#lemonade diet

Today is my last day of drinking lemonade to sustain my being. I am very excited. I just got back from a quick shift at work and have the rest of the day to whatever I want (accept for eat or drink booze, my main hobbies unfortunately). I have resolved myself to clean out my car followed by an epic mad men session at my friend’s house. Everyone at work was telling me to keep going forward with the juice fast, and even though it is tempting because I have come this far and I’m feeling more like myself than I was the first three days, I just can’t bring myself to commit to another day of this. 

Overall, I’d say it was an interesting experience. I might not ever do it again, but I’m glad that I tried it and I hope that I’ve learned something about my own determination and personal capacity for giving up things that I enjoy. I’m still planning on not drinking until my lead-out is pretty much complete, but honestly, I haven’t been thinking about the alcohol as much as I’ve been fantasizing about food. That gives me an idea of how it’s going to feel when I’m pregnant (in the future), but at least then, I’ll be able to eat (but hopefully not too much).

Tomorrow is orange juice and broth day and I can’t… freaking…. wait. 

So today is my second to last day of cleansing and I am feeling really good, probably because I know that the end is near. Its funny because I’m just really looking forward to all of the things I usually take for granted like having a nice meal and sipping a glass of wine.

I’m a little concerned that after doing this I might go food crazy, so I’m going to stick with my original plan of eating vegetarian for a few days after, and then just go from there. I’m probably also feeling awesome because I know that after the total 11 days are completed, I’m that much closer to going to Vegas to see Derric! He’s in a tournament right now, hopefully kicking some ass. It’s been pretty lonely without him here, but there is no way I could have ever attempted this detox if he were. Anyway, the days can’t pass quickly enough it seems, especially when you are not eating.  

I just woke up, it’s about 8:30am. Last night was much better than the night before, but the dog still woke me up around 2:30am to be let out. I drank less of the senna tea this time for fear of extreme cramping and luckily, it didn’t bother me, although I did have some anxiety after a scary hypnic jerk snapped me awake.

I am feeling very tired and I just pounded my SWF. Nothing has happened yet, but it’s only been about 25 minutes. Today is my half way point through the cleanse and I’m not gunna lie, I am very excited for it to be over. Hopefully I can just push through the next few days. I had dreams about eating cheese puffs last night, and pizza the night before…I must REALLY be missing cheese. 

I went to work yesterday and although I was fatigued, everything went alright. It was a little bit torturous being around all that food and all those people happily talking with their mouths open and stuffing their faces. The smells alone were enough to make someone in my position want to kill themselves.

I didn’t drink as much lemonade as I probably should have because I accidentally made my work batch way too spicy. And the fear of hyponatremia is still lurking in my brain. Of course, that means I’m probably dehydrating myself by overcompensating. Whatever. I’m still alive today so I guess that’s all that matters.

Today I have another long day of work followed by more work. I have to go into the restaurant for a few hours and then go downtown to do a catering event. I’m planning on being exhausted after and just passing out immediately, which would be ideal. 

After waking up from a much needed nap, I decided to troll the interwebs for more info on the master cleanse (of which I am pursuing). Being the hypochondriac that I am, I have started to feel anxious about my decision to jump face first into this acidic pool of lemons and diarrhea.

My main concern is that I am going to drink too much fluid and become hyponatremic, a life threatening condition where one consumes too much water. I’m also concerned that 735 calories per day is too few for me to healthily sustain myself. This is obviously a catch 22 because you can only get calories from drinking more lemonade. Ahh!

I’m also wondering if anyone has ever died from doing the master cleanse? I really shouldn’t google that if I want to stand a fighting chance at completing my five day goal… But how can you tell the difference between feeling shitty from drinking salt water and lemonade all day or actual near death symptoms?

This was probably a bad idea for me since I know how stressed out I get about my “health”, but the whole reason I attempted a detox is because of that very stress lol. I’m a shit show. And I really need more sleep.

Last night was rough. After drinking my Smooth Move and doing some reading, I figured that I better try to get some sleep since I had to be up at 8am this morning for a staff meeting. I eventually nodded off with minimal problems, but less than two hours later, the problems began.

First, my dog decided to sound the alarm for the millionth time since Derric has been gone that someone was clearly breaking into the house and trying to rob and murder us. He scared the shit out of me (not literally thank god) and had my heart racing for so long that I couldn’t sleep without checking the door first. Finally, I fell back asleep, but of course an hour later, the dog wakes me up because he has to go out. “Mother fucker I hate that fucking dog” was the only thing I could manage to think as I put on my robe and stumbled out to the lawn. After that annoyance, I climbed back in bed, pulled the covers up tight and willed sleep to come. Literally, an hour later on the dot, my stomach started acting up. It was so incredibly painful that it woke me out of my sleep. I couldn’t figure out why it was hurting so bad, and then I realized that it must have been that damn tea. I rushed to the bathroom and sure enough, the tea was the culprit. I spent a good 20 minutes sitting there, wondering if I should just quit this cleanse bullshit. I thought I was going to have a panic attack because the pain was so severe. Eventually though, it passed and I had a sip of lemonade and was able to get back in bed and pass out again…And then it was 8am.

I opened my eyes and sat there in disbelief that my night had been so terrible. I got out of bed and myself some lemonade and then I realized that I only had 15 minutes left to get ready and let the dog out. As I am realizing this, I suddenly have the overwhelming urge to use the bathroom. Five minutes later, I’m rushing around like a crazy person trying to do speed hair and make-up. I let the dog out, threw him in his pen, put a bow in my hair and ran out the door. I was prepared to go straight from the meeting to a marketing event, so I didn’t have time to do the SWF. I brought a bunch of lemonade and drove to the restaurant.

The meeting was boring and lasted about an hour. Afterward, my marketing partner and I were going to head to the Loew’s Surf Dog Competition in Imperial Beach, but we couldn’t find the flyers, so to my delight, they sent me home. Upon arriving back home, I waited until my stomach felt empty and I drank the SWF. Here I am about an hour later, still dealing with it’s affects. I think I need to take a nap before work later tonight because I am feeling extremely out of it. I’m hoping that it will be a quick shift since there are two of us tonight instead of the usual one for some reason. Who knows, I guess they expect it to be busy. Either way, I gotta keep my mind busy and my body near a toilet for the next hour, so I guess I better wrap this up. I’m really hoping that tonight is more manageable. I’ll report back tomorrow at the half way point.

Yesterday I awoke in a haze. My birthday had been a few nights before and I had spent most of my “raw foods” lead in day hungover. I already failed myself by caving to go get ramen in the morning instead of eating a salad. Oh well, that ramen was delicious and now I remember it as my last meal before jumping off the ledge. I was good the rest of the day, but my dog kept me up all night with his ridiculous poop needs. These are the times I really miss Derric because getting out of bed 4 times a night to let the dog out is akin to torture. Anyway, after a horrible night’s sleep, I woke up and realized that I would not be making breakfast as usual. I had to produce a bland vegetable soup instead.

It was my first day off from work in 9 days and I had made plans to meet up with some friends at the beach. I drank my soup broth, packed a Suja juice and headed toward the ocean. The beach was nice and it was a warm day so my friend and I decided to go get fruit smoothies. After that, she had to go to work so went back home. On the ride home, I was feeling a little anxious and began to develop a headache. “What am I going to do with myself tonight? No beer, no dinner… I’m not going to be eating real food for over a week!” The thoughts started to attack me, but I tried to ignore them. I found myself passing time by working on a few things in photoshop and suddenly, it was 9pm. I heated up some more broth, thankful to have something other than fruit juice to sustain me for a little while longer. I drank my broth and watched Masterchef (a poor choice). After a few more shows, I made myself my first cup of Smooth Move laxative tea. My head was still hurting, but I got into bed and read a few chapters from “And the Mountains Echoed” before attempting to go to sleep.

My stomach was hurting pretty badly as I hadn’t had anything to “eat” in a while and the laxative tea wasn’t helping. Eventually I fell asleep and wouldn’t you know it, the damn dog decides its time to go out right as I start to doze. I take him out, get back in bed and fall into a light sleep until about 7am.

I came out of my dreamland and realized that today was the big day. My headache had diminished a little, but I couldn’t fall back asleep due to the excitement (anxiety) and I knew that I needed to do that salt water flush thing before my body starting aching for sustenance. I was a little concerned with how I would react since I had never tried it before. It sucked having to drink a full liter of salt water, but it wasn’t as bad as everyone says it is. It tastes unpleasant yes, but it’s way easier to chug than beer. I started having the urge to “go” after about 15 minutes and it was on and off for about 2 hours. I made my lemonade after the first time I hit up the bathroom and began to drink it to sooth my hungry tummy. I decided to watch Hell’s Kitchen in bed (another poor choice) and eventually I fell back to sleep.

I woke up around noon feeling well rested, but a little uneasy. I made some more lemonade and debated what I was going to do with my day off. Nothing seemed appealing, but I figured it was just the fact that there would be no delicious food to look forward to that was making me feel unmotivated. I got on my computer and did my favorite thing ever, which is to plan out my life on google calendar. I decided that I should walk the dog and go to the store to pick up a few items. After I took a shower and started getting ready, the dull, hazy feeling sort of dissipated and I felt a lot more energized. I went to the store and the bank and came back home around 4:30pm. I finished my third serving of lemonade and had to make more.

It’s now 5:45pm and I have been sitting here recounting things for about 45 minutes. I am a few gulps into my fourth serving for the day and I am thinking that on days like today where I am not being super active, I probably will only drink about 6-7 servings. I am sort of dreading being done with this post because then I have to go find something else to do to take my mind off of the next few days… Unfortunately, I have been scheduled to work back-to-back double shifts this weekend and there is also a staff meeting at 9am tomorrow morning (which totally blows and ruins my SWF schedule). I’m hoping that I will be fine. I think I will just bring more lemonade. Yup, more lemonade. 5:53pm. I guess I’ll go paint my toenails or something.

So, after getting extremely sick to my stomach from eating creamy polenta, it dawned on me that many things have been making my stomach feel sick lately. I’m pretty much positive that all of my health problems are booze related, so I thought maybe I should do one of those crazy detox things that everyone keeps talking about. After chatting with my friend, I decided that I would take on and conquer the Master Cleanse.

Since I am a real person with a healthy social life and a job, I simply could not commit myself to cleansing for more than 5 days because you are supposed to do a few days of preparation for the cleanse by eating less and less as the cleanse approaches so that you don’t freak your body out, and then you also have to ease yourself out of it, lest you vomit uncontrollably for a few hours. I came to the conclusion that I could afford to do a two day “lead in” and a four day “lead out”, totaling 11 days overall. I am planning on updating my blog with my experience like every other egocentric, self-involved, histrionic person who ever decided that doing the master cleanse and letting the world know about it would be a good idea.