I had read in Tom Woloshyn's book The Complete Master Cleanse about cutting back on caffeine on the days leading up to your cleanse. This in itself was a motivation for me. I like caffeine! I like to have an extra shot of espresso IN my espresso! Gimme Gimme Gimme! Every once in a while I know I have to take a complete break from it though, back right off and reintroduce it slowly. Normally I have a little headache for a day or so-nothing a handful of tylenol can't fix. Anyway I read to cut back on caffeine by 25% a day for the 4 days leading up to your cleanse.
Now, maybe it's cause I'm an Aries, or maybe it's just cause I'm me-but I'm impatient! Once I decide I'm going to do something I NEED to do it right then before I loose my momentum. So instead of the normal 4 days of weening myself off, I cut my caffeine in half the first day and cut it out altogether the 2nd day(starting my cleanse then on the 3rd day). Add that to the normal detoxing side effects that your body goes through and I was a wreck! I had a headache that wouldn't quit! My HEADACHE had a headache! And there were only two ways to fix it. A) a bucket of coffee or B) tylenol. But wait-on the master cleanse the whole point is to NOT eat anything that can reactivate your digestion and detract from the healing that you want to occur. This means No PILLS, no gum, no candy, no tasting dinner as you cook it for your family, no nothing but your lemonade, salt water flush, Smooth Move tea or occasionally peppermint tea.
Well by day 2 I was close to non functioning, that's how bad it was. I tried all the things you're supposed to do-increase your water in case it's from dehydration (no, it's not! but I increased water anyway) tried to go to a 'happy place' in my mind but it turns out my happy place is starbucks so that backfired in a big way, tried meditation-that took me back to starbucks as well. In the end I took 2 tylenol. And I slept! And it was good. The next morning I was fine until about 9 (aka 2nd cup of coffee time). Then the headache started brewing (see the coffee reference there-not a coincidence!) So I did take 1 more tylenol to catch the headache before it got so bad this time. I have to say by that afternoon I was feeling pretty good!
Here's a brief breakdown of how the days went for me-just in case you're wondering how to plan your cleanse around your schedule.
Day 1-I worked thinking that by keeping busy I wouldn't notice that I was not eating 'food', just drinking it. By that afternoon the headache was already kickin my butt and I had a major fuzzy head! (I later read this is a common symptom at the beginning of the detoxing process)
Did salt water flush with NO results...
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 2 I was pretty much non functional, spent a lot of time resting and trying to get rid of my headache. I want to say that I had not yet had HUNGER pains! The drink was surprisingly satisfying and you can pretty much have as much as you want. If you're trying to actually lose weight you can reduce your maple syrup intake but I kept mine at the recommended level for just detoxing as I didn't want to cut out too many calories. I was still getting a good amount!
Did salt water flush AGAIN with no results...
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 3 'Its a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life....and I'm feeling good! No kidding! I felt fine!
Referencing the books/websites I'd read in preparation for the cleanse, I was aware that there would be food 'cravings'. This is not to be confused with hunger pains. This is more of a 'I HAVE to eat a WHOLE chocolate cake right now!' sort of craving. Not healthy, and apparently part of the detoxing process-when your body screams out for all the bad crap it's been so used to having. My craving was actually for sweet and sour chicken and I had it BAD. I was tempted to chuck the whole thing in, thinking surely 3 days was better than nothing((which is NOT true, by the way)) and just having the chicken. I'd already lost about 5.5 lbs at this point, I KNEW most of it was water but heck, this is sweet and sour chicken we're talking about. But no-I stayed strong and made it through and the chicken lived another day.
Did the salt water flush and learned why it's called FLUSH. Worked in a big time way! Wahoo.
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 4 Going Strong! I actually worked out! Just the treadmill for about 30 minutes-less than I'd normally do but I was cautious about overdoing it. Still, felt fine! Was hungry after so had a lemonade drink-I was actually starting to look forward to them!
As it took so long to start working, I did another salt water flush(with positive results again).
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 5 Fuzzy head is completely gone, have plenty of energy((not an exceptionally HIGH level, but I felt fine considering I was on such a limited diet AND I hadn't had caffeine in 5 days! I spent a lot of time this day trolling the master cleanse message forum boards reading other peoples stories and getting tips on things.
No SWF but did have SM Herbal Tea. It's important that you have this every day!
Day 6 I ventured out for the day. Had my first lemonade drink in the morning after my SWF. Then I mixed up my lemon juice and maple syrup. NOTE-when mixing it up in advance it's important you only mix up what you're about to drink in the next 10 minutes. The lemons start to loose their nutritional benefits after that amount of time. If you HAVE to mix it to take it with just mix it with the maple syrup((which will act as a preservative)) and add water and cayenne pepper right before you drink. This is important for another reason. If you add the cayenne pepper too early it starts to get hot...fast! Not pleasant! So I mixed up enough solution to take with me, packed up my cayenne pepper, measuring spoon and bottles of water and went out. Around lunch time I realized I'd packed everything BUT my mixture! OH CRAP! So I drank my bottles of water-having remembered that some folks actually do a water cleanse for a few days anyway-and made it home at about 6pm where I promptly downed 2 big glasses of lemonade. Unfortunately I did have hunger pains at this point, my own fault for forgetting my solution. This eventually resulted in the early demise of my 10 day plan.(10 days is the recommended minimum for the cleanse, some people go weeks or even months!)
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 7 still having hunger pains, broke down and had a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice in the evening, was heart broken! It'd been going so well. Lost 8.5 lbs and was feeling good up until the day I forgot my 'food'.
SM Herbal Tea in the evening.
Day 8 a day of juices, lemonade and eventually soup-coming off the cleanse.
1 last SWF and still having the herbal tea at night.
Day 9 The same to eat again-still trying to focus mainly on the lemonade but also had juice, soup and crackers.
No SWF, instead it's time to start putting back the GOOD bacteria now by introducing prebiotics 2x a day(or whatever your particular brand suggests)
Now I'm back to a 'normal' diet, but really I'm not! I'm using this weight loss/cleanse as a launching pad for my next weight watchers trip! I worked out that one glass of lemonade is 1 point for me(old system, not points plus system) and so I supplement that in when I am getting hungry. It fills me up and gets me through til the next meal time where I can enjoy proper healthy food.
Right folks-I'm super tired right now from a long day, will write more asap. Just know that IF you are considering doing this cleanse there is more you need to know! If you want to start before I finish my blog entries I'd say get a couple books on it from the library. Heck-you should do that anyway-for your own piece of mind. Some of the books can be read on google books.com also there are a LOT of websites about the master cleanse-a lot of them have forums where you can read/ask questions and that helps a lot too.
Good night folks!
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