Well, here we are… ten days of only drinking lemonade. I’m about to have my last glass of laxative tea (which I’m certain of, as the rest are in the trash), and tomorrow, there will be no lemonade. I have decided to do one last salt water flush, since it seems to pair with the laxative tea if one is to believe the books on this topic (break it up, followed by flush it out).

Apparently, tomorrow may be when the hunger begins, according to some message boards I read. My digestive system has basically been asleep for more than a week, and getting full-throttle undiluted orange juice is supposedly enough to start waking it up. The problem is that once it’s awake, it will want food, possibly to a degree that it is not yet ready to handle. We’ll see how that goes.

So, seeing that this is the end of my cleanse, what have I learned?

First, I’m just glad I was able to do the whole fast with no real issues. I could probably do 20 days of it if I wanted to, it was pretty easy. That is something I never would have imagined beforehand, and I’m still not quite sure why this weird lemonade suppresses hunger, but I can attest that it does (possibly the only verifiable statement in the books).

Second, not eating did give me time to think about why being vegan is important to me, and that emotional eating seems to have disappeared the entire time I was on the cleanse. After the U23D concert, I even went shopping at Trader Joe’s to stock up for coming off the cleanse, which a lot of people said not to do. But being in a grocery store, mall food court, movie theater with popcorn grazers, reviewing a cookbook… none of it seemed to matter all that much to me.

Third, I like the fact that the McDougall Program and China Study are both scientifically and medically sound and verified. McDougall (as well as the PCRM) regularly points out new medical research linking diet to cancer and other “chronic” illness, whereas this cleanse seemed to be a largely mental vibe. If you felt that toxins were coming out of you, or causing any mood, healing any ailment… you were right. I do wonder why something that has been around for so many decades hasn’t been tested, though (Atkins was tested quicker and that seemed to be obviously bad for you). That said, there have been medical studies about the benefit of fasting, although since you are taking in calories and sugars in the lemonade, this is specifically called a cleanse for that reason. So, any reference to the benefit of fasting seems to be a misdirect.

Fourth, I didn’t have any spiritual enlightenment. I didn’t really meditate or do anything to really bring that energy in, but a lot of people claim to have amazing spiritual response to doing the cleanse. I am in the process of reading “Happier,” but that’s as close as I got to spirit seeking in the past 10 days. It’s taking longer as I’m trying to do all the exercises as they appear in the book. I’m not very concerned about the spiritual side of things, though. More on that in the near future (though I plan to try and sell that essay, so it might delay things showing up here).

Fifth, I think my problem with colonics, fasts and cleanses is that they seem too convenient. While there are environmental toxins that we can’t easily avoid, most of the toxins in our body are there because we put them there through diet, drugs, and alcohol. I know a lot of people who fast after the holidays or when they return from doing drugs at Burning Man. Given the choice, I’d much rather not take in those toxins than scramble and try to get rid of them. I already don’t do drugs, my food is pretty well nailed (until simple carbs are considered a toxin), and I’m a pretty lightweight drinker when I drink at all. I also have a hard time believing that shutting down my digestive system gave my body enough energy to do naturally what it wouldn’t have otherwise done. I also think people tend to underemphasize the damage they do to themselves, and overemphasize the removal of sad toxins through fasting/cleansing. I can’t imagine it would even the scales in that short amount of time.

Sixth, as I used to write obituaries for a living in an area where meat-eating is pretty standard, and there seemed to be a lot of people in their 80s and 90s, it does raise a flag as to how all of these toxins and such are manifesting. And, on the flip side, having read T. Colin Campbell’s China Study, the best way to not promote cancer growth is a diet devoid of animal products. So, I eat a pretty alkaline, non-toxic diet to begin with, and assuming these toxins want to become cancer, I feed them nothing they like to eat anyway. So, in theory, I’ll just die with active cancer that grows slower than my lifespan. Fair enough.

Seventh, while I strongly believe this is all relevant stuff, there also needs to be a balance. I never question whether to drink a glass of wine, if offered, but I do need to find that same balance with food. I wouldn’t go ovo-lacto or anything extreme like that (McDougall actually said he’d give up dairy before meat if it were about health), although when I’m at a party, if I think something is likely to be vegan, I assume it is. Over the holidays, sometimes a cookie was appealing, so I ate it (although the necessity of dairy and butter in baked goods is way overblown).

Eighth, food needs to become more special than it is now. Given the number of cookbooks I have, I want to stop filling the fridge with ready-to-grab microwaveable meals (all home-cooked and packaged by me, btw), and start cooking from scratch on a more regular basis. With How To Cook Everything Vegetarian and Veganomicon aching for attention, that won’t be an issue.

Ninth, I do need to buckle down on all the rewards. Buying groceries for myself doesn’t mean I earned a treat. I’m not five. I may have to reinstate my old rule where dessert was only acceptable when other people were at the table with me.

Tenth, a lot of my issues (snacks, emotional eating, etc.) are really just about having too much free time from being unemployed. Once things move from being an afternoon activity to something I have to fit in after work, a lot of this stuff will completely disappear on its own anyway. So, just a matter of getting a decent job now.

Eleventh, this is all supposed to be fun! Relax.

So, nothing shocking here, but would I recommend anyone else do this cleanse? Not really.

At best, this cleanse focuses you on things you’re usually not thinking about, such as the toxic things that could be in your body. Rather than a drastic approach to getting rid of them, I think the more interesting aspect is to think about what kinds of toxins you hope are being removed… and then traceit back to how they got there in the first place. I think that sort of awareness and its ability to prevent future toxins is more important than getting rid of what you have now. If people on Atkins didn’t die from overtaxing their livers and kidneys, it’s a safe bet they’re pretty damn hearty and can handle whatever you throw at them. But, if you want to go easy on them, stop taking all that stuff in.

Now, there are a lot of health claims about a large number of chronic diseases and other ailments being cured as part of this cleanse. However, the list didn’t seem all that different from the same claims I know from the McDougall website, so I don’t know that this is about lemons, maple syrup and cayenne pepper as much as it was just an extreme version of a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet, which has the same benefits.

So, I’ve got two or three days here before I’m back to normal food, but I don’t think of this cleanse as being a negative experience, although not perhaps a necessary one. (And for people less concerned with toxins, though, my face thinned out, my pants are fitting a lot better, and I have to image I dumped at least 10 pounds on this thing.)

I am curious about food. Why we eat what we eat, how culture and society play a role in all of that, and whether we will change before change is thrust upon us (overfishing, environmental issues, etc.). That’s what this site is about, and as such, this cleanse fit right in.

There is increasingly less to write about as the cleanse goes on. It has just become a normal thing I do now. Of course, the big news is that tomorrow is the final day of the cleanse, so that’s interesting.

Been out and about for the past two days. On Wednesday, I went to see U23D in IMAX 3-D, and tonight I just got back from seeing Howard Jones live in concert, since I won free tickets. Very different experiences, but both worthwhile. I was surprised how many Howard Jones songs I remembered, as well as how he pulled in a decent size crowd who were really big fans of his. Very chatty and appreciative, so good time out. U2 is always good live, of course, but it was interesting to see how good they’re getting at 3D. The movie definitely had moments and, unlike my handful of live U2 DVDs, this one definitely made you feel like you were at a show.

I was upset to find that I’m getting a zit near my mouth. Up until now, the cleanse has sort of been working really well as far as clearing everything up, nice glow, etc., but not sure what’s up with this latecomer.

It’s interesting to see my bowl of lemons/limes on the kitchen and my instinct is that I’ll have to run out and get more, I’m almost out… only, that’s the point. The strange bit is that it takes three days to come off this thing, so my next actual dinner is Tuesday (although a lot of veggies/vegans seem to break it in two days from what I read), so maybe Monday.

So, Saturday morning, whenever I’m hungry I just start drinking full-strength, freshly-squeezed orange juice. I have no clue how that is supposed to curb hunger, since mentally it is just orange juice. But who can tell, I have been off solid foods for 10 days, so we’ll just see if my system goes along with that. At least with the lemonade concoction, there was the whole element of blind faith that somehow lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper satisfy hunger.

My master cleanse books have already been sold and shipped off to their new owners through Amazon, as this isn’t really something I see myself doing again. Of course, if I did do it again, it isn’t like I’d have to read up on it anyway. I am still unclear whether tomorrow or Saturday would be my last salt water cleanse, since the cleanse is supposed to flush out all of the toxins loosened up by the laxative tea the night before. So, it seems like I should drink tea tomorrow night, and do one last salt water flush upon waking, and then start in with the OJ. That’s probably what I’ll do.

I’m sort of covering all the minutiae here, so that tomorrow I can reflect or something on having done the cleanse. Unless anything surprising or dramatic happens coming off the cleanse, I imagine tomorrow will be the last post in this thread.

But, like I said, not much has happened. So, I’ll keep this brief.