10 days...
60 or so lemons and limes...
1 jug of grade b maple syrup...
1 vile of cayenne extract...
10 liters of salt water chugged...
5 mugs of poop tea...
AND THE MASTER CLEANSE IS OVER!!
Welp, I did it!
My experience? Ok. The juice gets boring. And it's really hard til about day 7. After that, I had tons of energy, to the point of not sleeping two nights in a row. Really. Cleanse euphoria. One night I did MENSA bathroom calendar problems from 6am to 9am. I was a genius. I went to the gym during the cleanse. Couldn't work quite as hard, but could still make it through. Not super hungry by the end, just really miss different flavors and textures.
I will not miss gagging down a liter of salt water in the morning and then being tied to the toilet for the next 3-4 hours, but I will miss the feeling of being totally empty. Couldn't always do the salt flush in the morning. If I had to be on set or things to do, I waited until the night. Twice the salt water didn't do its thing and I ended up just feeling sick from drinking a liter of salt water. Not sure what happened. You have to chug it all at once. It's hard. Warm water is easier. 1T of sea salt to a liter of water.
Tea wasn't as super effective as other poop teas (Ballerina Tea, the night I died on the toilet, but that's another blog.), but was a welcome different taste to the lemonade maple cayenne combo. I think it contributed to a bit of nausea, so basically only did it every other night. Didn't do it on nights I salt flushed.
Each day you should drink 8 servings of 8oz of lemonade. I made two 32oz bottles a day. Each serving calls for 2T lemon juice, 2T maple syrup, 1/10t cayenne, and 8oz spring water (8T, 8T, roughly 1t, 32oz for my bottles). I mostly used regular water (cause I forgot to pick up water at the store), found I preferred limes to lemons (mainly because I didn't have to deal with the seeds), and only used 1T per serving of the syrup because more than that tasted gross to me. Sometimes I would eat an extra T of syrup by itself. It wasn't as gross to me that way and helped me get more of the calories I needed (you don't want your body to go into starvation mode). I liked extra lime/lemon juice in my concoction. More tart than sweet. I varied the cayenne depending on how spicy I felt like that batch. I prefer the liquid extract to the ground pepper. Mixes better and wasn't as strong.
Along the way I had a few cheats. I assume the hungry was because I was only eating half the maple syrup I should have been eating. This also justified my cheats. I tried to match the lack of with similar easy to digest sugar. I sucked on peanut butter spoons if I got really hungry. About a T, but ate with a tiny spoon so it took longer. I probably had peanut butter 6-7 times through the cleanse. One day I sucked on almonds.
During a 14 hour day on set, I had finished my juice by 10am and was on set til 8pm. I ate a few pieces of fruit on set. It was necessary to keep alive. I also ate a pinch of bagel. My throat was really killing me (not sleeping for 2 nights in a row prior and talking to crew and kid talent all day is a recipe for super sore throat!) and I needed something scratchy to swallow against it. I only did one juice that day and drank a lot of water.
At another film shoot, I picked at 2 slices of tomato and had 3 sweet potato chips. In my defense, I was out of juice and feeling woozy. You try being on set 14 hours, staring at Crafts Service (doughnuts, bagels, sandwiches, cheese, butter, chips, dips, coffee, sodas, sweets, oh my...) and watching people eat all day. It sucks.
Another night, I became very nauseous. Maybe a combo of flushing and teaing? Maybe medicine on an empty stomach? That night I made a baked potato and ate a quarter of it plain. It eased my tummy. On alternating nights, I ate quarters of that baked potato with my meds. It seemed to help. 1 plain baked potato over the course of 10 days. Fine.
I got maple candies from the farmers market to munch on in place of the maple in my juice. The maple stand was only there once during my cleanse, I thought I could go back for more, so I only had that substitute for 2 or 3 days, but I really liked having solid syrup to eat instead of liquid in the drink.
I had no alcohol, soda, or caffeine. Just the juice, water, and poop tea. You are allowed herbal teas with no caffeine. One day I had a passion tea while staring at Sweetheart eating a Subway tuna melt and a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. It was rough. He gave me an onion sliver. It was delicious.
So, I wasn't perfect, but I'm pretty damn proud! I think I lost between 10-15 pounds, but I'm sure most will come right back once I eat again and have full intestines. I feel better, have more energy, and hope this makes eating healthy easier, which was the idea. I couldn't get back into the swing of things since Sweetheart and I ate everything in NC for 2 weeks vacation. The idea for the cleanse was to shock my system back into healthy eating and gymming. I think it did its job!
Now I do the ease out diet. This is important because your body is no longer used to digesting food. Too much too soon will make me sick or clog the pipes. Tomorrow I can have orange juice. The next day I am going to make a vegetable broth. The third is solid food, but fruits, vegetables, and brown rice. Meats and dairy will be last when I feel like my system can digest food again. I am excited to eat, everything will taste so good! But have a weird guilty feeling about eating again. It's strange, but I feel like I should stay on the cleanse because I can. Knowing how little I can survive on versus how much I consume is strange and guilt inducing. On the other hand, food is yummy!
Maybe the most frustrating thing about the cleanse was the inability to hang out with Sweetheart and friends in most situations. Everything involves food or drink! It's horrible. Bowling and beer. Movies and popcorn. Even a bike ride begs for a nice cool glass of something to drink that is not spicysweetade. It will be really nice to be able to go to dinner or grab a drink or see a movie... basically, be a social human again. I'm sure some people have more willpower than I do in these situation, but if I can't have it, I don't want to be around it!
Will I ever do it again? Probably. Will it still be hard? Fuck yeah! But at least I know I can do it!
Here's to you, Master Cleanse.
And here's to ME!
