Lemon Cleanse: Orange you glad you don't have to drink lemonade again?

5 days was just right for me. If you plan on doing the cleanse one day you should know that hunger isn't really the biggest barrier to completing the ten days. I think our preoccupation with food is the hardest thing to overcome. Don't eat for days and you'll know what I mean. A snack passes the time while you're busily working. A meeting, a casual gathering, everything we do involves food. Even your body is busy making decisions about food. Hunger pangs, eating, digesting, extracting nutrients, excreting waste, filtering fluids, it's all the time working in a constant cycle. When you don't eat, your body begins to metaphorically pout and whine. "You're not hungry" you say to your stomach. Your stomach smirks and replies, "yes, but if you love me you'll feed me". When you go days without eating, your body starts busying itself with other matters. Overall, my skin felt better, like more blood was flowing through it.

The next time I do this I will think one day at a time. It seems to work better than setting myself up for what seemed like days of deprivation. All in all, it was very enlightening both mentally and physically. I know there's a lot of bad press out there regarding the master cleanse, but I guess everyone has to decide for themselves after trying it out.

LC Day 5: It's not you, it's me

So I cheated on Wednesday, but Skinny was right it wasn't all I'd made it out to be. I mostly wanted to eat something to get that slimy coat off my tongue. It just felt weird, white and thick. My body didn't take the food well and I decided to finish out the five days or the supply of lemons and maple syrup, whatever came first. I wasn't really hungry, I was just bored and wanted to go somewhere for lunch, be with people, you know. Plus I have to admit, I'm not as invested in this whole cleanse thing as I want to be. I'd like my body to be rid of it's toxins and I want to feel rejuvenated, but I could probably accomplish that through less extreme measures. So, why am I continuing? It's one of my poorer traits, not being able to give up even when I probably should. Stubborn as hell; story of my life. LOL.

LC Day 4: WWBD

Let me just say that the salt water wash is naaasty. I could only get half a quart down before I started to gag. It’s supposed to start stewing in your belly for 30-60 minutes before you have to hit the great white throne, but my stomach turned all night without the need to ahem. My stomach made noises like when the power just comes on and all the appliances in the house start up. I watched 3 ½ episodes of Sex In The City and then drank four glasses of water and nothing. The book says that if it doesn’t work, you’re supposed to try again, adding or decreasing the sea salt in the wash. No thank you. I’m not doing that again ever.

I’m not so motivated anymore. I kinda wanna master quit this master cleanse. My tongue has been feeing a little slimy. I’m starting to question why the heck I started this journey, I mean how do you measure detoxification? It’s kind of like a puzzle, if you feel like shit your body is eliminating toxins, if you feel great your body has been cleansed of toxins? I feel sort of in the middle, euphoric for hours and then sluggish.

I may eat today although I prepared my LC. The hunger doesn’t start rearing it’s ugly head until mid morning, so maybe by lunch time I’ll be ready for a meal. Maybe. The added weight loss is nice, but not what I wanted to really accomplish. Which makes me wonder why I did this in the first place. Was it just to see if I could do it? Celebrity fad? Wanna be yuppy-hippy fad? Was it to discover some deeply embedded truths about my relationship with food? Was it to create emotional closure for that time in the 2nd grade when Sissy took my sembe from my lunch kit? Who knows. The real question is, what would Beyonce' do?

LC Day 2 &3: superhydration

Day 2 was hard, I was a little weak and by 7pm I was slurring my speech. I got a little bit of the shakes and gurgles, but as soon as bedtime drew near I was better.

I woke up to day 3 in cheerful spirits and have been feeling fine all day. I'm not starving mind you. I just miss being able to sit and chat and chew. Wayne and I went to Oleai's at lunch time and I got to watch him eat some delicious looking quesadillas. I am now making mental note of everything I want to eat next week, if I make it that far. Definitely those quesadillas, spam kelaguin at Dr. Jack's, poke at Naked Fish, Chili at Wild Bill's, a Ruben at Bobby's, ice cream from Himawari, and so on.

I lost a few more pounds according to my liar liar scale, which is nice even though Its mostly water. Speaking of water, I've never been so hydrated in my life! I'm usually defunct in that area, can never get my 8 glasses of water in, but I'm a drinking machine now. Food's been appearing out of nowhere lately, like some cosmic jinx. A friend gave me a couple of squid and lobster he just caught, there are suddenly more snacks in my office than ever before. Shoot, how much you wanna bet the theater has nachos?

Lemon Cleanse Day 1: Cayenne sounds a lot like

I did it, woke up this morning feeling good and surprisingly 3 pounds lighter. My scale is old and busted, and the babies like to jump up and down on it, so even though I saw I weighed in 5 lbs. less than I was yesterday, I still don't believe it. I made it through Day 1 with nary a scratch, save a little nick in my index finger from cutting up lemons. That made squeezing them a little tricky. It took about 10 medium sized limes to make 10 tspns of LC. Preparation is quicker when you have good measuring tools, especially a bottle already labeled so you can mix the main ingredients, juice, maple syrup and cayenne. I put the water, already measured into a larger container and just poured the mix in, shook and that was that.

I keep the big bottle in the fridge and then pour it into two little ones all day. If I alternate the little ones, one in the fridge and one in the freezer, I always have a nice cool drink. I like a little bit more cayenne in my LC than the recipe requires. It reminds me of the way I like my tequila shots. Pepper in my salt, salt on my lemon. Yum! No people, there's no tequila in my LC. It's weird, I feel very lightheaded, but not dizzy, just like I'm in slow motion. My heart rate is usually pretty fast, and I'm always warm, but today I feel real mellow. I may start singing some Olivia Newton John soon.

The hardest part about this is not having my coffee and red bull in the morning, but I'll live. I've also noticed that my ciggy's taste yucky, then I remembered that the last time I did this I could barely stand to smoke. Hmmm..maybe this'll help me cut that nasty habit out. It was also very hard to make dinner last night. Not because I wanted to eat, but because I couldn't taste the food I was making for my family. Buckwheat noodles, cut up pieces of leftover fried chicken, veggies and spices. Hope liked it, Sommer said she hated it, Peyton opted for a tuna sandwich, and Wayne said it was really good. When you can't eat a thing, food is always in the way. I went to get my keys in my purse and my hand grazed a snickers bar. It was like touching hot coal. We took our kids out for ice cream yesterday and I lusted over the green tea ice cream. I keep telling myself it's just food and food will always be there. I take a sip of my LC and feel the kick of the cayenne. Say cayenne ten times as fast as you can. It sounds a lot like I can!