Getting CLEAN. Mostly.

 

 

  I decided to do a detox this spring. It had been hovering about in my mind for some time under the "possibly interesting" category, but as long as the weather was nippy, it wasn't going to happen. Then spring finally arrived and all the sluggishness of my winter habits hit me full force. I still have a metabolism like a rocket (though I expect any day to wake up having put on 40 pounds over night) and in the winter, buried in SAD and cozy blankets, I tend to just eat bread until I can barely move. Bread and I have a soaring and lifelong  romance, saturated in evocative memories involving both my mother (a dedicated bread baker) and tomatoes and avocados. This winter, with all the snow and the realization that damnit, SAD only seems to get worse as you age, was particularly heavy on bread and cheese.  Spring came and I felt that I was still hibernating. Or dead. I had so little energy that I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering from adrenal exhaustion again, which leaves you feeling like the only human at a vampire buffet. Utterly drained. But then I remembered my detox aspirations.

    I feel like now I should say that the detox I attempted to do specifically said not to detox if you thought you were having adrenal exhaustion. I blithely ignored this because I was fairly sure that it was my demon lover, Bread, who was causing the problems. I purchased CLEAN, By Dr. Alejandro Junger.  In hindsight, I don't think I needed the book. The research I should have done before downloading it would have shown me that the CLEAN website not only provides a free list of the foods you can and can't eat during the detox, but recipes as well. If you are familiar with the way detoxing works, you probably don't need the book unless you want it.  I also don't agree with everything he says, for instance, he claims that a huge part of what is making Americans so unhealthy is meat. Too much meat, and most of it not organic or pastured. Later in the book he says that he feels you need a PHD in nutrition to be a healthy vegetarian. Seriously? Because what it sounds like to me is that humans need a PHD in healthy eating, period. Omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan. Anyway, I soldiered on.

   The detox requires you to stop eating processed grains (white rice etc.), dairy, caffeine, sugar, gluten, soy, corn, and a small selection of other fruits and vegetables that Junger feels inhibits the detox process. He does allow some meat, mainly fish, chicken and lamb, all of it organic and/or free range/pastured. I believe I've mentioned before that I'm not a vegetarian per se, in that I occasionally pop open a tin of wild salmon, usually during some kind of wild hormonal craving, but this is a rare occurrence of a few times a year, and I don't eat any meat beyond that. I can't do caffeine, I eat an extremely low sugar diet, and the only soy we eat is organic tofu. The big issues for me were dairy and gluten. The detox can be done for a week, two weeks, or the ultimate cleanse, three weeks. I intended to do the whole three weeks. I made it ten days.

    Benefits

• My skin cleared up dramatically around the 5th day.There wasn't anything very wrong with it, but my complexion was muddy and rough, and I just looked tired. I was also breaking out frequently. Now my face is bright and clear; it looks and feels so smooth it's like I've been airbrushed.

 

• My acid reflux is gone. It appeared mysteriously a few months ago and got so out of hand I stopped eating dinner for awhile in an effort to be able to sleep without it bothering me. Occasionally it would calm down, but it's been gone since during the detox and has stayed gone.

• My energy level is greatly improved. It is not only high, but very sustained. Unusual for me because I'm definitely a sprinter type, intense bursts of energy followed by fatigue.

 

• Allergies. I will admit that I was very curious to see if Junger's claims in this area held true. Essentially, the theory is that your body can't handle allergens because it's bogged down with toxins. I've had moderate hay fever since I was 6 or 7. I also don't take any medication for it because . . . I just don't. It was nothing for me to sneeze fifty to a hundred times during the course of an afternoon outside. That hasn't happened yet and the pollen here is exploding. I don't know what to think.  I've experienced a very mild runny nose and a few sneezes here and there, but absolutely nothing like before. Part of me is still skeptical, but I've since read that many other people have had the same experience.

 

Cons

• If you're vegan or vegetarian, you will be hungry. And not the pleasant, omnivore I-just-had- -a-juicy-chicken-for-lunch-and-am-now-mildly-hungry-I-shall-eat-a-few-almonds-to- satisfy-myself. No, more of the I'll-rip-the-throat-out-of-anyone-getting-between-me-and-food kind of hungry.

• Smoothies are boring. Once a day is doable. Twice a day feels like you're relegated to baby food. While everyone else is only halfway through dinner, you're sitting there empty handed picking chia seeds out of your teeth.

• It's extra work. Depending on your life and what you choose to eat, it's a lot of extra work.

• I don't like cold smoothies. I don't like cold food or drinks in general, it really hurts my stomach. So if I was using frozen fruit, I had to warm up the almond or coconut milk before drinking. Perhaps in the heat of July this wouldn't be much of an issue, but any other time of year, certainly for me, I can't stand such cold food.

 

 

    How come I didn't do the full three weeks? My weight. Junger addresses the concerns of underweight people doing this detox by assuring them that the people who lose the most weight the quickest usually need it, and that if weight is lost, it can be put back on with strategically healthy food after the cleanse. He also advises those who are underweight to double up their smoothies, which I did. I lost eight pounds in ten days. Even though I felt good, I hadn't wanted to lose weight at all, especially considering that while it's easy for me to drop weight, it's hard for me to put it back on and I still had eleven days to go. I can't see being able to do the full three weeks until my metabolism slows down. 

   I was interested to see whether I would react poorly to certain foods after the detox. Well, I was actually only worried about finding that I was gluten intolerant, because, you know, life wouldn't be the same without bread. I'm happy to say that I found myself having no allergic reaction at all that I could see, so I'm assuming that my body was just overburdened with carbohydrates and dairy and that's what was making me feel so exhausted. I decided I'm going to limit bread and dairy anyway, because I've seen what a difference it has made, but I'm pretty happy that I can still eat them!

    I thought I'd like to share this because it seemed pretty fantastic to me and Spring is a great time to do something like this if you feel you need it. Have any of you ever done a cleanse or detox? Did you experience anything similar?

Comments

[Erin aka Conscious Shopper]

I did the Clean detox in March, and I was very disappointed that I didn't have any of the benefits I've read others describe. I was specifically interested in the allergy thing, and maybe it's because I went back to eating normally after the cleanse, but my allergies hit me just as hard as usual this spring. I was bummed because I really wanted it to work!

[TheSimplePoppy]

That's no good, Erin! No wonder you were disappointed. I didn't expect as much of a change as actually occurred (I'm naturally skeptical!) but I was really surprised by the lessening of allergy symptoms. I wonder whether I'll still find this to be the case the farther away from the detox I get. Maybe different detoxes work for different people?

[Erin Kleider]

Am I the world's most unhealthy person? I have never done that kind of detox. I will periodically do a carb cleanse or a chocolate cleanse (and I don't mean that I eat only chocolate...I mean I don't eat chocolate at all) and I guess that for the diet I am on right now, I am eating similarly to what you describe without the smoothies but I haven't lost weight...thyroid, you know...

I don't really like smoothies either, especially not healthy ones, and unless it is warm, the thought of drinking an icy drink TOTALLY turns me off. Same with salad. I do LOVE salad, but I found it very difficult to eat salad with every day regularity this winter while it was cold. I wanted warm food. Now that it is warm, salad totally appeal.

[TheSimplePoppy]

Oh, I'm pretty sure you're not the world's unhealthiest person, Erin! Mmm ... chocolate cleanse.

You are supposed to eat smoothies for breakfast and dinner in order to give your digestive system a break so that it only has one solid meal to digest during detoxing. And yeah, smoothies aren't my favorite. I couldn't believe some people were doing this diet in the winter; that would about kill me. Like you, I have ZERO interest in cold food unless it's at least in the high 80's!

[Tanja from Minimalist Packrat]

I have a smoothie just about every day, but I have the world's foremost expert on smoothies making them for me :). It's really just my honey but he kicks out some awesome ones. Have you tried not refrigerating your fruit? We stop by the produce stand a couple times a week, so our fruit sits out on the counter for the most part. That way the only cold part is the juice we use as a base. Anyways, just a thought!

Here's one of our stand-by recipes if you feel like trying something different out. You may just not have found "your" kind of smoothie yet: fresh mangoes, strawberries, and blueberries in a base of juice. Simple and yummy. We skip soymilk and yogurt and it's a lot more enjoyable for me now. Just my 2cents chiming in!

[TheSimplePoppy]

Hi Tanja, I have been enjoying smoothies now that the temperatures have regularly been in the 80's. I had thought about using all fresh fruit (as opposed to some frozen) but berry season had yet to come in, even now it's about 2 weeks away, and the fruit at Whole Paycheck was about 6 dollars a pint - cannot afford a 20 dollar smoothie! You smoothie recipe sounds great; I love fresh mango.

[Jared]

I did a Whole30 (http://whole9life.com/2011/06/whole-30-v4/) in February, and it was ok. No crazy cravings, no amazing feelings or apparent physical benefits during the process, no bad reactions after the 30 days when re-introducing foods .... I dunno, I'm glad I did it, and could see it being useful to perhaps do each January as a 'post holiday cleanse' but it seemed people online were making a bigger deal out of it than I experienced.

[Jared]

The posting software grabbed the closing parenthesis for the link --- get rid of that and it'll work (if you can edit posts to fix it, and delete this one, that might be best ;))

[maureen173@gmail.com]

Okay, this is getting weird. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, since the very first day we met, sitting on the Miller's wooden back steps, it felt like we were finishing each other's sentences and couldn't get the words out fast enough. But still, I'm floored by how we have been having parallel experiences without realizing it, even though we're like 200 miles apart. I need to stop reading and go to bed now, but just wanted to comment on the cleanse because it was so phenomenal and I am planning to do it again during Ramadan since I won't be fasting, but still want to do something to challenge and restrain myself.

I did a 28-day detox cleanse in March, which was pretty much identical to the one you described (though I didn't look at the Clean website so it might be different). My motivation was very similar, in that the bread and the cabin fever (plus having a baby in February, after gaining like 40 lbs.) had started to make me feel like I was walking through mud. I NEED energy just to get through my day, it's not an option anymore, so I was doing it for that as much as for anything else. It was no dairy, no gluten, no soy, no caffeine and no sugar. I did the full 28 days and felt AMAZING. A few new habits I developed that I am still doing are drinking an apple cider vinegar tonic every morning upon rising, and at one or two other points in the day; having a green smoothie daily; having much more fresh food at every meal than ever before, as I found it harder to tolerate things like bread or pasta. Replaced pasta and rice with quinoa, which I've always liked but never ate much of because the cost was prohibitive. I actually loved the smoothies, and although it sounds gross, I was CRAVING the kale, berry and mango ones I would have in the morning. Very inspired by the Raw Family's website and how they healed themselves of a slew of ailments by infusing their bodies with more micronutrients. Though I don't believe in the theory that food should never be cooked (who can eat a raw potato?), I do think we can all benefit from the addition of more food in its natural state. There are plenty of foods that should ONLY be eaten "raw" so I strove to eat lots and lots of them. (Have you ever cooked a cucumber? A banana?)

Anyway, at the risk of rambling on - is it too late for that? - the measurable benefits were that I lost 10 lbs. and could fit into a pair of non-maternity jeans; I had tons of energy, where I had been literally dragging myself through my days before; my nasal congestion cleared up; and I completely lost my cravings for junk food. My drug of choice had been Hershey's Nuggets (by the bag!) and after a few days, I had no desire for things like that. It has been about 5 months and I still haven't felt like a slave to sugar which, for me, is nothing short of miraculous. I don't think I'll go back to white sugar and flour because I know how crappy I feel and envision what it is doing to my insides, so I've been experimenting with desserts for the family that use things like garbanzo-fava bean or brown rice flour, dates or raw agave for sweetness, coconut oil instead of butter and applesuace instead of eggs. They're really good! My sister-in-law works for Random House and gifted me the cookbook for Babycakes NYC, a gluten-free vegan bakery in Manhattan whose cupcake was voted Best in the City. I've been salivating over the recipes and have made about a dozen of them so far (I have to save up and buy the ingredients a few at a time over a few weeks though because some are ridiculously expensive, so it limits how often I can bake. Probably a good thing anyway.)

So my experience was incredible and I can't wait to do it again. Would love to share recipes if anyone has any detox-friendly ones!

[TheSimplePoppy]

I'd love to know if you used a program with recipes or just decided to cut out those things because you know you needed to. Like I said, I felt like I didn't really need the CLEAN book, especially as the info is on the website.

Unfortunately I've lapsed a little since the kitchen renovation because it's been difficult to cook. . . well, anything! I've definitely cut back on my gluten, I used to eat up to 6 pieces of bread a day (!), but dairy is my downfall. I'm still making smoothies, and I'm usually eating a salad once a day, so overall, lots more vegetables and raw food than usual. It's funny, because I thought our diet was great for the average American before the detox, but then I realized just how much more veg and fruit we should be eating. Made a huge difference in my energy level! It would be great to have more recipes, it's hard doing this kind of eating off the cuff!

[Rob Aker]

detox sucks, I adjusted my diet and started doing p90x... feel so much better now