Nine Days to Go: Week 2 of the Cleanse

Half way through week 2 of the cleanse. According to the book, change is happening internally, but I won’t necessarily feel it. It all depends on how “out of balance” my body was before the cleanse. Well, I guess it wasn’t too out of balance because I haven’t noticed much of a difference in the way I feel now and how I felt before the cleanse. It helps that I participated in the Elimination Week, preparing my body by taking out sugars, white flower, caffeine and alcohol from my diet.

It also could mean my pre-cleanse diet wasn’t as bad as I thought. I wasn’t eating as many fruits and vegetables, but I did drastically decrease the amount of white processed flower in my diet. I switched to decaf coffee. I started drinking more tea. I snacked on almonds and goji berries. I ate cereal with soymilk instead of regular milk. Maybe it’s those small changes that I had already made that’s making it easier for my body adjust to the cleanse diet.

In any case, I have nine days to go, and I’m going to see this thing through, darn it. Last night I attended Foursquare’s first birthday party at Lincoln Station. I knew there’d be alcohol. I knew there’d be cake. What I didn’t know is that it would be chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, my favorite. And also pizza, my other love. And the ultimate: Chocolate. Lava. Crunch. Cakes. All for free to celebrate one year since the birth of the latest social media craze.

When they brought in the chocolate sheet cake adorned with candles that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my friend Julie pulled me away. “You need to stay far away from that,” she said. But I wanted to look at it. I wanted to bend down close to it and take a whiff. I wanted to be naughty and stick my finger in the frosting. I took a picture of it and uploaded it to Facebook. “Help!” I pleaded to my Facebook friends.

“Hurry! Go outside and have a cigarette!” My cousin Vince jokingly responded.

The pizza wasn’t as hard to resist. After all, it was Domino’s. But the small boxes carrying two chocolate lava crunch cakes to take home almost killed me. The thought crossed my mind. Maybe just…one…little…bite.

“I wonder if I can take the molten cakes home and freeze them,” I said to Julie. But I figured by the time the cleanse was over, I might as well just walk to Domino’s and purchase fresh molten cakes to bring home. Or even better, treat myself to a gorgeous dinner at Quartino, which not only offers molten cake for dessert, but also hot, fresh donut holes with honey and chocolate dipping sauces. Mmmmm.

“Stay strong!” My Facebook friends encouraged. “You can do it! May the force be with you, sista!”

So last night I resisted. I persevered. And I went home with no chocolate lava crunch cakes.

Nine days to go.

Week 1 of the Cleanse: Where did this will power come from?

So I’m half way through Week 1 of the cleanse, and so far the biggest surprise is that I'm doing just fine. Where did this will power come from? I’ve never been disciplined when it came to a healthy diet. But Dr. Junger’s book, Clean, is developed in a way that makes it easy for even a foodie like me to give her body a much needed brake from processed foods and breads.

Sure, during Elimination Week last week I had the munchies almost every night, craving Fritos and McDonalds and chocolate. I stopped watching the Food Network, a regular visitor in my home, because I feared temptation from Paula Deen and Rachael Ray. But I ignored the hankerings, and instead sipped on chamomile tea with agave syrup (no honey aloud) or drank water with lemon, and that seemed to help.

I also found recipes in the book and online that I like enough to keep using after I complete the program, which makes sticking to the cleanse easier. On the My Clean Program website, a sort of Facebook for people doing the cleanse, I found a delicious recipe for an almond crust that I use on chicken breast and salmon (see recipe below). I lay the chicken or fish on a bed of mixed greens with homemade dressing, also from the book, add some quinoa or brown rice, and I have a healthy meal to add to my regular diet that I actually crave. By the beginning of this week, I was watching Food Network again, hoping to learn more healthy tips.

The Clean program consists of two liquid meals and one solid meal, preferably at lunch, a day. At first I thought having a liquid meal for dinner would be an adjustment, but I’ve actually enjoyed not having to cook at night after a long day of writing and running errands. I’ve tried a couple of the soups from the book, but neither of them will make it to the post-cleanse menu. I’ve enjoyed the energy smoothies that I have in the morning, but I miss coffee, scrambled eggs and toast. And pancakes. And pizza. And alcohol. I frown every morning at the new coffeemaker that I just got as a birthday present. But I did manage to bar hop last Saturday with my friends and drank water the entire time.

So far the withdrawal symptoms I’ve experienced aren’t severe. I get mild headaches and I’ve been sneezing a lot. Dr. Junger says by Week 2 I’ll start to see positive changes including more energy and clearer skin. So we’ll see.

Only two and a half weeks to go.

Almond Crust:

1/2 cup of roasted, unsalted almonds

1 garlic clove

1/2 teaspoon of coarse salt

3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

Combine in a food processor. Rub on to chicken breast or fish and bake. Yum!

Day One of a Month Long Journey to Clean

Day one of Elimination Week. So far so good.

This week, I’m starting a cleansing program based on the book Clean by Alejandro Junger. For years, I’d thought about doing a cleanse but never had the incentive. Then last week, after consuming too much white bread over three days, I suffered ongoing headaches and sluggishness. And when my friend Charlene mentioned she was starting a cleanse based on this book, I took it as a sign. I just turned 39, spring is coming, and I booked a trip to Miami in April. Now was a good time to eliminate the toxins that have been accumulating in my body.

The main detox in the book Clean is one to three weeks. But before the detox is an Elimination Week that prepares the body for the cleanse. Sometimes while a person is detoxing, their body responds dramatically to eliminating the toxins that have built up over the years that can result in acne breakouts, headaches, and flu-like symptoms during the first few days of cleansing. The Elimination Week helps alleviate that. Eliminated from my diet this week are all the usual suspects: sugar, pasta, breads, dairy, caffeine, alcohol, processed foods. But also included are some surprises: Bananas, strawberries, and tomatoes are also stricken from the diet.

This morning I started with a green smoothie made from a recipe from Clean that include frozen pineapple and mango chunks, and almond milk, which isn’t as gross as it sounds. I also threw in an apple and some leftover green smoothie my brother gave me yesterday, contents unknown, but they should be kosher given his healthy lifestyle. Threw in some ice, blended it up, and it was actually a sweet, refreshing drink. Not what I would normally eat on a cold, damp morning, but I drank the whole serving.

Lunch was a mixed salad with a homemade dressing of grape seed oil, lemon juice, garlic, basil, thyme and parsley. At the cafe where I do most of my writing, I sipped on naturally-decaffeinated chamomile tea with stevia, since honey is a no-no. I like using stevia in my lemon water, but in coffee and tea, it gives a funky aftertaste. Not sure if this is something I’ll get used to, or if I have to skip drinking herbal tea during the cleanse. Someone suggested using agave syrup, which I bought yesterday during my cleansing stock up at Whole Foods. I may give that a try. For dinner I heated up a bowl of left over brown rice with veggies and roasted chicken. During the cleanse, which begins next Monday, I’ll have to consume two liquid meals and one solid meal a day.

Now that it’s ten o’clock at night, I’m sitting on the couch trying not to let the fast food commercials discourage me. Throughout the evening, I felt hungry. But according to the book, the body “benefits so hugely from the break in digestion that if the body were completely in charge of things, there wouldn’t be a problem…It learns to function well and feel good on two liquid meals and one solid meal a day.”

My goal is to finish all three weeks of the cleanse, with Easter being the first day I’ll get to indulge. But I’ll have to see how I do after Week 1 of the main cleanse. For now, I’m taking it one day at a time.