the cleanse: the first week

Jul 5, 2011

I have completed the first week of the 21-Day Standard Process Purification Cleanse. I have not cheated with even one little crumb of non-vegetable or non-fruit matter – although it has been close a few times! I have found myself automatically picking up the children’s food and lifting it to my lips and then remembering right at the last moment and putting it back down. I have successfully downed thirty pills and two SP Complete shakes a day…I mix the powder with my green smoothies (confession: Keziah makes almost all my green smoothies for me…she is Wonder Girl).

For me to actually stick with something for eight straight days in a row is something of a miracle. I am pretty proud of myself. I have also felt surprisingly well. This weekend was kind of rough since we were out of the house so much at Independence Day activities and I didn’t have ready access to all my veggies and last night I had a wicked headache (I never get headaches, so I know this was either detoxification related or lack of food related), but other than that I have felt great.

I have realized just how much I think about food…how much I love it, really, really, love it. I SO enjoy a delicious egg sandwich, a bowl of popcorn, a hearty whole wheat pancake, chips & salsa, brown rice with apples & raisins, quinoa with spinach, and so many other yummy, whole foods. I also love some things not on the whole food list…like ice cream and lots of it. Even though my overall diet is pretty healthy, this new thing of eating ONLY vegetables and fruit is still an adjustment.

For those of you who have never done this cleanse, you are to eat twice as many vegetables as fruit and at least 50% of your intake should be raw. I am trying to do almost everything raw. I have had some veggies sauteed for less than four minutes a few times, but other than that everything I have eaten for the past eight days has been raw. Red peppers and sugar snap peas have been my favorites this week. I have also eaten a ton of broccoli and cabbage. I recently learned that cilantro is a powerful tool in blood chelation, so I need to figure out a way to get that in me by the handfuls.

Today we pulled out my old auger-style juicer and made “ice cream” with frozen fruit…can’t believe I forgot how delicious and easy it is! We fed some to Brother Ritchie when he came by to fix our windshield and he loved it as well.

I can tell my body is working hard. I feel like I need a lot of sleep, so I am taking things pretty easy…at least easy for me ! I am praying that this cleanse helps my liver get up to speed and kick starts all my other organs into a fine-tuned machine…and of course, I am visualizing estrogen flowing right out of me. I wish I had some sort of estrogen measuring device so I could quantitatively see the changes in my levels. Come to think of it, a liver measuring device would be super-handy as well!