The Master Cleanse, Day 1

I am not a diet kind of girl. I’ve never South Beached, or Jenny Craiged, or SlimFasted, or Atkinsed, or Raw…Fooded. In fact, I’ve never adhered to any particular eating program in my life. When it comes to my body, I’m a firm believer in working out and eating healthy as much as possible, but if I want beer and pizza, I’m will guzzle beer and munch pizza to my heart’s content.

Which is why the next ten days are going to be a real bitch.

See, I’ve decided to Master Cleanse, which means that for the next week and a half, I will be consuming no food, no caffeine, no alcohol. The only thing I will be putting in my body is six to twelve 10-oz glasses per day of a concoction consisting of lemon juice, maple syrup, water, and cayenne pepper. Oh, and laxative tea in the evening, and a salt water “oral enema” in the morning. Yum yum!

The Master Cleanse, or Lemonade Diet, was created in the 1940s by some dude named Stanley Burroughs. And Mr. Burroughs’ philosophy was that in this modern age of heavily processed foods and drug usage and environmental pollutants, our body becomes saturated with toxins that it can’t process, thus causing a whole host of health issues including cancer, diabetes, ulcers, arthritis, acne, obesity, anemia, edema, addictive behavior, digestive issues, headaches, heart disease, allergies – pretty much anything that can possibly go wrong in your body, toxin build-up is to blame. So Burroughs developed the Lemonade Diet, which (supposedly) allows you to consume the vitamins and calories necessary to function while simultaneously minimizing your toxin intake and helping the body to break down and expel the built up toxins in your body.

I had heard about the Cleanse before in passing, but I always disregarded it as some absurd anorexic crap that you would have to be an idiot to do. However, it came up in conversation recently while I was at work, and the girl who did it expounded on how amazing and intense it was, and how when she was finished she felt so light and airy and clean, and how she was so energetic and got so much done while she was doing it, and how when she started eating again food tasted amazing and smells were unbelievable and how it made her really appreciate what she was putting in to her body. And I became interested. Airy? Energetic? New appreciation? That sounded great! I wanted in.

So I went home that night and ordered Burroughs’ book on the Cleanse on Amazon, read it, gathered up my supplies, and just this morning I officially started Day One of Lyndsey Cleaning Out Her Sh*t.

For the record, this is not an effort to lose weight. (As a side note, Burroughs actually warns against using the Master Cleanse to lose weight.) I am more than happy with my 5’3,” 117 pound athlete’s body. But lately, I just feel…blech. I drink at least one sugarfree Monster a day, I go out to the bar a couple of times a week, and when I eat it’s like I don’t even notice what’s going in to my mouth, I just cram it in until it’s gone. Having the energy to get through my days depends largely on my consumption of said Monsters, and my brain feels…muddy. I’m the quintessential example of a person slogging through our modern, oversaturated world. I need a change. I want clarity.

Hence, the Cleanse. Admittedly, it strikes me as more than a little bit batty, and I question how scientifically sound it is, but I talked to multiple people who have done it and heard nothing but good things. (Which could possibly be attributed to hunger-induced delirium, but whatever.) And if it makes me feel as great as all these people say it will, well, ten days sans food/booze/caffeine is worth it. I think.

25 hours and counting…