The Cleanse

My good friend Rose practices as a nutritionist. For a long time she has recommended this cleanse which involves eating primarily fruits and vegetables for two weeks. The first six days you only eat fruits and veggies. On day seven you can take in quinoa or the like. During the last three days of the cleanse you may have lean meats in addition to the quinoa and the fruits/ veggies. The cleanse also includes taking these colon blow supplements that help to "repopulate" the good bacteria in your colon while ridding you of the nasty bacteria. How that works I'm not quite sure.

So this week, Andy and I decided to try it. My training currently doesn't involve much training, so it seemed like the right time to mess with my diet. I went to the grocery store at the beginning of the week and filled the cart with things I previously couldn't even identify: leeks, bok choy, kale, persimmon, beets... (Okay, I can recognize beets). My plan -- make a billion different vegetable and fruit soups and ingest them all week.

This plan appears intelligent, but it didn't factor in something very important: I don't like to cook; nor do I cook well. Hence, two days into the cleanse I found myself at Whole Foods purchasing million dollar veggie soups by the gallon. My current favorites are carrot ginger soup and pumpkin curry soup. Unfortunately, both these soups, though tasty, make me fart up a storm. Actually, the whole only eating veggies and fruits thing has had a rather flatulent effect. You really don't want to be near me until this cleanse is OVER. How do vegans do it? Do their colons just eventually adjust?

Andy, though not overly competitive with me, has gleefully kicked my ASS in the cleanse department thus far. I have cheated with the following foods: coffee, almonds, pumpkin seeds, Lara Bars, and cottage cheese. (I also went out to dinner with Alina, who was down this weekend, and had bread, enchiladas and wine, but let's just forget that little transgression.) Andy, conversely, has been perfect, which is probably why he has already lost weight and is feeling all cleansed.... and I have not and do not. I just want a freaking peanut butter sandwich already.

The benefit of the cleanse, for me, has to do with requiring myself to figure out what to eat. My daily intake generally involves peanut butter and bread... and that is about all. Occasionally I have almond butter instead of peanut butter if I am feeling a bit nutty.  I also drink water. And sometimes I have salad. But if we are what we eat--I am basically a larger peanut butter and wheat bread sandwich.

This adventure has required I NOT EAT bread (kill me now) or peanut butter (can you say quivering withdrawal?) for two weeks. I happily report that I have now made it FIVE DAYS without peanut butter and bread. To boot, I have figured out some cool things, like you can't taste kale in smoothies or if you eat ENOUGH salad you can actually get sort of full. Here's someting else interesting that Andy learned yesterday. He had made a kale, squash and corn soup and had added too much cayenne pepper to it. It was so crazy hot that neither of us could eat it, despite being really committed to eating it no matter what--so as not to waste all that kale, squash and corn. To cool his mouth after forcing down a bowl, Andy ate some grapefruit. Then he decided to add grapefruit juice TO the soup.

And it neutralized it! Amazing! It also make it slightly sweet, which was very yummy.
So, kale, squash, corn and GRAPEFRUIT JUICE soup. Not bad! Who would've thought?

In other news...
Oh wait. There is no other news because I'm not training.
Sorry!