My Clean Colon

Not to get too graphic here, but Cyr and I went on a "cleanse diet" for three weeks. No, I did not talk him into this. Yes, he wanted to do it!

A good friend of mine did this and was talking about it when we were out with her a few weeks ago. We decided that maybe we should do a little detoxing ourselves. Now I know these things don't work. I have read many studies and seen the BBC "Truth About Food" episode where they take tests before and after a "cleanse" and the after results are just like the before. Only the people loose weight. To be honest I am not concerned about having a toxin free body. I'm concerned about being a little too heavy right now. So I say "Yeah baby, let's do this thing."

This, I can say, might also be another reason I have not blogged in a while. I have been in a bad mood for about three weeks. This cleanse thing involves taking all kinds of fiber pills and green seaweed pills and vitamins. It's 21 days long and you can't eat meat for the first 10 days. You can only eat fruits, vegetables and these protein shakes that you can add frozen fruit to. No bread, pasta, sugar or salt. You can eat 1 serving of lentils a day and you can have sea salt, just not regular salt.

You are also supposed to try to eat only organic foods the entire time. Being as I am not Bill Gates or a Rockefeller we did not adhere to the "organic only" portion of this cleans. Which really probably means I ate more pesticides during my cleanse than I do normally now that I think about it. So I would make trips to the grocery store and buy things I have never purchased before, come home and look them up on the internet to see how to cook them. I would buy things that I thought sounded good like acorn squash, or butternut squash. We also purchased a food processor! You laugh...but I have used that thing 3 times in the last 2 weeks and Cyr has used it a few times too! I wonder how long we will continue to use it though...

My favorite was the butternut squash soup and the eggplant babaganouch which is pureed eggplant, garlic, tahini and olive oil. Apparently I don't like to chew much. So anyway, we came out the end of this me a 11.4 lbs lighter and Cyr down 15 pounds! My goal is to keep 6 of it off. I am rather certain I have gained back 4 but am refusing to get on the scale. Denial ain't such a bad place you know...kinda nice.

The diet was hard though. We both became a little snippy. We actually once got into an argument at the grocery store. It went something like this:

Me: I need to get some lentils, they are over on this aisle.
Cyr: I don't want to go into the aisles because I don't want to look at what I can't have. I get frustrated. We can only eat the food on the outside of the aisles, the fruit and vegetables.
(He, bless his heart, only listens to hears the second part of my sentence.)
Me: I need to go get the lentils.
Cyr: I told you I don't want to go into the aisles!
Me: Grow up!
(continue as if listening to two children argue.)

Poor guy was so traumatized by all the fruits and vegetables in his system he couldn't bear to be even close to carbohydrates! I was also short tempered so I didn't much help the argument. We actually ended up laughing, but we were serious for a while there!

My advice to anyone looking to "cleanse"? Take a shower.

Just kidding, I actually feel great. I hope I can keep up all the veg a fruit eating. I also learned how to cook some good healthy meals. Not too bad, but really really not fun at all. One cool thing, Cyr and I each had two beers the other night and that was all we needed. I knew that diet was good for something...