mix.  They did not respond.

There is something I can’t quite describe about the fresh lemon and maple syrup.  It just has a greater smoothness to it.  It tastes slightly thicker and more sustaining than the mix.  I’m not sure that this difference could be noticed to someone that hasn’t been drinking either the fresh lemonade or the mix for days on end.  When you suddenly throw even a slightly different taste in there the contrast is obvious.

Mood

No real irritability at all today.  I feel great!  I felt great all day.  The only out of the ordinary annoyance is a sense of dry mouth itchiness that sometimes sets in later in the day.  I also find myself wanting to brush my teeth multiple times throughout the day.  I can feel the sweet syrup collecting on my teeth as the day goes on.  But those two items are trivial concern.  What’s truly amazing to me is that I’m able to subsist on such a restrictive liquid diet.  It’s truly amazing.  The cleansing process has so far been a great opportunity for reflection on my relationship and enjoyment of food.  By taking some time away from food, I have realized how deep my love for it is.  That may sound funny, but I do truly love all the tastes, flavors and textures of food.  With each meal time that passes I find myself thinking of a recent batch of leftovers, or of the food at a local restaurant, or cooking with my wife.  This is not the same as craving because I feel satisfied in terms of appetite and nutrition.  I do not have the urge to eat, but rather an appreciation for the quality and variety of food that I am exposed to each day.

Totals for today

• 32 oz salt water flush
• 15 glasses of lemonade (900 calories)
• 1 cup of tea