My Cleanse Chronicles
Seven days into my PALETA cleanse and I can’t help but start to think about this little journey I’ve put my hunger through. This cleanse has not only helped me to understand how my body processes food, nutrients, & shakes, but more importantly, how my mind processes my thoughts and emotions. Deep stuff huh? Well, here take a look inside my my thoughts & follow me through the days, won’t you?
Day 1: Hey! These shakes are pretty tasty! I can totally do this! Look at all this delicious food! I don’t even have to think about my meals, thanks to Paleta! This is gonna be a breeze! And I’m going to feel so amazing to cleanse myself on a cellular level!
Day 2: As delicious and amazing my prepared, prepackaged food is, I want more of it. Like a lot more of it. I realize that this is enough food to live on and it’s so super good for me, but emotionally, physically, I want to chew on something. I understand that I’m a person who really likes to eat so this is a wonderful way to challenge myself, but damn. I just wanna chew! I guess that’s what got me into this challenge in the first place: absent-mindedly chewing until I feel the bottom of whatever bag is housing my chips/nuts/popcorn. Yes. I’m still on board!
Day 3: I’m a little tired today. Like I could sleep all day long. I still managed to squeak in a workout and then take a lovely evening walk. But my goodness, I’m exhausted. I’m in a pretty good mood though. That’s the funny thing about cleanses, you get into them for all of these different reasons, but it’s the things you don’t realize that you will respond with. Like I’m giving my body all of these beautiful foods, processing toxins from god-knows-when, but I’m happy. I’m happy because I’m not emotionally responding to upsetting my digestion or feeling guilty for a random act of chocolate. What a great cleanse-perk!!
Day 4: Sweet Jesus. What have I done? I’ll have to ask my lover/roommate to get rid of any soap or candles that smell like food. Otherwise I’m gonna eat it. If memories of my foul-mouthed youth has taught me anything, I don’t want to repeat chugging soap as a self-inflicted punishment.
Day 5: Oh my god. Where is that fucking soap? I know it’s hidden somewhere. I just want to smell it. I won’t taste it. I just need to smell something sweet and delicious that is absolutely un-edible. Maybe it doesn’t taste as bad as I remember. Not that I’d try it. But where is it???
Day 6: Aaaaaaand we’re back. My energy is great. I woke up in the best mood ever. I had such a kick that I actually did a spin class AND an ass-kicking hot yoga class. They really shouldn’t have called it a Yoga class though. I went there for a calm stretch, and instead had a cute guy yelling at me to do weighted lunges and to count my perfect plank push-ups at a volume that had nothing to do with zen. Even that didn’t mess up my mood though. Everyone should do a cleanse. I can’t believe how good I feel!!
Day 7: I feel so great. There’s stress about work and so many emails to catch up on before today is over, but everything is just rolling off my back. To the point where I’m starting to wonder how I can permanently incorporate eating this clean into my life outside of the cleanse. It can’t be an accident that everything about my life is exactly the same except my food intake, and I just feel rejuvenated. I feel calm and contemplative. My brain doesn’t feel like it’s struggling as much as it was a couple of days ago, so I must be done detoxing and now my body is just enjoying churning through a clean source of energy food.
That brings us to the present. I’m so intrigued to hear how my other cleansers are doing! Has your moodiness increased or decreased? Are you feeling like you are ready for the cleanse to be over or are do you wish it was longer? I’ve committed to a 14 day cleanse, but feel confident that I’ve leveled off at this point, and will just keep enjoying how lovely I feel. I can remember the first cleanse I did. The topsy-turvy feeling of not knowing whether that initial hunger and shock to my body was going to end really freaked me out. But now that I’ve done this a couple of times, it’s amazing how much I can enjoy it.
I hope that however long you are cleansing you realize it is so good for your body to start to look at food as fuel. We are lucky enough to be able to enjoy our fuel, so why not look at whatever you put in your body as something that effects you physically, mentally and emotionally. It should have a positive effect on you as a whole. I for one, am going to start looking at how I can achieve this feeling for a longer time. And I’m also going to figure out why the soap, candle and cookie people are working together. That just seems wrong to me now.
