I am still and alive and survived the first half of my cleanse. I am so thankful to have had the support of my husband and friend Kiley over the last 7 days because there were a few moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it and run to pantry for the peanut butter. The 3 of us have been texting and talking daily to encourage each other as we cleanse together.

DAY 7 MEASUREMENTS

WEIGHT 124 lb. | WAIST 28.5″

I feel really great about my progress so far. For starters, I did not do this cleanse to lose weight, but for a total body detox and a system reset. My goals were to help combat any areas of inflammation in my body and to reduce my cravings for sweets.

My husband has already lost 8 pounds. He also had to start eating again before going back on shift at the fire station. We did not want him passing out on a call. According to Josh this juice cleanse is much more challenging than the program he and my mom followed previously from Reboot with Joe.

If you are new here or missed last weeks post, you can read more detailed information about our cleanse, HERE. Basically, we are following a 14 day juicing and clean eating protocol called the Beta Breakthrough. All of our juices are made in our home from produce we purchased from our local grocery store and juiced using our Breville Juicer.

The first 4 days of this cleanse we strictly juiced and only juiced low sugar veggies. The next 3 days we reintroduced protein, moderate carbs, and healthy fats into our diet. Now for the fun part. Let’s compare my Day 1 photo with Day 7.

WEIGHT CHANGE -3 lb. | WAIST CHANGE -0.5″

In 7 days I have lost 3 pounds and 0.5″ around my waist. Like I said before I am not doing this cleanse to lose weight. I feel that my weight was very healthy before I began this cleanse. I would much rather feel amazing than have obtained a certain number on the scale.

DAYS 1-4

The first day was for sure the hardest. My husband and I juice often in our home so I wasn’t worried about juicing itself but was more concerned about how my body would feel and function on green juice only for 4 solid days. Josh said he has never heard me talk about food so much in my life. I kept saying how good french fries, pizza, and lemonade sounded. Poor guy, I know I was torturing him too with all my talk about food.

If you are ever going to do a cleanse make sure you read and understand the recipes and terminology. For example it would be great to know the difference between a stick of celery and and a stalk of celery. Learned this one the hard way. The first day of our cleanse Josh and I couldn’t figure out why our juices seemed so small. As I was prepping our produce the following evening I was struck by the word stalk.

Wasn’t a stalk a stick? No wonder our juices had seemed so tiny. I had not been putting the correct amounts in the recipes. Lesson learned.

Days 2-3 got fairly easier because we were actually juicing the correct amount and by Day 4 I was ready to be done with juicing and start chewing my food again. Because we were juicing for several days I got into a nice routine of cleaning, prepping, and storing our produce for the next several days of juices. Look at how pretty all those veggies look.

 

So many veggies! Josh and I were each consuming around 5 stalks of celery, 4 cucumbers, 1 bunch of parsley, 3 bundles of kale, 1 bundle of rainbow chard, 1/2 red cabbage, 1 lime, and 3 lemons during these 4 days.

There is no way I could ever eat this amount in a 24 hour period. Once I had all the veggies sorted, I made a “grab bag” for each juice we would drink. When we were ready to eat drink it was super easy to pull a bag out of the refrigerator with everything ready to go.

My energy levels took a nose dive on day 3. I was very, very tired. It didn’t help that I was up peeing every night at least 3 times because of all the liquids I was pushing through my body. In addition to the juice I also had at least 5 large glasses of lemon water a day.

Josh and myself took our recommended walks and I even did a very light swim during this phase. On day 4 Josh started eating again so he was well nourished before returning to work. I cooked him 3 separate meals, which I wanted to devour but didn’t, I think I should win an award or something, at least a foot rub (hint, hint Josh).

DAYS 5-7

I was so excited to eat! I didn’t even care that I couldn’t eat bread because whole vegetables and meat sounded so good! I am not sure why I have never had a sunny side up egg on my salad before now, but it may be my new favorite way to have salad. So yummy!

As good as all this food was I realized two very important things. Before this cleanse, I had been eating way too many “filler” foods during the day and after cleansing for 4 days with just juice the amount of food that I needed to be satiated was greatly reduced. My first meal I made I only ate about half of my plate before I was done.

What has been on my plate during this phase? So many things! Mushrooms, chicken, cucumbers, spinach, turkey, eggs, asparagus, brussels sprouts, broccoli, almonds, and sweet potatoes. I am sure I am forgetting something but those have been the staples.

I was introduced to adding a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to my water each night before bed during this cleanse and I will probably continue doing this after we have finished. It doesn’t taste bad at all and has so many health benefits. Who knew? Post coming soon on apple cider vinegar.

By the evening of Day 6, call me crazy, but I was looking forward to juicing again for another 4 days. And so my friends, today starts the halfway point of my cleanse. Yippee! Check back next Friday for a final recap.

I am off to enjoy my yummy green juice! I am sure in 4 days I will be sick of them again and ready for food but I am so excited for more juice.