Week 19: Conscious Cleanse Part 2

"Eating crappy food is not a reward--it's a punishment." -Drew Carrey

Well everyone, I am just about finished with my 2 week cleanse! I have to admit that this week was much harder for two reasons. First was the lack of variety in my diet.  The book includes a huge variety of different recipes, but living in Doha, it is more difficult to find some of the ingredients.  So I stuck with essentially the same foods as last week--green smoothies, salads, and soups, and stir fries.  I just got a bit bored.  

The other difficult part was the food combining rules.  I didn't have too much trouble with them last week, but this week, they were harder to stick with! The food combining rules are basically: veggies with protein OR grain (never protein with grain), fruits in smoothies OR alone on an empty stomach (never with protein or grain).  Seems simple enough, but some of my favorite combos were shot--no beans and rice, apple with nut butter, oatmeal with banana, rice cake with hummus, etc.  I felt like I had few snack options, which led me to eating WAY too many nuts throughout the day.

I will admit to breaking the rules a bit by having fruit after a couple of meals (so awful of me, I know). Today and yesterday were supposed to be fruit/veggie and liquid only days, and I mostly stuck to that, except for a few whole fruits thrown in (there's a reason I have never done a juice fast...and never will).  But other than those exceptions, I am proud of myself for following the cleanse to the letter!

I did unfortunately gain some weight this week, which I will blame on the over-consumption of nuts as well as just plain water weight variations.  I will not have my total official weight loss for the cleanse until tomorrow morning, since I am still cleansing today. As of this morning, I was up 1.2 pounds from last week, making my total cleanse weight loss 4 pounds.

More important than the weight loss are the other benefits I have reaped from this cleanse.  My digestive issues are all but gone, I have more energy, my body feels tighter, my skin is better, and I feel happier! And all of that just by changing what I ate! 

The next step is to start checking my body for food sensitivities by adding back the "forbidden" foods one at a time.  I am not going to test the whole list, but I am going to check dairy, gluten, soy, corn, and eggs. Hopefully this process will help me figure out if there are any foods I should permanently avoid to keep feeling great. Next week, I will report back my findings!

Pounds lost: 17.2

Pounds left to lose: 12.2

Love,

Candace