3 day cleanse

I SURVIVED...

a 3-day cleanse. But not really. Allow me to explain...

I want to start by saying I'm not a huge fan of "extreme" dieting, juice cleanses, or cleanses in general because I feel like whatever weight you do lose is mostly water weight. The minute you start eating regularly again, you gain all the weight back. Also, this particular cleanse is not meant to be an every-day diet; there is no way a person could sustain his/her health eating like this on a regular basis. However, I decided to bite the bullet and participate in this cleanse because I wanted to challenge myself, explained more below. And, since I am participating in a weight loss challenge, I figured that even if I did just lose water weight, it would be better than nothing. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have done it if I wasn't having my weight loss tracked by someone other than myself but I'm competitive, so here we are.

This cleanse was given to me by Christi, Brickhouse owner, and consists of green tea, three Shakeology shakes a day, two pieces of fruit, and a large salad with veggies and lean white meat protein for dinner (low-fat dressing of choice.) You choose when to drink your shakes throughout the day. I chose to drink one for breakfast (8am), one for lunch (noon) and one after dinner/workout (8pm.) If you aren't doing high-intensity exercise during the cleanse, it is suggested to cut out one piece of fruit. I did go to my Brickhouse classes, no extra runs though, so I ate two pieces of fruit a day.

How it went

Obviously, I was hungry. But that's kinda the point of a cleanse, in my opinion. It probably didn't help that the three days before the cleanse, I ate and drank pretty much whatever I wanted so my body wasn't use to being hungry. Learning to be hungry and being ok with that feeling is one of the hardest parts of losing weight for me. When I say "hungry," I don't mean "starving." I mean not eating something every time I think I feel a little bit of a hunger pain. Some people can do this, snack all day, and they can maintain or lose weight. I have learned that this is not something I can do while trying to reach my goals. I also have a hard time with liquid meals because I miss the chew factor, so drinking 3 out of 4 meals was difficult mentally.

I think I pushed myself a little too hard on the exercise front. Even though I didn't do my usual runs Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I did do Turbokick on Monday and Insanity and Bodypump Tuesday. I didn't sleep very well Monday night which lead to me being tired and hungry all day Tuesday. Tuesday night, I went to bed hungry (shocking) and then proceeded to wake up every hour from midnight-6am when my alarm went off because my neighbor had people over and they were coming and going all night. I know that doesn't sound like an issue except for the fun fact that my bedroom is right next to the back stairs and our back door has no spring, so it slams shut every time someone uses it. Multiple those slams by at least 5 people who I'm sure enjoyed some adult beverages because they were talking loudly (for 2-3am) and then add a crazy storm, making my apartment even hotter than usual (no A/C, I'm awesome) and what do you get? A very grumpy Lainer. At about 3am, I got up, said "screw this," and ate a banana. At that point I was just too tired, too hungry, and too annoyed to care about any cleanse. I decided at that moment that I would be stopping the cleanse a day early. Call me a quitter, I don't care; losing weight is not worth me being miserable for one more day. So Wednesday morning I got up, packed myself a REAL lunch and my regular snacks and decided 2 outta 3 days ain't bad.

A positive from the 3-day 2-day cleanse is that I've come to realize I get some anxiety about missing exercise that I've mentally scheduled for myself. I usually run Tuesday and Wednesday mornings but I just physically didn't have the energy for it this week. I felt guilty about it for a minute but quickly reminded myself that I wasn't eating enough calories for the extra exercise. A bad habit I've formed over the years is eating something I probably shouldn't and justifying it by saying "oh, I'll just add a run tomorrow" whether or not that run actually happens. More often than not, it didn't happen. I need to get out of the mentality of "exercising it off." It's not a healthy relationship to form with food or with exercise. So this cleanse helped me get real with myself about that, which I'm happy about.

Results

I weighed myself before the weekend and then again Wednesday morning and there was no weight change. I guess it's good that I didn't gain any weight over the weekend but I'm glad I made the choice to stop the cleanse a day early beause it didn't really do much weight-wise. All in all, I'm happy I did it; not necessarily for the weight loss aspect of it, but just to re-adjust and re-group myself. If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you, and this cleanse was certainly a challenge for me personally. Again, I wouldn't do something like this on a regular basis (or probably again for a LONG time) but I wanted to prove to myself that I could-kinda!