The Cleanse in Review

So big news, my post yesterday was my 50th blog post. Oh, and I can eat food again. I’m not sure which one is more exciting, but if you talk to me about drinking coffee or drinking wine again, I’m pretty sure I could figure out the excitement ranking quickly.

I didn’t even go off the rails today with my food. I had eggs and veggies for breakfast, had a lettuce wrapped burger for lunch and had the most delicious steak and sweet potato in history. I am absolutely sure that I’m not exaggerating. It was amazing. One thing I did NOT have was a shake. I’m a little burned out on those. I think nine shakes in three days will do that to a girl.

So what did I learn during the three day cleanse? Well, a few things; Like, Skyler should never go on a cleanse. She gets forty shades of ugly when she’s hungry, so we should just keep food in that girl’s tummy at all times.  But besides that great little tidbit of information, I learned, once again, that my family is pretty awesome. First, Skyler wanted to join me on the cleanse, which always makes any journey more fun. Then everyone else was pretty kind about either choosing food that didn’t smell, or food that I just would never eat if they were going to eat at home, so that I wouldn’t be dying of jealousy or tempted to throw in the towel. If they were going to eat something that smelled REALLY good, they just left the house and ate out. It was probably the ONLY reason that I was able to go three days without meat.

That leads right into the next item learned, which is that I will NEVER be a vegetarian. The protein shakes that I had on the cleanse did have protein in them, in fact, they had 20 grams of protein in each one. That should have been plenty of protein to keep this girl happy, since I was eating three a day! I was initially, very excited to see that I was going to get to eat that amount of protein. However, at the end of day one, when I felt draggish and sluggish, similar to how I feel if I eat all carbs- no meat- I looked at the protein packages closer. I am NOT a scientist or a nutritionist, but I can say without any other research, after 42 years of owning this body, plant protein does not do for me what animal protein does. This was made more clear with each meal. And with the fact that I very literally wanted to eat a cow by the second day. The whole cow.

Third, I learned that either people are liars or I have a screwed up body. Every single review I read of this particular cleanse raved about how full they felt and how they had absolutely no cravings and that they had just an overabundance of energy. Like, more energy than they had ever had. Their skin was better, their digestion was better, their clothes fit better, they’d lost weight. The raving went on and on and on.

I was just having this conversation last night over a beautiful piece of grilled salmon, some grilled chicken, grilled asparagus and lovely salad (yes wine too). One of the biggest disservices that we do each other is that we pretend to the world at large, that everything is perfect all of the time. We live behind our perfection smoke screens and tsk tsk when someone else isn’t so perfect. The fact of the matter is though, that when everyone is living this way, you get dirty little secret surprises. Ladies with children, don’t tell me there weren’t things you were surprised about when you got pregnant and had a baby! WHY, in God’s green earth, does someone not at least give you a warning shot across the bow BEFORE you’ve committing to hosting an alien being? Seriously. If I taught sex-ed, there’d be some additional material added, and probably a lot less teen pregnancy. It is not all growing belly, kicking baby and cuddly new being. There’s a whole lot of other stuff that NO ONE talks about.

The other thing that happens when things are glossed over or not talked about, is something ends up happening, and I end up thinking that there is something wrong with me. I mean, I just had this strange thing happen and I have never heard about anyone else experiencing it, so I must be defective. Seriously. Then I ask and learn that other people do, in fact, also experience said oddity and then I’m pissed. Why all the secrecy? Why all the smoke and mirrors? Do I REALLY want my life to be as airbrushed as the latest cover of Cosmopolitan magazine? How dull. Plus, it’s misleading to everyone else coming behind me that are going to be trying to figure out what’s wrong with them that they have to pluck or shave the hair growing on their big toe. Am I turning into a man? God Bless America. That crap just suddenly appears one day. I was shocked!

All of this is to say that my experience was much different than the ones that I read about. Yes, I lost some weight, about 5 pounds, which is bound to happen when you drink a sh*t ton of water and eat a meager amount of calories. I was expecting that, so I’m really glad it happened. Yes, I’m less puffy or bloated or swollen. That’s nice too, but I don’t know that it’s really noticeable to anyone but me. I didn’t, however, feel like I had more energy, I felt  more tired. I DID have cravings. Not for Skittles, but for meat. Big pieces of meat.  Would I do this again? Well, maybe. But maybe not. I guess we’ll just have to see.

Here is a lovely before and after picture for you. It’s not really fair because they were done in different lighting and I took the ‘after’ right before I went to work, so I had makeup on. If you try to disregard the softer lense look and the makeup and finished hair, you might notice a difference in my face. You might not. FYI, I was intentionally not smiling. I promise I wasn’t ready to kill anyone!