The Master Cleanse- Part 2

The Master Cleanse- Part 2

​I did it!  I finished the cleanse!! Yay me!  Read about my second half of the journey below, and I'll tell all the results!

Day Five: The cravings have really set in.  Last night, I treated myself to a movie and if you are like the average American movie-goer, you eat popcorn with your movie! That was killing me not to be able to have popcorn with my movie!!  I made it... but it was not fun.
Oh, and I had a terrible side-effect from the tea I was drinking.  I don't know if it was the combination of the tea plus the juice, but my face swelled up and I broke out in a rash... It didn't hurt, but it made me a little nervous!!  I stopped drinking the tea and flushed my system with lots of extra water and my skin went back to normal.  (after two days!!!)


Day Six:  My schedule had been fairly light thus far so the diet seemed to be working out well.  I had plenty of energy, good mental attitude, and was feeling pretty good all around.  Today, was the first day of a busy work schedule.  I was on my feet for most of my nine hour shift and was ready to fall into bed the moment I got home.  I slept soundly until my alarm woke me up the next morning.

Day Seven:  Another grueling  shift at work.  No hunger pains, but my energy levels kept getting depleted and I wasn't able to re-fuel.  I was burning off more than I took in.  Now in normal diet situations, this would be a good thing, but not the case with this one.  My body went into dehydration mode and I had to try and increase my liquids.  Another solid nights sleep!  Oh, and I noticed that my nails started breaking, so I added some calcium to my morning vitamin pack. 

Day Eight:  By now, I am tired.  Tired of drinking the lemon mix, tired of making the lemon mix, and my body is just super tired.  I can feel my body dragging along trying to get through the day.  Again, if I hadn't been so busy at work, I don't think it would have affected me in this way, but unfortunately,  I was super busy.  It was hard to keep my mood up.  I was happy, but just so exhausted that I could barely function.  After work, I went home and was in bed by 7 o'clock and slept through until my alarm went off the next morning at eight.  (I weighed in and have lost a total of nine pounds!)

Day Nine:  I am SO done with this diet!! Lol!!  I don't mind the taste, I'm just sick of the taste.  Everything smells so good to me.  I am craving food like crazy.  Knowing that today was going to be another busy day, I cheated and drank six ounces of pure orange juice to hopefully give me a boost.  
It helped.  But at this point, I'm just ready to be done.  I have absolutely no intentions of going for the fourteen days.  I am craving real food so badly!  Do you realize how many commercials on television are about food???  I have never wanted a taco so bad in my whole life!!   Only one more day.

Day Ten:  I am happily throwing away all of my finished sixteen ounce bottles once they are empty!  What a simple joy! Lol!  My mood is high again and my energy levels are too.  Happy to get this over with!
Tomorrow, I am supposed to drink nothing but fruit juices and the following day, I get to introduce soup and solid fruits.  I am so excited, the end is near!

Day Eleven:  Orange juice for breakfast!! Beautiful, wonderful orange juice!!    I weighed in and only lost a total of ten pounds.  While yes, that's a lot it just shows me that I could have stopped at day eight!!  I do feel lighter, not tired, but I am having a hard time not grabbing and eating anything I can get my hands on.  I am back to being hungry.  So, instead of waiting until tomorrow, I dug into some fresh cut pineapple and honeydew melon.  I know, I know.  I wasn't supposed to, but it seemed like the better alternative than that block of cheddar cheese that was calling my name!!  It tasted SO good!!  My teeth were so happy to be used again!  
It has been an experience. Would I do it again?  Probably not.  Hopefully, I won't need to.  Now that I'm getting older, I know I need to watch what I eat a little more closely.  Oh, and I will.  I'm going to watch it and savor it and appreciate it!!
Like I said in my last post, I do see the benefit of fasting, and I will do that again, probably once a year now, but this seemed a little too extreme.  It was an interesting experiment and it's good to see how my body adapts to different variables, but I'm glad it's over!  
The ingredients for the diet cost around $160.00 for the entire ten days.  The lemons had to be fresh and the maple syrup had to be organic.  It is time consuming squeezing all those lemons and measuring everything out.  But if you choose to do this, I highly recommend using the sixteen ounce water bottles.  It helped me tremendously!
Like I said early, I lost a total of ten pounds.  (Somewhere between day seven and day nine, I gained two pounds for some reason.  It is my theory that's when I went into starvation mode because I wasn't drinking enough, so my body kept everything, just in case.)
Also, the psyllium seed capsules did not work for me, and I ended up buying an additional laxative tea to help... uh... move things along.

So, there you have it!  The Master Cleanse as it was used by yours truly.  Let me know your story or your feed back below!  I'll get back to your comments later, because just now, I have a date with a taco!!

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