As I said in my last post, I was in Montreal on the weekend. It was a great time, but all the rich food, alcohol and unhealthy living took its toll on me. By the time I got back to Toronto, I felt a bit of a physical mess; my digestive system not quite feeling right. A great reminder to lay off the red meat binges, the ice cream cravings, and of course social lubricants (alcohol, thou art a cruel mistress). I was feeling in such a state that I had decided that it was finally time to go on a cleanse again. (I am no expert on cleanses, and if any of you are, feel free to send me an email if you would like to write a guest post on the subject). But I thought it would be interesting to let you know how my cleanse is going for me strictly for interest sake. Again, I am no expert on dietary measures and my situation is in no means the same as yours. If you are considering a cleanse, please consult an MD or naturopathic doctor first.
The cleanse I am doing is called Cleanse Smart and is produced by Renew Life. It consists of 2 bottles of pills. Bottle #1 is for an organ detox and bottle #2 is a colon cleanse. The simplest part of the cleanse is taking the pills. I take 2 organ detox pills in the morning and 2 colon cleanse pills at night. Both times you must have an empty stomach. And this is as easy as the cleanse will get. The tricky part is the diet. To really do a cleanse, you have to take all the junk out of your diet. So, for the next while I will be eating like a monk. Though I get the feeling that there are sects of monks that eat better than I will be. After all, wasn’t champagne invented by French monks? Now, if I was going to dedicate myself to religion, I’d definitely want to hook up with the partying monk variety. But no, I will not be living off of a monkish champagne diet. Instead, I won’t be taking any meat (red meat, white meat, pink meat, fish meat (Dr. Seuss… anyone, anyone?), steak, hamburgers, pork chops, sushi are all taboo for the next few days), any wheat products (no bread, pasta, couscous… not even a lousy cracker), any alcohol (beer, beer, beer or beer), any instant food (pizza pockets), any dairy (pizza pockets) or anything I might enjoy but might be vaguely suspicious of its questionable nutritional value (pizza pockets).
My first hurdle was timing. I arrived back from Montreal and promptly took the first set of pills muttering “never again” to myself as I washed them down with a glass of water (quite the ventriloquist act if you’ve ever seen me do this) and went to bed. I woke up the next morning and washed down the second set of pills and looked around for some brekkie. Well, my cupboards were practically bare, but also, there was nothing I had that I could consume as part of my cleanse diet. Those cans of tuna? No. The carton of eggs? No. The breakfast sausages? No. Some toast? No. So, while I had food, I had nothing I was allowed to eat. If there was nothing I could eat, then I would eat nothing. No problem. I’ll just have to last a while until I’m done work so that I can go out and buy some veggies. I was actually doing ok until a client arrived with a thank you present of Norwegian caviar and cookies from Starbucks. Hmmmmmmmmm. It would be rude to refuse…. I had just started the cleanse and I’m sure I had bits of the weekend still floating around in me, meaning that I was hardly clean yet and these dirty little cookies wouldn’t reaaaaallly be hurting me. And so yes, only 12 hours into the cleanse and I was devouring cookies then crackers and caviar like I had just seen food for the first time. I should add in my defense that the caviar was out of this world.
Today, the second day of the cleanse, I ran down to China Town East and picked up a cornucopia of Chinese greens, tofu, and fruit. So I am now set to weather the storm. I figure I can nibble on this mixed with some brown rice and be satisfied for a good while. I was feeling proud of myself after going into work with a stomach full of nutritious goodies until I had my second client who was so happy with how much better she was feeling since she started treatment that she brought me in a little care package of Cadbury’s chocolates as well as a goody bag of Quality Street chocolates. Now, normally I can withstand any assault of Cadbury’s or Quality Street, but today I was defenseless, because not only were they chocolate (my favourite food group of them all), but they were from England. Bloody ‘ell! I should explain that Cadbury’s and Quality Street are chocolatiers as old as jolly old England itself and the chocolate they make there is superior and in a completely different hemisphere as the “chocolates” made in Canada under license from Cadbury’s and Quality Street. (It should also be noted that one of the first real stumbling blocks that the European Union had in hammering out its framework was in the legislature over chocolate. England was at risk of not being able to call its chocolate “chocolate” as it had a higher cocoa butter content that the rest of Europe. There was a passionate, heated battle in European parliament, that somehow ended with me having pure chocolate gold in my hands on this day). If you ever have the chance to try the real thing, go for it, you won’t regret it. (well, except that you might now never really enjoy another chocolate again).
Long story short (it’s a relative thing…. believe me, when I start on chocolate, it takes a lot to stop me), I greatly enjoyed a taste of England tonight. I hope my cleanse forgives me. I will try to be a better, truer cleanser tomorrow. Amen. (Oh and if the 2 clients that led me into temptation are reading this….. Thank you. The caviar, cookies and chocolate were absolutely delicious and well worth every morsel of guilt)