January 7th 2009 – 9:35pm

Done Done and DONE!  Tonight marks my final evening of the master cleanse!  I have to admit that I have become used to the routine of lemonade, movements, and not eating.  I have even been able to prepare small meals for Steve without feeling tempted to nibble at all.  I suppose it would take this long on a fast to reach a point of satiety and content with ones goals.  I am very proud of myself :)

Today was, again, much of the same.  Although I didn’t feel nearly half as hungry today as I have felt the past two days at work.  I think I was getting used to it.  I made some orange juice with maple syrup for tomorrow and filled my Sigg bottle with it.  Tomorrow should be a similar day as I still wont be eating anything.

I really really REALLY can’t wait until I can cook some meals again!  I heated up some of Steve’s clam chowder and was able to resist it.  It sure smelled tasty though.  Damn MSG, why must you entice my senses so.

Also, as mentioned before, I did weigh in this morning to see how much weight I lost during the entirety of the cleanse.  I weighed in at 118 even before the cleanse and weighed in at 109.4 this morning!  Nearly 10 lbs gone!  I sure as heck feel great fitting into my jeans much more comfortably now :)  I am sure I will gain a few back but I am always trying to go off of how my clothes feel to make sure I am maintaining a comfortable and healthy weight.  109 sure feels good though, I haven’t weighed this light in ages.

I will go ahead and write down a quick menu plan for my ease-out phase of the master cleanse, for my own re-iteration and for anyone who may be curious:

Day 11:

• 32oz Fresh squeezed orange juice with grade b maple syrup and water.  32oz of water.  Drink these all day.

Day 12:

• B: Orange Juice and water
• L: Vegetable Juice heated hot and eaten like soup (I wonder how this is going to taste…) and blueberry pomegranate juice during the day
• D: Organic Miso soup

Day 13:

• B: Orange Juice and water again
• L: an apple or a banana
• D: Homemade hot vegetable soup

Then I will resume normal eating on the days following the ease out.  I’m so excited to cook again!  I am going to begin posting in a new category called “Cooking & Recipes”  when it comes to healthy food experiments I might conduct.  I have a nice menu of meals I am going to try over the next few weeks and will love blabbing about them in my new category :)

January 6th 2009 – 9:35pm

Almost done!  Today was a bit hard.  I wanted to eat something so bad today.  I think I just really miss the ritual of eating and especially cooking.  I spent about an hour tonight going through some cook books and creating a healthy veggie rich menu plan for the next 2 weeks.  We will be going food shopping this Friday to stock up.   I can’t wait to try some of these new healthy recipes!

I packed my boyfriend some easy-on-the-tummy snacks today.  Some brown rice cakes, cut up fruit, and broccoli with some artichoke Parmesan dressing to dip them in.  I’m glad he is feeling better.  I think the acidity in the lemonade was really starting to wear him down.  So I am glad he decided to ease off the cleanse.  He even went out to get a sub sandwich with some co-workers, and saved some for his dinner.  I guess his appetite is coming back, so that’s a good thing.  He will be nice and ready for all my home cookin’!

Today was basically similar to yesterday symptom wise.  Woke up in the wee hours of the morning to go.  Its become routine now.  I thought I was a bit more cleaned out, but today’s movements yielded some more nasties.  I drank lots of lemonade to stave my growling stomach.  Others around me were eating at their desks all day and I could smell their food.  I think the smell just triggers my tummy to growl instinctively because it is empty.  I didn’t necessarily want their food though.  And looking through those cook books this evening had a similar effect. Mmm…tasty tasty food will be consumed soon.

So tomorrow is my last day and I have already prepared my lemonade for the day.  I am having my tea right now and will have my last cup of tea tomorrow morning.  Hooray!  No more upset stomachs leading to massive movements!  I was thinking about having some peppermint tea or some of my weightless cranberry tea tomorrow night as a treat since I won’t be drinking the smooth move tea.   Then the following day will be an orange juice/maple syrup drink and lots of water.  I’m going to experiment with the orange juice.  I may not even need to add the maple syrup, but I might just to keep my energy levels up.  The grade b maple syrup has more calories in it to keep me more energized (which is also why it is in the lemonade).  I’m excited to have a new taste in my mouth tomorrow besides the lemonade.

I think I am going to hit the sack a little early tonight.  I am also going to weigh myself tomorrow and see how much weight I lost….*gulp*  I know most of it will be water weight and I will gain some back because of that once I start eating, but it was nice to have an all-day flatter tummy for the past few days (:

January 5th 2009 – 10:45pm

Well we are almost done with the cleanse!  Unfortunately my boyfriend decided that his body couldn’t take it anymore and decided to break his fast tonight with some hot chocolate I got him for the holidays.  He was complaining about lots of gassy bloating and claimed he just couldn’t handle the lemonade anymore.  I have to admit that it is really acidic.  It burns my bum some days.  He had issues with a flaming rump all throughout the cleanse.  So hats off to him for at least making it this far!  It was a great accomplishment.  And although his original reasons for going on the cleanse were manifested from myself, he still stuck through it and gave it a great go.  He says he feels ‘cleansed’ so I guess that is the best he could hope for (:

I am still committed to the 10 day minimum.  Although I feel relatively cleansed, I think I just want to be sure.  And I also want to keep the promise I made myself about using this cleanse as a precursor to better health and I feel if I were to break it off early, it might create some bad ju-ju in the near future in terms of my nutrition.  I decided to continue to make the lemonade until I run out of lemons.  I believe I will have just enough to carry me through day 10 so that should work out perfectly.

As far as my daily symptoms go, I had a movement during the night and one in the afternoon.  It sucks to sit at work and think…”Oh crap, I think I gotta go…”  Then having to walk all the way to the restroom on a false alarm.  There is always cramping before a movement and you pretty much have to wait until its about to come out before you know anything will.  Its a hassle, but doable.  I did get a bit hungry today, but I believe that it was my mind so used to me eating at certain times of the day at work that sort of tricked me into thinking I was hungry.  The lemonade sure did a great job of staving of the hunger though.  There is at least once a week free food somewhere in our building, either leftover catering from a lunch meeting or something someone brought in to share (today someone left some rum cake outside the conference room).  These are hard to resist.  But knowing I have this cleanse set in stone helps.  I just can’t help wondering how much self control I will have after I am through with the cleanse.  I will just need to think positive and remember about my accomplishments and new found health (:

My tongue was much pinker this morning, but throughout the day it did get coated again.  I think the lemonade does it.  Either way I’m just glad to see it gone in the morning rather than having it 24/7.  Also, my period has gotten MUCH lighter.  I believe it should be over in the next day or so.  That’s a relief.  Oh and I had the most random craving for steamed brussel sprouts today.  That will definitely be one of the first things I eat (:  I am also looking forward to making a garlic lemon pepper talapia dish next week as well. Mmmm…

Onward to day 9!  Almost there!  I can almost taste the orange juice!

January 4th 2009 – 6:35pm

I remembered to post early this evening.  Today went pretty well.  This morning I tried the salt water flush as planned but DANG was it hard.  I made the 32oz of water with over 2tsp of non-iodized sea salt.  I made sure to over-fill the rounded teaspoons just to make sure it would work this time.  Some research online told me it may not have worked the first time because there wasn’t enough salt.  I pre-heated the water in a pan on the stove first just to get it warmer, but not too warm.  Then I dissolved in the salt.  The pan filled up 2 and a half tall glasses worth by the end of it.  The first glass went down.  That was rough.  It was SO SALTY!  It tasted like tasteless chicken broth that had WAY too much salt added.  After that first glass my stomach was about to burst.  I was so full!  I started drinking the next glass and started feeling very nausous.  It took me about 25 minutes to finish the last glass because I literally could not fit any more in my stomach.  It hurt.  But I managed to get it all down eventually.  What came next was a bit unexpected.

After laying on the couch for a while letting my tummy settle and the nausea to subside I started to get the feeling that things needed to come out.  So I ventured to the bathroom and was in there for almost an hour!  I took my Nintendo DS with me (:  But to my surprise, the only thing that came out of my rear was….WATER!  Yes, salt water.  Actual but pee.  I was peeing out of my butt.  It was the weirdest feeling.  Every few minutes a burst of butt pee would come gushing out.  Then after a while it would be about 10-15 minutes before anything would come.  But nothing else came out.  Just a yellow-ish watery pee.  I was expecting secret stashes of toxins hidden in my intestines to come with it.  It sort of felt like a ‘gut shower’  It just went straight through me.  On one side I am glad to know that my insides must be relatively cleansed if nothing too significant came out during the salt water flush, and on the other hand I was a bit surprised.  I expected some grosser things to emerge.  Oh well.  I think I am going to stick with the tea for the rest of the cleanse not only because I won’t have a lot of time to make sure I can let the flush run its course (because of work), but also because it was uncomfortable to drink and keep down.

While I was in the bathroom I kept calling for my boyfriend to bring me water because I immediately felt dehydrated after taking so much salt in.  So I had a few glasses of water which helped a lot.  I also managed to get pretty far in the game I was playing too (:  And finally after that ordeal I had a glass of lemonade which helped some tummy growls I was having all morning.  I have had a few glasses today, I will probably have just about the minimum amount of glasses by days end.  Then some tea to sooth my mouth and help with movements tomorrow.  Hoo boy, those should be interesting at work.  My boyfriend brought up a good point though.  Just before our holiday break, the entire downstairs team moved to another building we acquired to make room for our growing team.  And we bet that the bathrooms down there won’t be as inhabited on a regular basis which might help us feel better about stinking up the stalls a couple times a day (:  Its only for 3 more days so it shouldn’t be too bad.

I noticed today that I wasn’t really craving any foods.  My boyfriend had some sports on tv and if it were day 2 or 3, all of the food commercials would have killed me (they did, we watched a hockey game or two during that time…it was torture), but today they didn’t really seem to phase me.  I like that (:  Those food advertisements really have a manipulative way of making you hungry for such awful foods.

I had a slight hint of a headache today and it began around the time of me drinking the salt water flush.  I think the sodium had something to do with it.  But its not too bad.

My period throughout these past few days has been about heavy as it normally would be.  Except this time around my lower back was absolutely killing me.  I always have at least a little lower back muscle pain before and during my cycles, sometimes its more bearable than others, but this time was pure murder.  I had a little trouble sleeping right away a few nights and had constant aching throughout the day.  Today it was better than the previous few days.  Its getting better.  Just in time too, I’ll be ending my cycle around the same time I can start eating and cooking again.  I will feel like a brand new woman with a newly cleansed body, mind, and soul!

Another thing I noticed throughout the entire cleanse is that my boyfriend and I aren’t as testy with each other as we thought we might become due to the hunger and lack of food.  We actually have been much more affectionate and compassionate toward each other throughout.  If the cleanse reinforced any of our pre-existing ideas, then patience, understanding, and teamwork were definitely some of them!

Well, off to enjoy the last night of freedom before work tomorrow!