Day 1 – What you can’t have won’t kill you….

What an appropriate statement for the start of the cleanse!  One of the main reasons I designed this program was to bring “mindfulness” back into the forefront of our brains in regards to eating and our daily nutrition.  As life continues to be a constant whirlwind, our food and eating habits tend to get caught up in the craziness and most times, we are either living to eat (too much), eating to live (too little), or fueling our bodies with convenient, fast, easy foods (not necessarily healthy).  We forget how to be “mindful” about our health and nutrition.  Our bodies keep going and going without much less of a pause and years later, we end up with chronic illnesses; many due to the lack of mindfulness in our lives.

When you take away something that we rely on every single day to keep us energized, placate our emotions, make us happy, and allow us to socialize with other human beings, it can be a bit jarring to the body, mind and soul.  However, the goal of the cleanse is to bring us back to the start – simplify the nutrition in our lives, infuse our bodies with raw, live nutrients, and let us “push the reset button”.  Hence the birth of the VEJ 3-day cleanse.

The start of Day 1 went fine.  Since I normally drink the juices on a daily basis, I didn’t notice a difference in my energy levels.  Same with the afternoon.  Come 3 pm, I was starting to feel hungry.  Since my juice bar is inside an organic market, I kept staring at all the food and having a nonstop stream of consciousness in my mind that consisted of, “I should have some granola”, “I should have a piece of fruit”, “I’m hungry”, etc. etc.  My brain didn’t stop….until I realized I was only 10 hours in and cheating right now just seemed ridiculous.

4:30 hit – I was about to leave for the gym and another battle with my willpower was in full swing.  I seriously went back and forth for 10 minutes about whether or not I wanted to go to the gym.  I convinced myself I was too tired, I thought I was low on energy, I was going to forgo the workout because I was cleansing.  I mean it was on and on.  Do all people go through this?  The battle with going to the gym seems to be a daily thing but in the end, we all go cause we feel much better afterwards (well and look better, too).  So I went.  And had a great workout.  I also noticed I was more sweaty than normal which could be attributed to Dandelion, Parsley and Cucumber being natural diuretics. Side note – another great benefit of the cleanse – the water weight just falls off.  Side note #2 – it’s good to exercise while on the cleanse.  It helps to increase the release of toxins from the body and excrete them through sweat.

Once I got home, I was super hungry but I had a little whey protein isolate and some almond milk as my recovery drink.  This is something I continually stress with my clients.  Make sure to have a protein/carbohydrate combination drink/snack within 30-45 minutes of finishing your workout while on the cleanse.  It helps to reapir your muscles and replenish the glycogen (stored form of carbohydrates in your muscles) you burned.  Now it was on to #5 – Calm.  However, I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to eat.  Again, on and on and on.  I distracted myself with a book, the football game, the phone, Facebook, blah blah blah.  I was still jonesing to eat.  But why??  Because that is what we have become accustomed to do at a certain time of the day?  I was giving my body the nutrients that it needed (albeit the calories it is used to) so I should have been fine.  And honestly, when I really thought about it, I wasn’t starving. I was fine.  It was just my mind, my thoughts, and the patterns I have developed over a lifetime that were trying to derail my efforts.  Once I had this realization, I felt better.  Went to bed early and felt like I had conquered some sort of emotional and mental battle that doing the cleanse seems to elicit.