I'm half way through a one-day juice cleanse (two days if I stick with my original plan, but after only a few hours of this I was already thinking one day might be all I (and Douglas!) can handle right now!) My Naturopathic Doctor recommended I try juice cleansing to detoxify and help restore hormonal balance. This is what he told me: start with a 2-day cleanse, see how it goes. If it goes well, up it to 3 days next time (I assume he means in a few months). If that goes well, up it to 5 days. Ummm, WOW! I played it cool and said sure, I'll do that. Two hours into this first day I was already STARVING and having all these crazy food cravings and literally drooling over Douglas' Veggie Stix snack!
And, in case you're wondering, I don't mean Juice Fast as in Tropicana OJ, I mean freshly juiced fruits and vegetables and water.
I've done several cleanses before, but usually they are 2-3 days and involve drinking only water and freshly juiced fruit/veggie juice all day (which is hard) and then at night I get to eat real food - a super healthy, super easy to digest and cleansing meal like brown rice with very lightly sauteed veggies. This Juice Fast was supposed to entail no food at all for 2 days...hmm. I'm not ready for that yet apparently.
Also, this is the first time trying a detox cleanse since Douglas was born. Before, it was doable to just stay away from food at all cost all day. I was alone during the day - I didn't have to look at food at all. I would take a leisurely walk in the morning to get the blood flowing, spend lots of time on the back deck journaling and reading, take a nap mid-afternoon, maybe a nice bath in the evening. Aaah. But now I have to actually feed Douglas food, which he doesn't even want and yet I'm telling him, "Dougie, what I wouldn't GIVE for this rice and salmon! Eat up! Believe me, if you were me you'd be scarfing this down!" He doesn't get it.
Can you tell I'm a total rockstar at this whole juice fasting thing? (Yes. Yes, that was sarcasm). I like to eat, what can I say?
Dougie LOVES the juice I've been drinking today. I gave him a tiny bit of my carrot/cucumber juice (I added a little oj) this morning with his breakfast (don't worry, I also made sure he had a full breakfast)...watered down quite a bit. He loved it. So when I whipped out my parents' juicer that I'm borrowing and started to make my "lunch," he was all about it. My lunch juice consisted of the following: a grapefruit, an orange, a carrot, an apple, and half of a cantalope. Wow. That's a lot of juice. It made at least 4 cups of the stuff.
I think of myself as a pretty strong person, but let me just tell you it will be a major miracle if I make it through THIS day, much less two days of this. Right now, I'm shooting for one day. That'll be my first successful attempt. It makes me wonder what the Dr. meant when he said, "If it goes well"...did he mean, "If you don't end up ravenously consuming everything you see in your pantry mid-day"? or perhaps "If you refrain from yelling at other people because you're so cranky or stealing their food right out of their hand?" Wow. I need to distract myself from all of this.
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Friday: Day 2 Update (I made it to Day 2!!!)
I decided that rather than only doing one day of the detox, I would have a little bit of brown rice and lightly steamed broccoli and carrots last night and see if I could withstand one more day of this. I went to bed hungry but, amazingly, woke up feeling good (aside from the pounding headache that always comes with getting rid of toxins from your body). It appears that the incredible amount of food cravings on Day 1 begin to subside a little bit on Day 2 (they don't go away - apparently that happens Day 3 or so).
So I'm mid-way through Day 2. I made a tasty breakfast with juice from 1/2 cantalope, 1 carrot, 1/2 lime, and 1 apple. Yum. I even went to a morning Yoga class at the Y, which of course felt amazing. Lunch was the nastiest drink yet: Kale, Parsley, Spinach, Apple, Celery. Mmmm.
Tonight, I'll do the same as last night and have a healthy dinner. Homemade Nori Sushi Rolls with Brown Rice. The recipe is here, and they are super easy to make and super ridiculously good. It's become a bit of a Friday night tradition between us and my sister, Heather and her husband, Brian (who live next door to us).
Happy Friday. Happy eating. I'll let you know when I get around to upping the fast to 3 days...I'm guessing that might be a while! Hey, maybe some of you could even do it with me next time!
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