Day three in the can! Seems to be getting easier and easier. Actually, I think the toughest day so far was the second day of the ease-in. But now that I have a routine down, I think I’m pretty set.

I made a pretty lengthy video tonight showing the exact process I take to make my lemonade. The video ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be, but I hope it’s still interesting.

Day Six

I went to bed way too late last night. I stayed up to do my blog post until around 3am, then watched the second half of Dinner for Shmucks which I had rented and watched the first half earlier that day (for the record, I know that movie was supposed to be horrible, but I thought it was HILARIOUS! Don’t judge me). Regardless, I set my alarm for 9am, and thank god for that Sleep Cycle app, I wake up feeling like a rose. The inside of my mouth feels like I just ate a whole bag of movie theater popcorn and a bag of sour patch kids. I think the lemon juice has something to do with it.  I roll out of bed and pound two pints of salt water. After speaking with Mike, I decided to bring the salt content down a little bit from the previous day. So I put exactly two teaspoons of salt in this time. Oh how I love The Salt Water Flush (SWF).

Just like the day before, after about 20 minutes, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. POOP IS COMING!!! Man it’s impatient.  Again, I’m a little surprised by a few things: the small size of the BM, the stench of the BM, and the number of BMs.  Just three. And the second two I kind of had to force out. I estimate that I only pooped about half of the liquid that I took in, or maybe less. A little disappointing to say the least (I really wanted to write, ‘what a bummer’ but I didn’t.  And I won’t)

I take a shower, get dressed and realize I’m out of lemons.  Hey, it happens. You go through them a lot. My saying has always been, “When life gives you lemons, hand juice them, add equal parts maple syrup, spice to taste with cayenne peppers, then through it back in life’s face by drinking nothing but lemonade for 10 days just for spite. You can’t get this dog down!!!” That said, I forgot to purchase more lemons, and I have a meeting with a friend in half an hour. So it looks like the first drink of the day will have to wait. And it does!

I meet up with my buddy Bilal at a Starbucks on Yonge Street in Toronto. This is actually the first time I’ve left the apartment in two days, and also the first time I’ve been at a commercial food and bev establishment since starting the lemonade diet. Fortunately I can take advantage of my own cheat so I order a non-caffeinated, herbal, all natural tea. It’s not exactly boeuf bourguignon but it is nice to have a different flavor in my mouth. It also makes me feel kind of normal, being out with a friend at a cafe.

We chat for about an hour, then I go pick up my lemons. I’ve gone through the maple syrup a lot faster than anticipated, so it’s time to re-stock that as well. With my new supplies in hand, I return to the apartment and do what I do best… make lemonade!

The rest of the day plays out pretty normal.

How do I feel?

Yeah, I’m feeling just fine. People keep on asking me how I’m dealing with the hunger. I’m actually not really noticing it all that much anymore. Psychologically it’s changed a lot. The first few days I was actually getting some hunger pangs, but now it’s more like I miss food. It’s how I imagine becoming allergic to seafood might feel. You would see others eating it, you would remember how tasty it was in your mouth, but you would not entertain ideas of eating it because you know that’ll just tear you apart. So you reminisce in memories of past delicious moments and then just go on with your day.

With all of this blogging my personal blog has had a resurgence, and with it all sorts of old friendships and relationships have been revived. I would say no fewer than six people who I never though I’d talk to again have contacted me in the last 48 hours (over Facebook mainly). Including one who I don’t think I’ve spoken to in over a decade. That is an unexpected treat.

I also received an interesting comment:

I like that you recommend we eat complex cards. Do you suggest does an ace trump two jacks?

For the record, I do not suggest that an ace trumps two jacks. This person input their name as Ima Jeff Lover, and email address as imajefflover@hotmail.com. I think most of the readers know that I’m an internet marketer by trade, so I could help myself but look into this mystery person with the knowledge I had of them. When someone submits a comment, I receive an email that includes their IP address (if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry about it). So I took the IP address and cross referenced it with a Geo-locator I use to get the long/lat of the user. I don’t know what they did to produce this result but it came back as 60.0000, -95.0000. Which is on the Manitoba-Nunavut border. So I don’t think it’s real. Bollucks!

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My outlook moving forward?

For this second I’d like to share a comment made directly on my personal blog by Rachel:

Heyyy, I recognize that juicer on your counter. And the advice about the olive oil.

I hope the salt water flush went well. Definitely hoping you don’t post a video documenting that particular process.

What I like most about these posts is that you’re focusing on the way that you’re thinking through the cleanse. I suspect the final benefits are less about the technical stuff (ie, how much lemon juice/cayenne pepper is needed to run a pipe-cleaner through your colon) and more about the psychology of it. It gets me thinking of a different take on the term “master cleanse”: it sounds like it’s primarily about willpower, managing your emotional relationship to food, and thinking through what it means to feel “hungry.” If you can ‘master’ that, then you can come out of the cleanse with a detoxed GI system -and- a detoxed perspective on food and taking care of your body.

You’re definitely making a strong effort at mastering what you put in, whether it’s food or attitude, in order to get a perspective on what you put out, and that’s great. Keep up the good work!

I thought this was pretty damn insightful.  What’s your take? Please leave a comment below.