Cleaning accomplished

Time to recap the detox.  It is over, for you inquiring minds.  I did it for 10 days.  Three days of the elimination diet and one week of the cleanse.  It is meant to be a three-week cleanse but the good doctor says it's fine if you only do one week for your first time. 

These are some things I learned from the cleanse:

• I CAN survive without fast food. (This was a problem for me before.)
• Smoothies are a yummy breakfast that can be packed with antioxidants, protein, and fiber!  (The hand blender my parents bought me for Christmas was just perfect for these.  Thanks Mom and Dad!!)
• I can actually cook and learned to love my kitchen through my experiments.
• Taking time to prepare my food makes me more mindful of what I am putting into my body.
• To be in the present with all things, not just food.

These are all valuable lessons that I will carry with me as I go about my normal life post-cleanse.  People think I am healthy because I run.  When it came to food, that was so not the case.  I am excited now to be able to eat healthier and therefore live life feeling better, which was the main reason I did the detox.  I knew that I had put nothing but crap into my body for some time now.  It was time to remove that from all of my systems...because, you see, they all work together.  A great example of teamwork.  I learned so much about the human body from this book.  I love learning new things!  I am a dork.  A dork full of (normally) useless information.

It was difficult.  No lying here.  After a few days it got easier though.  I found it not so difficult to find things to eat.  I even went out to eat while still on it!  Yes, it's allowed.  I ate at Barberitos so I could see and specify exactly what was going into my salad.

I did not feel deprived or hungry most of the time.  I felt just right.  (Which is how we should feel, right?)

Now for the things I would do differently.

• Discover what to eat so that I can run as fast and as hard as I'm accustomed to. (I just didn't have the energy I needed and wanted when running.) 
• Find more dinner (soup) recipes and always cook them rather than trying to eat raw pureed vegetables. (Not good.)
• Lower the prices of "good-for-you" foods. (I spent a fortune on groceries in those 10 days.)
• Ease myself back into eating other foods so that I could identify my "triggers". 
• Do this at a time when I can and want to take a break from running for a while. (Maybe after my next marathon.)

If you are in the right mind-frame (non-training) mode, I would highly recommend the Clean detox.  It allows you to have solid food, which a lot of detoxes don't.  I feel much better now that I have cleaned out my system and am going to keep up this clean thing as much as I can.  Bread is making a reappearance in my life but I don't believe that I have a gluten-allergy so I think we're cool on that one.  I need my carbs so that I can just... keep... running.