Monday, February 4, 2019

10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse - Modified

Interestingly enough, as much as I enjoy food, here I am writing about basically avoiding food for 10 days - well, avoiding "chewing" food and avoiding all "unclean" foods.

I have attempted the 10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse in the past but gave up around day 3. I just couldn't take it! I still had to cook to feed my family and smell all their delicious food. I work in an environment where there's always food.. Even foods I didn't like suddenly smelled SO GOOD!

At any rate, I'm here again with the moral support of 5 girlfriends who are also on the smoothie cleanse journey. I will say that although I didn't make it through the whole cleanse last time, I felt nice and "clean" from the inside out from the time that I did spend cleansing.

I know myself well and know that I REALLY enjoy the process of 'eating food', not just consuming nutrients, so this time I decided that I would do the Modified 10 Day Green Smoothie Cleanse. In this version, two meals a day are replaced with green smoothies and dinner is baked or grilled fish or chicken or veggies (or a combination of those).

Day One

(Boy, it really helps to be prepared. I blended my smoothie and chopped my veggies last night)
Today, I began with the Berry Green Smoothie. As non-rigid as I am, I used a touch of agave nectar to sweeten my smoothie instead of the recommended Stevia (bleck). I know, I know, added calories and such. But for me, the goal of this cleanse is to actually 'cleanse' my system, not shed lots of pounds. I digress. The smoothie was actually a bit too sweet for me. Tomorrow, no agave. 
Today was actually pretty smooth. I am used to having vanilla chai tea in the mornings sweetened with honey and enhanced with a touch of heavy cream. I did miss that this morning. It seemed that my day went by pretty quickly, and so did my smoothie. I certainly did use the bathroom a LOT! I attempted to consume the recommended 64 ounces of water. I may have been off by a few ounces. Today's snacks were half an apple, sliced red and yellow peppers (I didn't like those, something must be up with that crop) and red grapes which I didn't eat. Tomorrow's snacks must be better planned. Dinner was simple: Cubed chicken breast atop a bed of onions, kale and tomatoes seasoned only with herbs and fresh garlic and baked for about 30 minutes at 375. Pretty tasty. I do miss the salt but I'll manage.
Clean Chicken Dinner - Pre-oven

I weighed myself before bed - 140.2. Surprisingly, I weigh more than I did on Saturday - 138.6.
As I prepped for tomorrow's smoothie, I snacked on a the red grapes that I failed to eat earlier at work.

Day Two

This morning I woke up pretty hungry with a very mild headache. Before getting ready for the day, I chugged some water from my nightstand staple water bottle to quell the hunger. It worked. As I got ready, I forgot about the headache but it slowly increased as the morning progressed.
Today I was actually hungry. Gladly I prepared a snack of  veggies with vegan house dressing.
"Vegan House Dressing", not bad

 At lunch time, I drank more smoothie - today's version was apple strawberry. I grabbed a store-bought water bottle today so that I could keep better track of the amount of water I'm taking in. About 5 of these will do the trick.
This afternoon, I decided I'd try mayo-free tuna salad for a protein pick-me-up. Surprisingly, the cilantro that I added to the dish (per the recipe) was a nice touch. I'll keep this in my rotation for times when I'm not cleansing along with the vegan dressing.
There was more smoothie today and it lasted all day at work and through dinner time, so no actual dinner for me today. I did notice that I haven't "moved" since I started this cleanse and I'm usually a daily mover so I grabbed some Smooth Move at the store to help with that. (I try to be a rule follower most of the time, but not always with my eating habits. The book totally recommended a daily detox tea, I just chose not to buy it initially. Looka there, they got me!)
Tonight's weight - 139.7

Day Three

I woke up this morning severely lacking in energy. Partly because the Smooth Move tea kicked in at 3AM...The directions say to drink it at bedtime. NEVER AGAIN. I relish my sleep more than anything! I decided to munch on some grapes before leaving home to give myself a boost of energy for work. They eventually kicked in and did the trick.
Today's smoothie was Apply Berry. Eh, it was ok. I added a touch of agave nectar because from past experience, frozen blueberry smoothies aren't quite as sweet. Good thing I did. This smoothie is ok, but I won't make it again.
I was STARVING at work today. My assumption is that it's because my stomach and intestines are now nearly empty. It was rough, I get a daily email from Food Network with recipes to try and today's issue featured game day favorites 😫 One of my favorite things about football season is the game day food... (I'm cheating for the Super Bowl this Sunday. Sue me.)
The snacks I brought today were 'deviled eggs' - I brought 6 halves but only ate 3, chopped veggies and cashews. I decided to eat only 3 cashews since these are heavy in calories and the were the main ingredient of the "Vegan House Dressing" used to flavor my eggs.
Each time I ate a snack or consumed smoothie, I felt pretty full but when I got hungry, I was HUNGRY. I decided to eat dinner (baked chicken and veggies left over from Sunday) so that I wouldn't be disturbed in the night with hunger pains.

Day Four

I forgot to weigh myself last night. This morning, the scale showed 134.6. Progress.
My child had a fever through the night so again, I'm lacking sleep here. I felt pretty weak this morning, not as weak as yesterday though. I consumed two of the three leftover deviled eggs around 9:00. Since I was home laying around with my sick young one today, I didn't really feel hungry. Or maybe I'm over the hump and can finish strong? At any rate, at least half of my smoothie was still left at dinner time. My family ate burgers - one of my all time favs. It smelled so great, but to be honest, I didn't really desire to eat a burger. I didn't really desire to eat anything. While the family ate, I had the rest of my "lunch portion" of smoothie and felt very full from that.
(Interestingly, lack of sleep and lack of desire to write go hand-in-hand.)
Tonight's weight - 135.6

Day Five

I'm OVER IT! To be honest, at this point I can sit right next to someone with food, I can cook food for my family and not think twice about eating it. I'm not hungry. But I'm BORED! Even with different fruits and greens in each smoothie - today's was Peach Berry Spinach - they're All. The. Same. Texture. I need variety in life, crunchy, sour sweet, firm, etc. I barely finished my smoothie throughout the day. I was just in a negative place regarding that thing today.
But negative feelings aside, I do feel great! I feel pretty weightless today, muffin top shrunk considerably. I'm a few pounds down from the beginning. I call this smoothie cleanse a success.
Today's snacks were spicy tuna - a lil too much heat 😰 - and sliced veggies. Again.

Today, I decided that I'm done with this cleanse for 5 reasons:
1. I thought I was starting with 5 girlfriends. As it turns out, only 3 of us were down for the cause at the time. Slight buzz kill.
2. I lost 5ish pounds. I'm already pretty slim, so I can't afford to lose too much weight. Also, my muffin top shrunk quite a bit. (I know, slim with a muffin top. How Sway?)
3. One of the 3 lone participants quit on day three for understandable reasons. I lost even more motivation.
4. My blender cracked on night three. I rigged it in hopes that it would last a bit longer because LAWD KNOWS it will take me a minute to find a new one. For me, it's not as simple as walking into a store, selecting a replacement and purchasing it. I need details, reviews, green in color. On night four, said blender operated efficiently. On night five, said blender spilled green juice all over the counter. I was already in a negative mood. Icing on the cake.
5. On night five, I decided upon several lifestyle changes. For example, I'll have to ease up on my love affair with bread and potatoes. I'll lighten my lunch at work and take a few light snacks to keep my metabolism up. I'll have a vegan or vegetarian meal or two here and there. Less fried foods...

Take Aways

The 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse wasn't for me, but the self-made 5-day version worked quite nicely! I feel clean, light and refreshed. I would recommend the cleanse to anyone who needs to clean themselves out or lose weight - even if you only do a partial cleanse. But I would also recommend lifestyle changes following the cleanse in order to maintain the new healthy weight and clean body. In my opinion, the only keys to success would be a strong-willed mind and a good blender.



The smoothie recipes and baked chicken dinner idea came from the book 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse by JJ Smith.

The dip which I called "vegan house dressing"* - Raw Cashew Ranch Dip, deviled eggs and tuna salad recipes came from Divas Can Cook.

*I named it 'vegan house dressing' because my husband says you can't say it's 'ranch' if it's not. I can agree with this for the most part. Don't roll up to me calling something 'chicken' fingers when it's really tofu. Just be honest.


Though I'm a pretty balanced eater, I will certainly be attempting to have more good, less bad at home and on the road. Follow my culinary journey @CltByThePlt.