The Cleanse

As promised, a reality-TV-free entry!

So, a few months ago Trish and I decided to do this "cleanse" thing. Her family had done it a while back and remarked on how good it made them feel.

We bought the stuff at least 2 months ago and we kept trying to make plans to do it, but had to put it off because of travel for one or the other of us. Finally we made the commitment to start it last week.

The cleanse is from Isagenix where they have several different plans. We opted for the 9-day cleanse since that is what her family had done. Basically you start with 2 cleanse days. This involves not eating any solid food except for 2 raw, unsalted almonds or one of their "snacks". The products in the 9-day cleanse are the cleanse, snacks, shake, and accelerator capsule.

The cleanse days you start out with 8oz of water. Then, 30 minutes later you drink 4 caps of the cleanse with 8-12oz water. You snack like 5x/day and have the cleanse for breakfast, lunch, dinner and then an hour or so after dinner. Days 3-7, you don't have the cleanse, but you replace your breakfast and dinner with a shake and have a 400-600 calorie, healthy lunch. You're not allowed any dairy or caffeine and you're advised to stay away from artificial sweetners or regular sugar. Basically you're not supposed to drink anything but water.

The "snack" is basically a hard tablet of compacted shake powder, in my opinion. If you've ever had a protein shake made from powder, that's what it tastes like. The shakes are mixed with water, so, while it isn't horrible, it isn't exactly yummy.

The first two cleanse days weren't too bad, really. It was novel and I stuck to the program completely. I scoffed at 2 almonds. TWO? Come on. But, they really make a difference. By the end of the 2nd day, I was looking forward to my real lunch. Turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread with no condiments...it was great. 5 days of trying to eat very healthy without dairy or additives. Diet Coke was starting to sound really really good. We did good, though. I even made some chicken fingers rolled in home-made bread crumbs (uh, yeah, dried bread, crunched up...high level of difficulty) and then baked in the oven. They were pretty good. Were they as good as Red Robin's...or pretty much any other chicken fingers? No, not really. But, they weren't bad and they were healthy and that's what this all about, right?

Today is day 9. It's the 2nd cleanse day and the last day of the program. I've begun having halucinations about the smell of cooking steak. I am trying to decide what my first real meal will be tomorrow. Chipotle? Subway? What, no pizza? No. See, the thing is, this cleanse is a "reset" button for me. We're going to start eating healthy from now on. Not as much pizza or fast food. Granted, we didn't eat lot of that anyway, but at least once every 2 weeks or so this winter we were ordering pizza. And, since I like deals, I was almost always getting the special of 2 large pizzas so we could have some leftover. So, essentially I was eating pizza like 2-3x after the initial meal. Not good.

I also start back at the gym next week. It's been almost a year since I went regularly and at least 5 full months since I've been at all. Although this time it'll be more cardio and less weights.

I highly recommend this program to anyone. It's certainly made my pants fit better and I am lighter and more energetic. I think it's even improved my mood. I'll definitely be doing this a few times a year to get all the toxins out of my body. In the mean-time I plan on dining with care.

I love food. I'm a huge fan of chocolate and I love fries and chips and meat. But, the thing I've missed the most on this program? Cheese. I can't wait to have some cheese. Subway sounds better and better tomorrow. Pizza would probably kill me from excitement right about now, but I'm not going to start off on that.

It was definitely and interesting experience. You wouldn't blame me if I woke up at 12:01am tomorrow and cooked a tombstone pizza, would you?!