Spring Clean-Out

I've been reading a lot about cleanses lately, and I found myself ready to give one a try. I've never done one, and the thought of 30 years of literal crap built up in my body is disgusting me more than usual these days.  I've been wanting to clean out my closets and my garage, so why not my colon?   After reading a post by Mistress Parker, here, I began researching The Master Cleanse. I found a crap load of good info on this site.  The Master Cleanse is not for the faint of heart, but neither is the Tracy Anderson Method, so I thought, what the hell?  Originally, I thought I'd put it off until the end of May, when Jake is likely to leave for several weeks for a class in Virginia.  I figured it would be easier to do my first cleanse when I'll only have the kids' meals to worry about.  I mentioned this plan to him, and to my surprise, he wanted to do the cleanse with me!  Jake is 6'5" and fit and likes his meals filling and frequent.  Him signing up to live on spicy lemonade for 10 days was not something I considered to be plausible in this century.  But having a cleanse buddy seemed like a fabulous idea, so I thought, Why Not?  I spent the next week gathering our Grade B maple syrup, cayenne, "pure" water (I still don't know what the hell that means - I bought Fiji brand and hoped for the best), senna tea, peppermint tea, non-iodized salt, and lemons.  I found all the ingredients readily available at Whole Foods. (I must note that this was my first trip to the Whole Foods on Oahu, and it felt just WRONG that I had to forgo all of their fabulous selection for fucking LEMONADE.  My son and I were sniffing cheeses from their cheese case like Mary Katherine Gallagher sniffs her arm-pitty fingers when she gets nervous.

Onlookers may have been a little disturbed. What can I say? We appreciate a funky cheese!)  I also downloaded a book on the Master Cleanse for our Kindle.  Jake read it, I didn't haven't read it yet.

We decided to start the cleanse on a Sunday (instead of a Monday as many recommend) so that Jake would have a day to get used to it all before he headed back to work.  I also came out with a post-cleanse workout plan.  I've clawed my way through 8 levels of Tracy Anderson's Metamorphosis Omni and have just one more level remaining.  The dreaded Level 9.  Could this whole cleanse idea have been a way to stall?  I don't know.  I do know that I'll be feeling mucho guilt about taking nearly 2 weeks off of TAM. (It's taken me 6 months to complete her 3 month program, so OBVIOUSLY this won't be my first break, but the guilt is always there. Judging.)  I just ordered the Continuity program from Tracy's website, so I definitely want to continue on the TAM journey post cleanse, but I know I won't be feeling in tip-top shape.  So I came up with a plan for a rapid reboot.  Once the cleanse is over, I'm going to start over on Metamorphosis from Level 1, spending 2 days on each level (instead of 10) until I get to Level 9.  This will allow me to complete 3 levels per week.  Once I get to Level 9, I'll complete its full 10 days before moving onto Continuity.  This way I'll feel like I've gotten myself prepared for the new phase, without having to wait another 3 (or 6) months to do it the conventional way. 

Now begins the fun of cleansing.

Day 1

I should preface this with the fact that we both drank our cups of poop senna tea the night before. Anyhoo, I woke up Sunday morning and proceeded with my morning ritual of peeing and weighing in. I know not everyone likes a daily weigh-in, but it helps keep me from getting out of hand.  Weight was 124.2.  My lowest post-second pregnancy weight. Victory smile! It was at this point that I remembered we were beginning the cleanse today, and with this I was immediately struck by the fact that I would not be allowed to enjoy the next part of my morning ritual... Coffee.  My victory smile was replaced by the wrinkled up nose of my "whine" face.  But I shook it off and located a clean pair of Big Girl Panties.  I knew I was going to need them.  We went downstairs, and whilst casting longing looks at the coffeepot, I dug out the the salt and got our salt water flushes (henceforth referred to as SWF) ready.  Here's a very informative video on how the SWF moves ya. 

Jake went first and sipped his flush over the course of about 5 minutes. I opted to pound it. It tasted like lukewarm canned chicken broth without the chicken part. Yummay. Not.  We sat and waited for the gurgles to happen. We didn't have to wait long.  Within an hour, we'd both made several trips to the bathroom.  His trips were more productive than mine.  Day One, and I already had poop envy.  Great.  We downed our first lemonades and didn't find them horrible.  Our goal the first day was to each drink 8 lemonades, but neither of us made it to the goal.  Jake drank 7.  I was crashing all day from the lack of caffeine.  If I got horizontal for even a few minutes, I was OUT.  I'm not a "nappy" person, so this was weird for me.  My energy level was non-existent.  Instead of feeling better after each lemonade, I felt worse.  Boo. But the first few days on a cleanse are never fun.  I ended up only getting 5 lemonades down, plus a cup of peppermint tea and more poop senna tea at bedtime.  I opted to use 2 teabags instead of 1, because I've never had much help using 1 bag in the past. (The previous night's experience was no different.)  Neither Jake nor I was terribly hungry, per se, but we missed food. Smelling it, chewing it, and all the feel good chemicals that eating it produced in our brains.  All in all, it wasn't a bad day.

Day 2
I woke up at 3 am with some minor bubble guts, but everything came out okay, and I went back to bed.  I slept HARD.  Jake got up at 4am to do his SWF so that the whole "process" would be over by the time he left for PT (physical training - his Mon-Fri early morning runny, jumpy, sitty-uppy routine that comes with the soldier bit).  I got up at 7 and opted for another cup of tea instead of the SWF.  I should mention that as of Day 2, I weighed in at 123.4 for a loss of .8lbs.  Jake, on the other hand, lost SIX pounds.  I wasn't jealous, really... this cleanse is more about detoxing for me than it is weight loss.  The day went on much the same as Day 1.  I was super sleepy and lethargic.  Jake ended up getting off work early, so he came with me to pick our son up from school.  We hadn't turned off our street before I felt some gurgling.  Uh, oh.  He turned the car around and dropped me off to handle business while he handled the school pick-up.  We were already running out of lemons, so we had to hit the grocery.  Just outside the grocery is a Korean BBQ food stand.  On any given day, the smells that come from their grill make me drool.  On Day 2 of our cleanse, it was like I could feel an alien (otherwise known as hunger) trying to claw itself from my chest to scream, "PROTEIN!!! GIVE ME PROTEIN!!!"  I pouted and whined the whole walk past.  It wasn't easy passing all the grocery shelves.  I'm pretty sure there was a continuous puddle of drool marking our path.  I had to pick up food for the kiddies, so the trip lasted a little longer than planned, but we made it.  The night was spent trying to avoid food commercials and trying not to notice the food being consumed on my TV shows.  I was watching (and forcing Jake to watch with me) Bethenny Ever After, and she was chowing down on what looked like shrimp fajitas and guacamole.  It's almost physically painful for me to even type this and remember the deliciousness. :(  By the end of the night, after my cup of tea (1 bag this time), the lambs were screaming.  I was having trouble not leaning over to gnaw Jake's ear off.  All I could think about was food.  I wanted to motorboat a pizza.  Earlier in the day, I'd been feeding our toddler a banana, and the whole time I was wanting to do, well... dirty things to it.  Pornographic food thoughts were not on the list of "healing crises" I read about.