Clean Cleanse Debrief

Chad and I successfully completed a full 21 days of the clean cleanse.

and with very little cheating.

We both lost about ten pounds (me a little less, Chad a little more) and our stomachs and digestive system felt good. Dropping the caffeine was harder as I’d imagined; I had bad headaches for the better part of the week. My reaction made me feel like a remorseful junkie.

We decided that the cleanse was a good thing and started swearing that we were going to do it every six months. We started rereading all the bits about what to do after you’ve done a cleanse.

It turned out there is more to the program than just the 21-day cleanse, which is, that while your body is so clean, you take advantage of the situation by re-introducing eliminated foods ONE AT A TIME EVERY THREE DAYS.

There are so many foods to pick from! And it’s not always easy to segregate the foods. For instance, you can’t introduce wheat with cookies, because you might not have introduced eggs, sugar, or dairy.

A list of foods we hadn’t been eating: wheat, dairy, sugar, oranges, strawberries, bananas, tomatoes, eggs, peppers, corn, potatoes, alcohol, coffee, chocolate.

We realized that we weren’t prepared, neither emotionally nor physically, to get off the cleanse so slowly. We were ready to binge!

To do the clean cleanse properly, you end up doing it many more days than 21, because you’re eating from the elimination diet while you slowly re-introduce foods. To gradually introduce the above would take 42 additional days.

So, we’re started over. After a month of general gluttony, we’re back on the elimination diet, which means we’re doing a cleanse at half mast. Our breakfasts are smoothies (we never stopped that part); and lunch and dinner are from the elimination diet foods only. we are maintaining a 12-hour digestion window between dinner and breakfast.

This time, we’re cleansing just enough to re-introduce foods, and instead of starting with high-suspicion foods, we’re starting with the least suspect. Tomatoes tomorrow night.

 

 

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