So…It’s day 3 of the 28 Day Raw Vegan Healing Cleanse. The last two days have been tough.
I started getting some minor headaches here and there and I’ve been sleepy and kind of out of it. I really thought this would start later in the cleanse, but I guess my body is really ready to kick stuff out. I haven’t been craving meat or dairy, but I do have yearnings for bread. Legit, affectionate yearnings for bread. Sigh.
I was kind of wilting yesterday, so I gave in and had a baked potato with dinner, which was lettuce, arugula and mashed avocado with red onion. Followed with watermelon. And that perked me up until bedtime. I think I just need to eat more, more often; and drink more too.
Today is much better though. I had some lemon water in the morning, took my daughter to school, and then cleaned out the car and swept out the garage when I got back. Phew. I had some breakfast after that – bananas, kiwi, honey, coconut and cacao nibs. Yum. I think the dandelion root tea I had the night before may have given my lymphatic system a boost which brought me a better morning.
Another reason for the cleanse are these weird skin issues I’ve been having. My hands have been getting really dry, and flaky and crack and bleed. And I’ve been getting discoloration at the corners of my mouth and the skin around my eyes is sometimes red, wrinkly, and flaky. But the redness around my eyes is better today! A lot less noticeable. Which is awesome.
My sense of taste is heightened too- lemon water tastes more sweet than tart to me, and the clementines I’ve been throwing back have begun to take on notes of cherry. It’s been nice to find these hidden depths; these unexpected jewels of flavor!
Day 8
It’s day 8 of the raw vegan cleanse. I basically “cheat” once a day now. It sucks, but its funny and whatever. I was holding strong till Day 4 when I had to get an email out before picking up my daughter up from school and I didn’t want to stop and eat – so I inhaled some Boulder Canyon potato chips real quick. Gah! It wasn’t a craving, just a necessity for quick energy. Day 6, it was pizza at a volunteer meeting. Cause pizza. I could have easily just walked out of there. I wasn’t starving. But Pizza. Man oh man. Day 7, tortilla chips. Because I made awesome guacamole and it just felt right. I told myself even though it wasn’t raw, it was “still vegan”
The biggest challenge with this cleanse is having enough food in the house. And getting the ripeness of the produce to line up with your desires. Also, not having chips in the house, apparently.
Nice surprises were that I can handle a little bit of dandelion in my salad – even though its bitter as hell. And that I could probably live off guacamole on salad for the rest of my life. What I love about guacamole is that there is nothing “not-so-great” in it. It’s all good for you and tastes amazing. I also remembered I can easily add my supplements to my morning smoothie (2-3 bananas, 1 cup of wild blueberries, 2 dates, some maple syrup and cinnamon) and be done with it which is nice. My hands are still really dry and some of the redness is still around my eyes. No more headaches, but I’m achey in other places now; mostly my back, shoulders, hips, and legs. Taking an Epsom salt bath at night helps a lot with this. My energy does drag a little on this cleanse , but I am somehow getting more done, and feeling pretty good while I’m doing it.
One thing that I didn’t expect is that at times I am experiencing symptoms that I previously blamed on having certain foods. Like wheat and dairy. Whenever I had puffy eyelids before I would think “oh that’s my body freaking out about the cheese I had, etc.” My feet also get a little puffy from time to time, but now I know it’s not the cheese, per se, (this happened before my slip with pizza) it’s really just a symptom of an overloaded lymphatic system – Previously it could have been the cheese adding to my body’s burden, but right now it’s clearly just my body detoxing and my lymphatic system is struggling to keep up. Its a symptom that of course goes hand in hand with feeling shitty! I just listened to the Medical Medium’s show on what you can do for the lymphatic system and it was an eye-opener. For now, I’ll be keeping up with my lemon water, of course, but also taking my dandelion root tea, and peppermint tea.
I recently got the left arm pain again too, (peripheral neuropathy) for about 2 seconds -it was like a twinge of the old pain I used to get when I had wheat. And this was on Day 2 or 3 when I was still spotless in my diet. That seems like one of those weird detox reactions you read about. Twinges of the old pain before it leaves you forever..
Day 15
So, a lot can happen in a week. On Day 10, I had another attack of that crazy colitis thing, which I need to re-frame, I guess crazy diarrhea is more of an IBS symptom, or I’ll just call it septi-mania. But this time I know what caused it! It was the cucumber juice. Yeah. The cucumber juice. I’m sure that’s what is was the first time too. I failed to mention it in the original post because I thought anything as healthy as a cucumber couldn’t possibly be at fault. Well, maybe this body is not supposed to consume 8-10 oz of cucumber juice in one sitting. I’ll have to reign it in a little. The same MO in both cases too. I have the cucumber juice. I feel absolutely amazing for 8-12 hours, and then the bloating starts, and a few hours later the septi-mania begins. This time it was very mild, probably because I’ve been eating like a woodland elf and no stomach cramps at all this time around. The whole episode lasted a day and I rebounded fairly well. My best guess is that the cucumber juice really flushed a lot of crunk out of my liver or GI tract, and then the toxic overload was too much for my body and had to be jettisoned ASAP. So, I’m not giving up my cucumber juice, because it makes me feel borderline euphoric for the first 8 hours, but I will back up on it. Maybe 2 ounces here and there and I’ll see how it goes.
Also, I am no longer afraid of Papaya. It took a lot to bring home a dinosaur egg from the produce aisle, and even more to cut into it, but I’m okay with it now. It smells like vomit to me when I cut it open, but the actual fruit is okay. It’s not that sweet to me but I don’t care because the skin on my hands is starting to get better. It feels like my body is saying, “Yes! Papaya! This is what we’ve been missing!” I only added a few small chunks to the strawberry smoothie and there was a significant change in my skin. Today I took some and massaged it into my hands and let it sit there while my skin absorbed it. The Medical Medium says skin health is all about the beta-carotenes! Mostly, that is. Naturally, consuming it is best, but my hands needed some quick relief today.
Other than that I’m still falling off the wagon here and there. I thought I could do anything for 28 days, but I do have a penchant for potato chips and lately, cookies! I would love some Stella D’oro Swiss Fudge cookies. Good God, would I love those with some cawfee. My craving always matches what I didn’t have enough of that day in good foods. If I went easy on the fruit, I want sugar (cookies); If I want chips, its because I missed out on some good salts and didn’t have my celery juice in the morning or didn’t get a big enough salad. Rarely, I crave fats, like a piece of cheese. But it’s always when I didn’t have an avocado that day. (Or when I make my daughter bacon and eggs for breakfast and she doesn’t finish what’s on her plate.) I’m starting to see how beneficial it is to get some portion of Glucose, Salt, and Potassium in each meal. And how health problems are basically nutrition problems.
I honestly didn’t expect to learn all this on the cleanse. I was enjoying just being in activity mode and not over-thinking everything like I usually do. Things keep presenting themselves though which is nice, and it’s nice to be in observation/appreciation mode too. And I’m really glad I got over my weirdness with Papaya, I think its going to be key for me.
Day 22
Soo…I’m done with the cleanse. Kind of. I know. I didn’t make it all 28 days. But I’m okay with that. Even with my litle snack cheats here and there, I really only made it to Day 19. My husband was making spaghetti (rice noodles) and meatballs for dinner and I just caved. I was hungry, it was there, my produce stash had not a single mango among it and I didn’t feel like making myself potatoes or whatever. As Bob Dylan said, “There’s no success like failure” and boy was that true the next day when I woke achey, sluggish, and meh. I hopped on some lemon water which picked me up and got me moving and that day I ate pretty light and pushed the fluids. My guess is that I had been detoxing pretty well and the extra fat in the meatballs slowed it all down, as the Medical Medium says it will. Last night I made rice pancakes for my daughter. These are actually good. But I got so tired and sleepy afterwards that I won’t be making those again anytime soon. Ugh. We also have a small fruit fly invasion, which is being contained with apple cider vinegar traps.
During the cleanse, I was interested in all these starchy, processed, quick energy foods and now that I’m off the cleanse I’m really not interested in them anymore. I look at the gluten-free waffles in my freezer and think, ‘I see you gluten-free waffles, so what, you do almost nothing for me. You’re not supplying my body with any living nutrients. You’re not building my glucose stores, repairing my adrenal glands, knocking back the herpes virus. Why would I eat you when I can have fruit, and leafy greens! It feels a little like getting out of an abusive relationship. We eat these foods that really do nothing for us and yet we keep coming back for more.
It’s not a total re-orientation for me. In fact I shied away from the 28-Day cleanse prior because I had really wanted to make just a few changes on a more daily basis. Well, I did that for awhile, and then my morning bowl of fruit became those gluten-free waffles with butter, bananas, and syrup, so it was definitely a good push back in the right direction.
I actually ended up doing the celery juice every morning for a month when I had the septi-mania in November. So I’m pretty pleased with where I stand in all this. I don’t feel like I “failed”
I’m definitely okay with letting meat out of my diet, even more so than previously. And the wheat no longer holds the same sway on me. I got three great foods even more firmly entrenched in my diet: Papaya, Avocado, Mango. Well, wild blueberries and bananas too because I really like having the wild blueberry shake for breakfast; so I’ll be continuing that for awhile. And I’m into my spinach-tomato-cucumber and guacamole salads, so I’ll stick with that too. I got back off of having coffee in the morning too which has been good.
I think key for me is keeping some better snacks on hand, like the date-coconut-almond “granola” and keeping my fluids up. My feeling after all this is that my organs detox quickly but my lymphatic system has trouble keeping up with the load. And that’s where I get bogged down.
A few issues cleared up for me while on this and if I can keep pretty close to it, I’m sure other things will too. The uber dry skin on my hands that looked excemish/psoriasisish cleared up. I went back and listend to the Medical Medium show on excema and psoriasis where he says its from a dermatoxin, so I had the bright idea one night of giving my hands an epsom salt back to draw out the toxins. And it worked! The next morning they had dramatically improved. I also started back in on my Cat’s Claw. I ran out of Lysine or I would have added that too. The problem area around my eyes, the redness, and the flakiness is coming and going still as is this weird wrinkle that’s developing. I think its from nerves around my eyes being is some kind of mini-spasm all the time. So, I have to hit the magnesium and the B12 for that I guess. I also have re-up on all my teas, the Lemon Balm especially. And I have to find out somewhere I can buy all this stuff in bulk because it’s getting pretty pricey.
The most amazing thing is that even though I don’t feel super “up”, I find I have a higher quality of energy. It’s hard to describe. I’m up for things and not just dragging myself around. I’m starting to clean out the house and get rid of stuff I don’t need anymore. How’s that for a cliché detox metaphor! AND, this is huge, I’m actually getting stronger than I was before. My muscles are coming back. Fructose and Mineral Salts, baby! I haven’t been exercising at all!
But I did actually have the thought about maybe going to do some laps yesterday. It struck me as an appealing idea to propel myself through the water again. I didn’t do it, but to even have that thought shows amazing progress for me. I haven’t swam laps since 2011!
Before starting the cleanse I was tired of eating “healthy” and eschewing fruit for gluten-free waffles. The skin on my hands was crazy dry and a little revolting. I was feeling tired, and too discouraged to do anything about it. And I had no idea what the bouts of septi-mania were caused by
Now, I’m up for the challenge on most days, and even having thoughts about swimming again! Huge. The skin on my hands is all healed up! And I now look at fruits and vegetables in a much brigher light. They are amazing beings. They are not something to suffer through, they are blessings. When I open up the fridge and see a bowl of oranges and apples or spinach, avocados and tomatoes, I think “oh good, there’s plenty to eat” not “ugh, there’s nothing to eat.” It’s much easier to eat the right foods and to heal when you can reset your body back into its natural alignment/viewpoint. (or as close as you can come anyway) Which is what the cleanse did for me. It kicked me back into a more productive alignment. And I’m really starting to reap the rewards. I’m going to keep my raw produce high, my meats and wheat low, and do the best I can with all my supplements and teas.
“You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances”. – Bobby Fischer
CFS | Endgame 
Leave a Reply