“Clean” – day 5

I have made it to day 5 of my cleanse without any major problems. On Wednesday, I felt very tired during the day, but my energy level picked up later and I actually got a lot done. I also had some great meals — a mango and pineapple smoothie with coconut milk, and homemade hummus with sliced cucumbers and carrots. Dinner was some leftover leek and asparagus soup (pureed this time), which was still great. Yesterday was a bit more difficult — I felt spacey throughout most of the day and didn’t get a lot of work done. Aside from my breakfast smoothie (my new go-to of blueberries, almond milk and almond butter), the recipes I chose for my meals were disappointing. I didn’t feel hungry after eating, but I didn’t exactly feel satisfied either.

So I spent a while in the kitchen last night preparing my food for today: a juice for breakfast (so I could easily take it with me and drink it after my 6 am yoga class [which was great — I was pleased to discover that I had plenty of energy]), and a quinoa salad with more of the hummus for lunch. Tonight when I get home I think I will try the chilled cucumber soup recipe from the Clean book.

The liquid dinners are definitely the hardest part about the cleanse, along with the no-snacking-after-dinner rule. But there are good reasons for it: Dr. Junger says that it takes 8 hours for your body to digest a meal, after which point it goes into detox mode. It then needs 4 hours to do a deep cleaning. Consuming a liquid dinner speeds up the digestion process so your body can enter into detox mode faster. It’s also important to wait 12 hours before breakfast; in fact, I never thought about it before but that’s where the word “breakfast” comes from — you are breaking the fast that you began after dinner in order to provide your body with energy for healing and rejuvenation. If you snack late into the night and don’t give your body this 12-hour window, your body can never fully enter into detoxification mode.

With my upcoming trip to Florida, I won’t be able to do the full 21 days of the program. I’m still undecided about the best way to break my cleanse. I can either do 2 full weeks and ease back into solid foods so that I can eat whatever I want on vacation, or continue until I leave (18 days total) and try to eat as healthy as possible in Orlando. Our hotel suite has a kitchen (with a blender!), so maybe I’ll plan on picking up some produce and continue making smoothies for breakfast.

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