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Cleanse

I’m starting a cleanse today! It’s not a New Years resolution – I don’t tend to do those – but for the next three weeks, I’m cutting out alcohol, caffeine, sugar, wheat (gluten), dairy, and meat. Seafood is ok, and I’ll probably have the occasional piece of dark chocolate or lightly caffeinated tea, but that’s it.

This is a “blacklist” kind of cleanse, as opposed to a “whitelist” that lets you have only orange juice, or only rutebaga and sardines, or only raw plants you pull out of the ground yourself. Those just seem silly.

I generally eat healthy, but I’m not hardcore. I’ll happily gobble down the occasional pork belly, croissant, half a chocolate cake, or five drinks or cups of coffee in a day. Even without the excess, days without wheat or dairy or sugar are the exception, not the rule, and days without coffee or alcohol are rare indeed.

Even so, I’m happy with https://valtvalacyc.com my diet overall, so I’m doing this mostly just for the experience. It’s not an obvious one to seek out, but I’m sure it will be interesting!

Props for the inspiration and motivation go to Gina, who’s always trying different cleanses, and Schemer, a great new webapp for discovering fun things to do. Wish me luck!

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11 thoughts on “Cleanse

  1. after posting this, i read more of the wikipedia article i linked to, and i just had to post this quote. so good!

    The general idea suggests that most food is contaminated by various ingredients deemed unnecessary for human life, such as flavor enhancers, food colorings, and artificial preservatives. Scientists, dietitians, and doctors, while generally judging ‘detox diets’ harmless…often dispute the value and need of ‘detox diets’ due to lack of supporting factual evidence or coherent rationale.

  2. Half a day in and the black list grows smaller…chocolate and cereal with skim milk. The claim being “skim milk is like water” and there’s no added sugar to dark chocolate:). Love the creativity! But thanks for giving it a try with me. Next year maybe colonics?

  3. Touché! Dark chocolate does have sugar added, but not much. I’m all for creative cheating excuses, though, keep them coming! :P

  4. i never have headaches, but i had one last night, just 24 hrs into the cleanse. i was drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day, so i suspect caffeine withdrawal. whee!

  5. I love diet experiments! I spend a lot of last year black-listing foods, I kinda liked it. Will look forward to discussing results :-)

  6. aw thanks! how it's going so far: i never have headaches, but i had one last night. i was drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day, so i suspect caffeine withdrawal. whee! via Google+

  7. mmm, sounds great. we'll definitely take you up on that!

    one week down, and i don't feel too much different. and the only thing i really miss is coffee. i love coffee. via Google+

  8. How is this going 12 days in? What is still tasty? What are you missing the most?

  9. @John, it went well! (we called it a couple days ago, so we only lasted two and a half weeks.) i was still happy with the food i was eating, and coffee was the only thing i really missed. I’m sure i would have missed (dark) chocolate, though, if i had cut that out too.

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