We're almost a week into the cleanse, and so far things are going well. I haven't started feeling any different, really, but I guess it is still early. I started Monday, so I've got 16 days left to go.
The struggles I've found so far are all based on schedule and time. When I got home Monday night after yoga (pulling into the house by about 8:30) I still had to make a dinner soup, which ended up taking nearly an hour to cook. I had to transfer everything into a different pot to try to blend it, then had to transfer to the food processor. It was 10:00 before I was finally able to sit and eat. Since a key part of the cleanse is the 12-hour fast between dinner and breakfast, this meant that I couldn't drink the breakfast shake until 10:00 the following morning. Plus, since I'd done yoga I was already starving when I got home, so I was cranky by the time I finally went to bed.
On top of that, since the largest meal of the day is at lunch (when I am working) I have to cook a meal the night before taking it to work. Which, at the beginning of this week, meant I was cooking soup for dinner and lunch for the next day. I wasn't even sitting or relaxing or doing anything else at night - just cooking. Finally, on Wednesday, I made a soup that has been feeding me each night since (a pumpkin coconut soup, which is pretty delicious, though a bit grainy) and now that I'm heading into the weekend I'm hoping to take an afternoon and cook, or at least prep, ahead for next week. I'm making fish tacos tomorrow and will be planning out my meals for next week as well.
The last difficult thing (though it is probably for the best) is that I can't have any beer. This would be fine, except the last two days at work have been really stressful, so all I wanted when I got home was a cold beer to help me relax and move on. I suppose it is best for me to get away from that habit, but beer is just so good... Matt and I won't be able to homebrew for quite awhile because of the cleanse and his awful work schedule. He has worked every weekend since we got back from our Christmas trip. I miss coffee too... not for the caffeine, just the flavor. Tea just isn't cutting it.
The cleanse, despite it being extremely expensive, is finally starting to become habit. The breakfast smoothies will be a great way for me to start incorporating breakfast back into my diet, and I really like most of the soups I've made - they would be great sides for meals moving forward. I worry that Matt hasn't been eating well since we aren't eating together... I'm hoping that I can re-incorporate our shared meals back in once I'm finished with it. Considering how often Matt and I eat separately (due to work schedules and such) I'm sure I can find a good balance of these small, "clean" dinners and our more substantial dinners.
I did decide to start taking pictures for "progress." I took some on Wednesday and will probably take more again tomorrow. I think twice a week should be enough.
In other, non-cleanse-related news, I'm slowly working my way back into yoga. I'm going to attempt a C2 tomorrow morning (which I've been skipping because sleep has been much more appealing for the last month or so) so that could be interesting. I'm sure I'll be quite sore tomorrow. I'm also going to hit the "cleaning plan" hard tomorrow... our apartment still looks like a bomb went off in it.
And finally, and somewhat exciting, is that we are in full-on house hunting mode. It's been stressful, and we haven't even started looking (just browsing online), but we're excited. Our landlords graciously are letting us live in our apartment month-to-month so we can take our time finding one we really love. The only really upsetting thing so far is that we weren't approved for a loan big enough to get into our preferred neighborhood... on the plus side, if we buy near where we live now Matt could still use transit for awhile, and we'd be able to buy another car for us soon because the house cost is about $30-$40K under our max budget. Now we just have to find one we love... so far, we've found a couple, but they've been bought out from under us. But we're moving right along!
Now it's off to bed... I've got a Half Moon to master in the morning!
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