Ritual Cleanse – final thoughts

Saturday was my first day back to food after the juice cleanse.  According to the scale, I lost 3 pounds.  If you assume that the scale reading when I started was an anomaly, then I lost 5 pounds.  However, I don’t think my clothes fit any differently.

You’re supposed to have fruit for breakfast and then try and stick to a raw diet for the rest of the day.  The only fruit we had in the house were apples, which seemed a little crunchy to throw at my body first thing in the morning.  I drank some chai and then had some yogurt, instead.  Oh, wait, I also had some hot lemon water before I ate anything.  I drank it through a straw so it didn’t make my teeth all squeaky.  Then I had an appointment with the florist ($140 for all our wedding flowers! Which I’m arranging myself.) and went grocery shopping.  I had a recipe for carrot soup with shredded chicken to try and I wanted to pick up a rotisserie chicken.  I’m sure you know this, but maybe writing it will make me remember. Costco has the best deal for rotisserie chickens.  I bought one a Henry’s, which is still pretty decently priced, because I didn’t think I was going to go to Costco.  But, then I went anyway for canned dog food and a brisket (and veggies, salad, and something else) and saw how inexpensive their chickens are (like, $3).

Let me tell you, the smell of a roast chicken in your car when you haven’t eaten solid food in 3 days is maddening.

For lunch, I was going to make the soup and then eat it, figuring a carrot soup must be food for you, even if it’s not raw.  But I was starving (starving!) so I had the spring rolls I picked up from the special vendor display at Costco. Never ever eat spring rolls that haven’t been freshly prepared when you order them.  They sit out for the briefest amount of time and the wrapper gets hard and chewy.  I ended up eating the insides and giving the wrappers to the chickens.  I also picked up tuna and salmon nigiri because it was super cheap and I love salmon.  It was okay – the tuna was stingy but the salmon was good.  Not as good as Poway Sushi Lounge’s salmon and not as good as Ichizen for the price.

I also ate some chicken skin and the wings as I shredded the meat into a container for later.  Then I made the soup, which is good and will be handy for work lunches this week.

My wedding dress arrived, and they were able to squeeze me in for a fitting.  Well, they said I could come in and just try it on, but it turned into an actual fitting.  The dress fits – it zips up – but it took some wrangling!  The cute little old seamstress told me to drink more hot tea, don’t eat bread or sugar, and lose 3 pounds.  So, that’s the plan.

Dinner with Cami at The Lincoln Room – their happy hour (5-7p m every day) is pretty awesome.  We had some shrimp, deviled eggs, and deconstructed pizza.  Yes, I ate some bread, but it was flat bread.  And really tasty.

And then I came home and ran on the treadmill.

Sunday morning, I was back up 2 pounds, so I think most of the weight I “lost” on the juice cleanse was really more like water weight.  Especially since it didn’t really drop any inches.

I like the idea of cramming a bunch of veggies into your day and it was super easy to just drink the juices all day long.  I never felt sluggish or got a headache, but at the end I didn’t really feel refreshed.  It DID make me think about what I wanted to eat afterwards and it kind of makes you conscious of the food you put in your mouth.  If it had shrunk some inches off, I would do it again if I needed to.  However, I would probably look at doing a modified version where you drink juices all day and then eat a vegan-ish dinner.  That would at least give you some chewing food to look forward to at the end of the day.

In the end, I think I’ll just stick with what I’ve been doing all along: lots of veggies, limited red meat, occasional vegetarian dinners.  Occasional tasty splurges like cookies and cake and animal fries from In-n-Out.  Peking duck. Pork belly.  You know, those kind of things.

After the wedding, that is.  For the next month, I’ll be staying away from bread and sugar and trying to lose 3 pounds. I don’t want an 81-year old Chinese seamstress yelling at me!