At 25 years young, I’ve been feeling like the juice in my energizer battery is leaking. There is continually less time in the day to fit in my workouts, work, social life and should we say blogging… but that’s nothing new, if you gave me more hours in the day I would just add in more activities. What’s bothered me most is fatigue, struggling to get out of bed in the morning, or skipping workouts from being exhausted by a days work. Coming from the person who usually races out the door to squeeze in a surf session or bike ride before the sun goes down I knew I needed a change, but wasn’t sure just what that was.

Should I give up caffeine? Sweets? Or (God forbid) alcohol? Sleep more or less? up the workouts…

I consider myself a healthy person, and some of my friends or co-workers might say that’s an understatement. Although I’m pretty active, make most my meals from scratch, eat lot’s of veggies and fruit, I do enjoy my red wine, afternoon cappuccino and occasional sweet treat. And by no means am I a calorie counter, or one to follow fad diets; I admittedly have difficulties resisting the abundance of great restaurants I am presented with living in lovely San Francisco.

Earlier this winter, I stumbled upon this article in Outside Magazine – about this fascinating 21-day cleanse called Clean.

“The caffeine-free, fully cleansed, take-your-nap, buff-as-hell guide to a whole new you”

Which when followed strictly will supposedly rid your body of toxins and boost not only your mood but increase your energy. The only catch is you have to cut out refined sugar, alcohol, dairy, soy, red meat, shellfish, wheat, caffeine and various fruits and vegetables. So just abut everything you eat? But the seven Outside editors who went through a range of self-denial sufferfests, also yielded surprising answers about what you need for total health. At first glance I thought, WOW impressive, maybe this is just the thing I need. But the difficult part was deciding when to pull the plug… Luckily I had a motivated partner in crime who kick started the game. She bought the book and immediately prompted me to follow suit. Let’s start when you get back from Vacation, timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I had already cut out sweets and coffee for lent and was traveling to Costa Rica for a week of surfing, much needed Vitamin D and technology reprieve. I read the book on my trip and began promptly upon arrival home.

In addition to food’s you cut out, Dr. Junger author of Clean points out that our number one toxin is stress, followed by lack of sleep and hydration. We often eat when we are bored or because it is presented to us, not when we’re necessarily hungry. Our bodies are constantly working to catch up, and we never give them a rest. The cleanse is recommended as a once a year way to a reset your immune system, intestines and body chemistry. But Junger warns, that once you start, you’ll have a difficulty going back to the way you ate, and only now do I understand why.

In reflection, it is definitely a testament of control, personal will and organization. I still ate a ton, but very consciously, and planned much of my meals in advance, because you can’t expect a place to have much or any food that fits your ‘diet’ needs. My meals consisted of a green smoothie for breakfast, solid meal like quinoa or brown rice and fish with veggies for lunch and blended vegetable and bean soups for dinner. I snacked on nuts, apples, carrots, celery, seaweed, snap peas. If I really needed something sweet I had a medjool date. I drank more water than I ever imagined, rotated out with a few cups of tea – ginger, green, licorice and mint or detox, Yogi Tea’s are my go-to. (Please Note, I did not use the powders or any of the packaged cleanse, just followed the food guidelines)

A look back at the transformation that occurred over three weeks time, and how my view of food has drastically changed. I have already adapted much of the eating habits into my post cleanse routine, as my body has quite simply rejected a lot of what I used to eat blindly. Even when I was a competitive athlete I wasn’t fully in tune with what foods made me feel better, stronger, recover quicker and make my skin glow. I have already shared many of the secrets with friends, so I thought I would write about it.

CLEAN: A Revolutionary Program to Restore Your Body’s Natural Ability to Heal Itself

Elimination Diet:

You are supposed to ease your way into the cleanse, as to not completely shock your body. I had eliminated caffeine and sweets for lent, which was about 4 weeks prior to starting the cleanse. I started the cleanse one day after returning from vacation where my stress level was low, I had been very active and my body was feeling good. This made for a much more smooth transition when I eliminated more elements from my diet.

Week one:

I felt the effect much faster than I imagined, only a few days in I could literally feel toxin’s moving out of my body.  I had some afternoon headaches and hit a wall at night where I would become very exhausted. The most curious symptom was congestion, which may have caused the headaches, but my sinuses were constantly draining. It was as if I was sick, but I wasn’t.

The first week I ate more than the prescribed amount of food, as I tried to maintain my normal level of activity throughout. My muscles felt heavy when I ran and they did not recover at the same rate as I was used to. I went backcountry skiing and my normal snappy movements were sluggish and my muscles sore and achy after the fact. I was also starving for carbs, I ate lots of quinoa and brown rice to fill the void but it wasn’t the same. I drank 3-4 cups of tea along with 7-8 cups of water a day.

Week Two:

I felt a drastic change in my skin. From head to toe, my skin felt smoother, softer and tighter. Although my face broke out, my arms, legs and body felt leaner. I lost about 5-7 lbs. in bloated weight and my muscles appear more defined. I also felt like my flexibility increased, which was most noticeable during yoga.

Alcohol and eating in social situations was likely the most difficult thing this week, with a black tie event, outdoor concert and NBA basketball game I found it challenging to be the one sipping water and picking apart my plate to find something edible. Everyone asks questions and you start to get tired of explaining why you are not eating, drinking certain foods – everyone seems to have their own opinion about what’s healthy and questions the logic behind your program. The best advice I can give is to share openly, and recommend the read about it and make their own decision.

Week Three:

Things started to click this week, it was as if my body was enjoying the diet, energized by what I was supplying it with and came to life. My focus was heightened, my thoughts, emotions were stronger and I was more aware of my surroundings and most noticeably the taste of food. I did not crave (too many) foods outside the diet. I slept soundly, and woke up with the sun, ready to start my day. My confidence increased and I would attribute it to the way I both felt and looked at myself. The whites in my eyes even shone more bright.

What I started to fear most was introducing new foods back into my diet. Rightly so, the smallest glass of wine left my stomach in knots, as did wheat make me bloated and cramped. Now that I had cleaned my body of much of it’s toxicity, the difficulty was to determine isolate what things made me feel good, bad, better or worse.

Epilogue:

I didn’t exactly ease out off the cleanse, I more than shocked my system with rich foods, sweets, alcohol and wheat. I quickly realized how poor I felt and what simple things really hit me in the stomach. Pineapple made me break out in hives (found this was common through the forum), coffee after 8 weeks without it almost made me throw up and wheat makes me bloated. I am still working to figure out a balance, but I definitely enjoy the affects of eating this way and will try and incorporate as much as possible into my day to day eating.

I remember a year back when my roommate did a cleanse and made these gnarly green kale, ginger and chia smoothies. I used to look at them and cringe. Now I’m making my very own ‘green smoothies’ EVERY day and loving the effects. If I stick to one thing, it will be liquid breakfasts!

If you’re looking for an opportunity to refresh your body, get in tune with your surroundings and shed a few office lbs. I would recommend trying this cleanse. Unlike others out there, it can be done with a normal workload, activity and social setting. It can also be a lifelong diet if you choose.

About The CLEAN Program

If your interested in doing the cleanse, I highly reccomend getting the Clean book through Amazon. It’s a little repetitive, but rather interesting. The 21 day cleanse is mainly focused on ridding your body of toxins that collect in a healthy manner and then restoring them back to a place they can support healthy digestion and cleaning. Here is the website too, it has all the resources if you don’t want to read the book.  Dr. Junger takes a lot of his practice from working in the field without technology.

• Clean Planner (Program at a glance)
• Elimination Diet
• Daily Do’s & Tips
• Resources

You can also signup to the Clean community, where you’ll have access to a forum and some of the Clean team will reply to your questions. It is a great place to ask questions, find answers and see if others are having similar symptoms or reactions to food and the cleanse. I was able to determine that breaking out in hives from Pineapple was a common reaction that others had experienced.

A few tips, If you so choose to do it:

1. Find an accomplice or partner to do the Cleanse at the same time as you. This person is a good confidant to talk about your symptoms, feelings and best of all, keep you committed.

2. Take detox bathes, they are the best – 30 minute hot Epson Salt bathes that literally pull toxins from your body, you’ll break out in a sweat or even breakout on your face, but they help the process, relieve stress and are a good way to end the day.

3. Plan ahead, make things in bulk. I cooked pots of quinoa all at once, batches of soup, doubled smoothie recipes or baked fish for a few days. It makes it easier to get your lunch ready for work in the morning. The last thing you want to be in is a time crunch, because it might be difficult to find the foods you can eat just around the corner.

4. Talk about it, people are curious and may poke fun, but most people find it fascinating. I found that the more I talked about the cleanse, the more accountable for what I was doing. AND I found that most my friends were interested in following suit, I got at least three or four people to buy the book.

5. Remember, it’s only 3 weeks! You can do anything for a short period of time if you set your mind to it. You’ll be surprised how fast it goes and how hesitant you will be to go back to the way you were eating, living before.