By the book, today should have been day two of all orange juice. It wasn’t.

I started off the day with a grapefruit, and some orange juice throughout the morning. For lunch, I had a fruit salad comprised of mango, banana and strawberries. At one point, I had some High Fiber Cereal, although I let it soak through with the soymilk to make sure it was soft.

Throughout all of this, I kept going slowly, making sure nothing was causing me any discomfort or somesuch. But nothing to report. So, I figured I would have a normal dinner and, if that went OK, I would officially call the cleanse over.

So, for dinner, I went to Cha-Ya, a vegan Japanese restaurant near my house. I ordered a clear broth soup with tofu, mushrooms, and veggies in it, although it was the opposite of what the cleanse books recommended, as it had more stuff than broth. I also got a vegan roll, which is just a thick sushi roll with spinach, tofu, carrots, and a few other things in it, and I even dipped it with the wasabi and soy sauce. And I finished off the meal with some gyoza and edamame.

This was about four hours ago, and not a single issue as far as internal groaning, pain, or anything else. That was certainly enough food, with enough textures and such, to make me comfortable that I’m back in the eating saddle again.

So, this officially wraps up the cleanse posts. Thanks for reading.

I said I was done writing about this, but I think it’s sort of necessary to document the journey back to real food, as well, as people might end up reading all of the previous posts and wonder what the recovery is like. I know when I went to Thailand and blogged about my trip, I still get a few e-mails each year asking about different places I stayed and such, thanks to search engines and the like.

So, today was supposed to be orange juice and nothing but orange juice, but I have to admit I was curious to test things out, so I did stray from that. After making my first glass of the morning, I quickly realized that it will take a lot more oranges than I had purchased, since I’m going from needing only two tablespoons of lemon juice per glass to 8ish ounces of pure orange juice. It was also clear that juicing oranges isn’t as easy as juicing lemons, so I brought out my juicer to handle the job. It seemed like too much work to use it for the lemons.

While at Rainbow Grocery, buying a few grapefruit, oranges, and some fruit for an upcoming fruit salad (mango, banana, strawberries, etc.), they also had dates out to sample. So, I took one and ate it, chewing it slowly, although I don’t think there’s much chewing necessary for a date really.

I sort of wanted to test the waters and see if I could get a reaction from my digestive system by tossing something but juice down. Nothing really happened.

So, throughout the afternoon, I’m drinking juice whenever I get hungry and, once again, reading the message boards proved to show the extreme side of things, such as people experiencing total hunger that the juice can’t suppress. I don’t know what the deal is there, as it didn’t really happen with me. And, I should point out, I did not stray from the fast a tiny bit during the 10 days, I did it 100 percent by the book.

By mid-afternoon, I was making some juice, and peeling the grapefruit before putting it in the juicer and, just for kicks, I held three sections back to eat them as-is. My juicer is pretty hardcore in the sense that it is juice, with absolutely no pulp, and in addition to the caloric surge, part of me thinks this is also about introducing solid foods slowly back into the mix. So, I eat those, taking care to chew them pretty thoroughly. No bad reaction.

All day, I hear my digestive track making noise, coming back to life. The noise was internal for most of the afternoon, and finally found its way externally by evening. So, I’m pretty confident that whatever “waking up” is supposed to happen has occurred.

The more I looked at the way to break the cleanse (two days of OJ, and then on the third day it’s OJ for breakfast, a raw fruit salad for lunch, and a raw veggie salad for dinner), I started questioning the intention here. Specifically, that this diet has been taken up by the raw foodies, and they do make a push that after this cleanse, you might want to consider eating raw full-time and such. So, it seems odd that my first solid food would be raw fruit, which is pretty dense and, depending on which fruits I pick, pretty dramatic.

So, since my early experiments with taking in some food had gone well, I decided to have a sort-of dinner tonight. All I did was heat up one of the pre-cooked Jasmine Rice bags from Trader Joe’s, and mix it with soy milk. That seemed like it would be much gentler on the system than raw fruits and vegetables, and possibly not offered up due to the “cooked” aspect (though some of the books did suggest a broth-heavy veggie soup for dinner on day two).

I don’t know that I would recommend breaking the fast early like this, as many people have had realy bad reactions introducing food too early. I just figured jasmine rice and vanilla soy milk seemed about as benign a thing as could be and, even if I reacted badly to it, it didn’t seem like it would torture me as long as an actual dinner. But, it didn’t seem to affect me at all.

So, I’m thinking I’ll go easy with things again tomorrow, and probably have some soup for dinner. Of course, whenever I make soup, it is always a huge pot. I seem incapable of making a small portion, so I’m thinking of going down to Harvest in the Castro and seeing what soups they have and, barring that, possibly doing some vegan split pea at the San Francisco Soup Company in the Westfield Centre. I’d rather do something brothy, though, and they usually only have one vegan option. When it’s two, it was usually black bean, which seems too heavy. We shall see… I’m certainly not going anywhere too upscale just for soup. And I’d cook something before I went canned.

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.

If I recall properly, the books said that days six or seven were the other day where people had a hard time on the cleanse. Once again, it’s just sort of easy and not difficult for me.

I think a lot of people’s experiences on the cleanse are based on what they hoped would happen. Many say the latter half of the cleanse was when they started to gain a spiritual element to things, when quieting their patterns of eating and focusing on food gave them insight into something more powerful. Sounds nice, but I’m just drinking lemonade.

Went to Rainbow Grocery today and got enough supplies to finish up the cleanse. I’m sort of at the point that I reach when I’m 60 percent into a movie I’m not really getting much out of. I want to leave, but I want to see it through. Plus, I want to say I did the recommended 10 days if I’m going to say it’s kind of a waste of time and not risk anyone saying I didn’t give it enough time to do its work.

That said, it was important to zero things out for me. Recently, I have been a bit of a kid in the candy store. If I run an errand, I tend to buy a snack. If I go for groceries, I get a little something extra, too, whether it’s a baked good, chocolate, or somesuch. It’s a bit silly. I used to have rules that the only time I would have a snack or dessert is if I was dining out and not alone, but at some point going to buy stuff at Rainbow meant a truffle or a savory pie, etc.

I’m looking forward to getting off this fast and changing the way I cook. I want to cook more often and more variety. Starting next week, I’m also going to begin my weight training. When I read a book on the flight back home from the holidays on the east coast, there was an actor who was out of work for a while who said he lived at the gym since he was unemployed and his gym membership was paid up. I’m in the same boat, yet it’s never become more than a 45-minute checklist item.

So, it’s a weird Catch 22 of using this cleanse as a time to think, yet not really getting much out of the cleanse itself as far as the detox, etc. Of course, it’s hard to tell what would constitute a sign of detox anyway, which is the genius of this thing. If you feel good, it’s your body reaping the benefit of the cleanse. Feel bad? Your body is purging old toxins. There’s an answer in every direction, all praising the cleanse.

But, I think I’m just going to do good old-fashioned McDougall Program from here on out.

It really is the best thing I’ve found, and it is refreshing to see something backed by scientific study and verifiable results. Although I’ll have very few recipes there that are going to call for maple syrup, in case I have any left…

Was a boring, rainy day today, so pretty much stayed in and just wrote. Won’t lead to much an exciting entry here, although one hopes it might ratchet down the length.

I stopped counting how many lemonades I have each day, since I always go over six and never go over 10, so there was little need to monitor it.

For some reason, I didn’t connect these dots in the last post, but I was intrigued how directly related my mood was to both my diet and my digestive system. I was extremely irritable, and as soon as it came out of me, it went away. It certainly brings up interesting questions in a world of anti-depressants.

I seemed to take a lot of naps today, not sure what that was about, although it was sort of a blah, rainy day, so there may be nothing cleanse-related there.

I think my face is thinning out from the cleanse, which would make sense. Although it is nice to know that this time next week, I’ll be eating food again. It takes three days to come off the cleanse, so I don’t get to go crazy on Day 11.

I’m just going to keep today short, rather than pontificate needlessly. I am curious how long it will take before all my Google ads on here are NOT about cleaning out your colon.

Shortly after posting last night’s blog, or perhaps during it (I just re-read it, but can’t detect any shift in mood), I got really irritable for no apparent reason. I was down on the cleanse, questioning why I’m using this wacko method to kick-start things when I already intend to shift to a low-fat vegan diet right after this, etc. Just an unexplained foul mood, which was easily detectable as I’m rarely in a bad mood.

I just went to bed, hoping I’d wake up in a better place. In the middle of the night, I had to wake up for an elimination, and it was one of the things I’d read about in the books. Yes, it was the hot, burning acidic elimination! Which, I’d also read, is often preceded by a foul mood. Talk about irritable bowel syndrome…

So, good to have something to shake things up, as this thing was getting pretty yawnsville.

Today was pretty basic. Woke up fine and contented. No gym, as I am trying to not go seven days a week. Just phone calls back home, watched the first half of a DVD I’ll likely review for Vegocentric tomorrow, and then off to see the Sex Workers Art Show a few blocks from my house. I took two doses of lemonade to the show, as per yesterday’s photo, and all worked out fine.

While I was in my foul mood last night, I stumbled upon a random comment on a web site discussing the Master Cleanse, and it was certainly shocking. It turns out that Stanley Burroughs, the guy who started this cleanse, was found guilty of second-degree felony murder, felony practicing medicine without a license, and and unlawful sale of cancer treatments.

It seems Burroughs wanted to use the Master Cleanse to cure a man of his cancer. He instructed the guy to not see his physician for 30 days, during which time he would drink lemonade, laxative tea, and the salt water flush. He would also get Burrough’s massage and color therapy treatments during this time.

In two weeks, the patient’s health deteriorated and he had a fever, which Burroughs said was according to plan. His pain in his abdomen and vomiting were treated with deep abdominal massages and Burroughs told the man he would recuperate. It continued until the patient died of a hemorrhage in his abdominal region, which the prosecution said at trial was the result of Burrough’s massages.

The murder offense was overturned, as felony practicing medicine without a license was found to not be a severe enough offense upon which to then base a murder charge. The court upheld the other convictions, and indicated he could face charges for involuntary manslaughter.

Burroughs was also convicted of practicing medicine without a license in 1960.

I do find it strange that these things are not mentioned in either of the two books I read on the Master Cleanse. It seems that not mentioning them indicates something to hide, whereas no sound-minded person could read Burroughs’s book and think he is basing any of this on medicine. I don’t know how he presented himself to actual clients, of course, but the 50-page document I read is certainly not the work of a medical professional.

Plus, the guy with cancer decided to this of his own free will and, let’s face it, if the guy was having this bad a reaction to The Master Cleanse, I doubt modern medicine’s aggressive approach to treating severe cancers would have led to a different result. I don’t think this casts Burroughs in a bad light at all, only its omission by people who discuss his life and work that seem to be glossing over it intentionally irk me in this matter. If you believe in Burroughs’s treatment, and think the medical community and the criminal justice system overreacted, then paint that picture of how Burroughs was misunderstood for his methods, which have been used now for more than 50 years, etc., etc.

Nothing else major happened today. Well, I did finally drink the mint tea for the first time, but that’s not any major deal. Just figure I bought it, it’s sitting here, may as well…

And, oh yeah, the cleanse is half over!

Today was unique in the sense that I felt like getting out of the house, so I had to prepare a cleanse-to-go kit. I made up three little concentrates of lemon juice and maple syrup, one container with enough cayenne pepper, a bottle of water with enough for three servings, and another container in which I could mix it all up.

While walking around downtown, I paid attention to the abundance of food. I say paid attention to it moreso than saying I was compelled to do it. It was intentional. I started to realize that a lot of people on this cleanse eat meat and dairy and a lot of this junk food, and I could see that it is a bit of an obstacle course for them. Hot dog vendors, and mall food courts, and movie snacks… so I think my vegan repulsion at most of this stuff helps me in the cleanse.

I went to see Cassandra’s Dream, the new Woody Allen movie starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. Was a very interesting picture coming from Woody, as there was no trace of his usual nebbish doppelganger, and the two male leads were quite manly. Farrell really shows his range in this one, and I hope it finds an audience. I’m not sure why we seem to constantly shun our elder artists, but we are certainly shooting ourselves in the foot by doing it.

Anyway, while the previews were playing before the movie, I mixed up my batch of lemonade, which was pretty easy, seeing as I only had to measure out some water, dump in the concentrate, sprinkle some cayenne and shake it all up. When I was leaving the movie, I didn’t really have any plans for today and still felt fine, and still had two more shots of lemon mix, so I jumped into seeing Sweeney Todd for a second time. Still holds up. I really love that movie. Same deal, mixed the lemonade up during previews.

After the movies, I went to the gym (had my third lemonade en route from the subway to the gym) and did my cardio. Went fine, watching the Steve Jobs Macworld keynote while doing it. No nasal action and a bare minimum of mouth slime this time around. If I’m burning off 600-650 calories at the gym, and this diet seems to be taking in less than that amount, then clearly any weight loss is just the same-old formula and not some by-product of detoxification.

One thing I noticed today is that I often find my teeth pressed together, not sure if I’m just missing the need to chew things or what that’s about. Not grinding them together or anything, just pressed. Strange.

Eliminations are pretty boring and primarily liquid, of course. I think there was some solid stuff in the movie elimination, but auto-flush toilets, so it disappeared before I got much of a glance.

I think I may have expected more dramatic results because I failed to consider the diets of many people going into this cleanse. People craving meat and cheese (as they say on message boards) and having all this stuff come out of their system. Maybe being vegan gave my body a chance to detox otherwise? Then again, the one book author that talks about doing this cleanse several times a year is a raw food vegan.

I’m sort of at an impasse here. On one hand, I like the concept of detoxing and that I am helping my body eliminate all of this stored stuff and flush it out. But then there’s the whole medical community sort of giving it no attention, other than to sort of raise their eyebrows and question whether it could do harm.

It sort of reminds me of when I did 90 days of Bikram Yoga in a row. Any mood, skin breakout, or anything I felt at all was attributed to my body reacting to the yoga and flushing out toxins. The takeaway was always to just go with it, your body knows what to do with it. So, there’s this whole blind faith element to it all that seems to be based on junk science and feel-good hype.

On the other hand, I completely distrust the medical community as well. Anything that isn’t profitable doesn’t really have a place there. If you eat a bad diet and turn your blood thicker and your heart decides to work harder to move it around properly, you are diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on pills forever to bring your heart rate back down where it should be. Keep eating too much, you’ll probably start needing some cholesterol medication, something for your acid reflux. It goes on and on down the line, people scheduling C-sections for convenience, and I think the circumcision debate within the medical community is we make money if we do it, and we don’t make money if we don’t.

And the cleanse of course is ridiculously cheap: some lemons, syrup, one spice and water? They would hate that!

So, it’s sort of a tug of war between the vague “just go with it” hippies and the morally-bankrupt medical community.

The only thing I know is true is that Chinese medicine does use the appearance of the tongue to diagnose health problems. So, right now, I do have a white tongue, and the book says you’re supposed to cleanse until it turns pink, which means you’ve flushed out all your toxins.

Of course, I have to keep reminding myself that my primary reason for doing the cleanse was to reset my system, break old habits, and start the next 40 years differently. I don’t really need to believe the “science” or anything else, really.

Well, tomorrow marks the halfway point of the cleanse. Going to a show tomorrow night, but otherwise just hanging out and kicking back.

The book I read said days two and three are supposed to be the hardest for most people on the cleanse, so I’m perplexed why I find it so easy and, honestly, boring. I get up, drink salt water, stay home for the next 90 minutes (heh), and whenever I’m hungry all day I drink some lemonade. Easy…

It’s not bringing up cravings. I’m not sitting here bored because I’m not eating. It’s really sort of a non-issue.

I made it to the gym today, and within a few minutes of starting my cardio, I notice that my mouth is all sort-of phlegmy. Not that I have something of a quantity that could be coughed up, it’s all just coated and kind of slimy. And my nose starts blocking up as well. In addition to that, I am really not feeling in the mood to work out. It’s not a physical thing, my body is handling the workout fine. I just don’t feel like being there.

Of course, I just blast the Rent cast recording on my iPod (in honor of the show finishing its Broadway run on June 1), finish the workout despite my feelings, and by the time I’m able to blow my nose or rinse out my slimy piehole, all of the phlegm is gone again. Eriq mentioned his eyes being bloodshot, but I’m not seeing anything like that in mine. So…

Let’s talk books today. I bought three Master Cleanse books in advance of doing this cleanse. I purchased: The Master Cleanser by Stanley Burroughs, the book that started this whole thing back in 1976; The Complete Master Cleanse by Tom Woloshyn; and Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days by Peter Glickman. A bit overkill, but they are all quick reads.

Had I known how well my body is taking to the cleanse, I would have probably been fine with the original Burroughs book, which clocks in at under 50 pages. The origin of this diet is pretty strange. He supposedly was just inspired to write this diet down as a way to heal stomach ulcers in 10 days. Shortly thereafter, some guy shows up and tells Burroughs he has stomach ulcers that are going to kill him, and Burroughs shows him the paper with the diet written out on it. Sounds implausible, of course. But people have founded religions on less, I suppose.

The Complete Master Cleanse was probably the most definitive of the three, and the one I enjoyed the most. It just walked through his experiences with the cleanse both personally and as a practitioner in Burroughs’s healing techniques. He goes into Burroughs’ other therapy methods, which are a sort-of massage and color therapy, explaining how those could also help during the cleanse, but I’m sticking to just the lemonade.

The Glickman book was enjoyable because it had a lot of different voices represented, as Glickman runs the message boards at TheMasterCleanse.com and included a lot of message board chatter on various topics.

So, I guess it’s really up to how people think they might best receive this information. Burroughs is the minimal approach,  Woloshyn has the authoritative vibe, and Glickman had the most accessible version because it had a lot of different voices once it hits the message board section.

I am still surprised how little I am caring about food. A lot of the books advise not going out to the movies, to big events, or even watching commercial television because of the food ads. I think my being vegan is probably beneficial here, because I hate all the junk they sell at the movies anyway and don’t consider the ads on TV to be selling what I consider to be food, so I’m used to living in a world of sights and sounds that don’t really pull my focus.

I mean, I spent tonight polishing up a cookbook review for this site, and reading through all vegetarian recipes while drinking my lemonade. But still… nothing. I just thought ‘Hmm… this will be a nice recipe to try after I’m off the cleanse.’

I still question whether the laxative tea is doing much. Most of the books say to avoid drinking pure senna tea because you can cramp up, and it should probably be diluted or find a blend that has a smaller percentage of senna instead. I have 100 percent senna tea bags, and on the first pass I steeped in at the minimum recommendation. No obvious reaction. Now I’ve been steeping it longer than it says, and I’m still not reacting to it. Who can tell…

So, nothing major to report aside from the slimy workout action. I’ll have to report whether that comes back at the gym tomorrow.

I fear these entires will cease to be useful, seeing as how easy I’ve taken to this cleanse. But I put this here anyway, as a sort of famous last words placeholder.

So, drank the laxative tea again last night and slept right through the night without incident. Salt water cleanse, and then started up with the lemonade. Went for a longer visit than I expected at Macworld, which kept me from the gym (I really need to get over my hangup of not going to the gym after 4:30, because the frenzied people with jobs arrive; but seriously, the collective attitude does take a downturn with their arrival. Are you almost done? How long have you been on that machine?)

Sadly, I have still not weighed in, so any weight loss will not really be given a proper measure at this point. Probably won’t bother. Besides, I’ve already lost this weight many times over, so it’s sort of boring. I’ll just go by the true measure: clothes.

Once again, I am surprised by how little I am taking in and how well my body is adapting to it. Today, I will be having 7 glasses of the lemonade, so still on the low end of things. I did check my tongue and it is sort of white and coated, which in the psuedoscience of things is supposed to mean the cleanse is working. I’m basing everything on visual cues, though: toilet bowls, skin clearing up (or breaking out), clothes, etc. I actually don’t bother reading the Master Cleanse bulletin boards much, because it seems daft to need support doing something so banal, and there is so much wisdom floating around them that seems completely fabricated.

Let’s face it. Most of the people doing this cleanse on the boards are trying to lose weight, but they like romanticizing that they are not only losing weight but doing it by healing their bodies from the inside out. I do think there is something valid in letting the body detoxify, etc., but I think it might seem too desperate to otherwise say they are just trying to lose weight to the point where they are drinking a weird lemonade mixture and no food. So, there is a fixation on the science: I only had 2 eliminations, do I need more lemons? More tea? More cayenne? It seems that if you believe in the cleanse… just do it.

Eriq started today, so he’s a day behind me. We both went to Macworld together without incident. Well, aside from the fact that I could easily toss down $5K to get the iMac I want AND the new MacBook Air now,  but that’s always what happens at Macworlds.

The only downside was that I underestimated how long we’d be at Macworld, since I’m used to shredding through them quickly from years of covering them as a tech journalist, so I didn’t bring a lemonade with me. So, I was sort of hungry by the time I got home. I was worried that hunger was a bad thing, that satisfying early indications of hunger when you first sensed them was sort of the proper state of things, and that an actual hunger might be all ‘Lemonade? Are you kidding me?!” But, again, I drank one glass and it was fine.

Still no mint tea. It is mainly offered as something to drink that isn’t Lemonade or water, but the redundancy has yet to be an issue.

I do notice that my teeth seem sort of filmy by late evening, which is not usual. No big concern, though. I just brush them?

In many of the books I read, they said Day One, Three, and Seven are often the harder days for people. One was sort of easy for me, so maybe I’ll have more to report tomorrow?