The Cleansing Process

After drinking about five gallons (only a slight exaggeration, I assure you) of wine on Friday night I realize now is the time to deal with the issues of my love for red wine and attempt to combat it. It has to go, or be tamed down to a seriously dull roar, if I'm going to be successful in my quest to the 5k.

In order to get out the bad and welcome the new & less pickled me, I have decided to do something called the Master Cleanse or the "Lemonade Diet," as it's called. I'm not doing this for the diet purposes, mostly the detox purposes. My good friend, Rachel, has decided to do this with me and today is our start day.

The mixture is a concoction of water, maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper -- all organic of course. You mix it up as follows:

- 10 oz. filtered water
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup (Grade B)
- 1/10 teaspoon cayenne pepper

It's lovely as you can see from the picture. I've put mine in a nice wineglass so I don't feel so deprived. It's not working, by the way. This is what we are going to live off of for the next ten days. The only other thing permitted is peppermint tea. They also suggest you do a sea salt cleanse in the morning to get the body functions going - this doesn't sound pleasant what-so-ever.

There's a lot of claims about how great this detox makes you feel. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "being happier" in ten days thing, but we'll see how it goes. Right now I'd be happy with a nice medium rare steak. I will, however, push those thoughts out of my malnourished head.

Today has had it's challenges, but in the long run has not been that bad. It's gone a little something like this:

9 - 11 a.m. - Just started - not feeling too hungry. The bad feeling was probably caused because of the lack of coffee in my body and my body's rejection of this whole crazy idea.
12:00 - Lunch. That was tougher than I thought. I had tea while my husband had a nice big cheeseburger with fries. Justifiable homicide if you ask me.
1 - 3 p.m. - Starting to feel a bit sluggish and now the belly was wanting food and protesting. I did not comply and gave it another glass of the yummy stuff instead. Belly was not happy.

It's now 7:30 and I think I am going to actually make it through Day 1. The husband just stood by the pantry, kicking back sea salt kettle chips and I didn't succumb. This is a good sign. Tomorrow is a new day.