The Master Cleanse Site

A couple of weeks ago while surfing the wonderful place that is the Interweb, I came upon some information about a detoxing system called The Master Cleanse (aka The Lemonade Diet). On this system, you consume a drink consisting of fresh lemon juice, rich maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water. You do a “salt water flush” in the morning and have an herbal laxative tea at night. As a treat, you can drink a decaffeinated tea. You do this for at least 10 days. This seemed downright scary to me. 10 days, no food? Preposterous! I couldn’t go 10 minutes without eating something.

It wasn’t until a few days ago that I gave The Cleanse some serious thought. I had just spent 3 days straight eating 1-pound slabs of steak slathered in A1 sauce just because I could. Steak with fried, breaded green beans. Steak with yellow rice. Steak alongside a large order of fries from the Chinese store. Salt, pepper, ketchup, please! Sometimes the steak was followed by a super thick milkshake. Other times, a handful of Oreos.

Those three days, they were pretty disgusting.

So I told myself I’d do it. I was going to go on The Master Cleanse and I was going to do it for a whole 10 days!

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The Master Cleanse: Day 1

Everything I’ve read about starting this cleanse is true. The first day, the first hours aren’t any fun, especially when you are the only one cleansing among a household of people who aren’t.

I had my first lemonade within an hour of waking up (I’ve decided I wasn’t going to do the salt water flush) and I actually enjoyed it. The thought of cayenne pepper in any drink is a turn off but the taste and spice didn’t bother me at all. And then I had to cook breakfast…

About a half hour after the first drink, I was so hungry it was making me nauseous. By the time both kids were up, I was able to ignore the hunger pangs while fed and entertained them.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that I started getting used to being hungry. But now all I can think about is the food. FOOD!!! FOODDDD!! I can taste the pad thai noodles, I swear I can. And the refried beans. Just the thought of steamed broccoli makes my mouth water.