Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Day 10 is here, and you are feeling one of two things.

You either have had enough, and are SO EXCITED to start drinking orange juice that you couldn’t stand to think of doing it one more day. You are proud of yourself, but still, you’ve had enough. You are ready to call it a wrap and finalize your accomplishment. The Lemonade Diet is over, and you are ready for the Ease-out (and, frankly, would like to chew anything even vaguely edible ASAP).

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Or you may be thinking – WOW, I feel great… and I am not sure that I am ready to quit (either because your body is giving your signs that you are not quite cleansed yet, or you are feeling pretty good, and while there is still weight to lose, you may as well keep up the pace). The question then becomes, when is it time to quit? When are you done the Lemonade Diet? When is it time to start the Ease-out?

It is time to quit the Lemonade Diet when you are ready to. It is a personal choice, but there are some signs that you can pay attention to:

1. Are you truly hungry? Hopefully, during this process, you might have begun to recognize what different types of hunger we can have. Your body can signal a physical need for energy – you are shaky, or light headed – so get some food in you in order to get your blood-sugar up. Your psychology might be telling you you’re hungry when you’re actually just bored. Your society might be telling you to eat because it’s that time of day, or season, or an event demands it. But then there is HUNGER. Your body needs long-term and full spectrum nutrition. You are lacking and you are in need. If you ever get to this point, you should begin the Ease-out immediately. It is time to quit the Lemonade Diet.

2. Your physical signals are starting, peaking, or diminishing. Your skin may break out, you may have headaches, your tongue might get white, you may be stuffed up and coughing up mucous, and your breath could stink. If these things are just starting or coming and going, that is a good thing; it’s likely you are cleansing and going through Healing Events. You should probably continue – unless you have genuine HUNGER, as related in item 1. If these events are peaking and you feel a breakthrough, KEEP going a few days – especially if you feel you are on a roll, and are experiencing a natural high. If you are through the events and feel you have no more cleansing to do, finish up and count yourself lucky. Your tongue might be pinker, your breath is healthy, your bowel movements are getting clear, and even your arm-pit sweat doesn’t seem to stink.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 10 – Time to Quit?

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

As the Lemonade Diet begins to wrap up, we generally begin to see the effects coming into focus. A few of us don’t experience the effects – whether weight loss, or improved skin, or lost inches, or a sense of well-being – until later in the cleanse. Each of us feels them in different ways and at different times. The Lemonade Diet can feel either easy or hard, at different times in the process, and each different time we do it. But by day nine we should all be gaining the confidence or getting ready to quit. Either way, it’s almost done.

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This time tomorrow you will be deciding whether you are going to quit the Lemonade Diet and move onto the Ease-Out. Way to go! I knew you could do it. It was hard, it was easy, it was SO WORTH it. One more day until you get to taste something new!

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 9 – Almost Done

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Day 8. By now, you’ll know it can be an emotional rollercoaster. Each day feels like a continuous cycle of falling in love followed by depression because you were dumped. Sometimes I feel a deep loss for the food, like I will never eat again. Thankfully I realize, of course, that this is not true and the feelings pass.

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It is also interesting how much I CRAVE, and want to eat. The “thoughts” themselves don’t really go away, but the sting of the actual cravings do subside. I am the fish and the craving is the baited hook; it’s so tempting. That is perhaps my favorite part of the Lemonade Diet: I learn each time that I am not my thoughts. I am not a biological machine on autopilot, controlled by the subconscious ramblings of my mind. These are the same thoughts that make us eat when we are depressed, or bored. Those two unhealthy relationships with food lead us to the weight gain from which we are trying to purge ourselves.

Another relationship I have with food is that I LOVE it. I love eating. The tastes and smells of world cuisine. While this in itself isn’t an unhealthy relationship, perhaps my choice to eat until I no longer am capable – so I can continue to taste as much as possible – is. In fact, I am certain it is.

A final cause for caloric in-balance is drinking. I like to booze. I drink beer and plenty of it. That’s a great deal of calories. Not only that, but going home (from the bar, from a friend’s), I then want fast food and lots of it. And in the morning, hungover, I want fast food again. Simply: the trifecta of weight gain.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 8

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

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Sometimes you will miss eating and crave eating again. The psychology of this process can be strange. You may occasionally, or even frequently, have thoughts of quitting. But you also know you can do it. Perhaps, to distract your mind, you move on to something else, playing mental gymnastics to calculate how much longer you have to go; how good you feel now, and how good you will feel after the lemonade diet. You begin to develop the strength to deny those cravings (beer, chocolate, etc.) that are just means to make yourself feel better, wants not needs. Some of the time you feel powerful, some of the time you feel weak. In some ways, it’s like training for hockey. So much running or lifting weights – there are times you want to quit, yet you push on through, finding your groove and leaving behind those doubts. And the feeling afterwards is so uplifting.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 7 – Don’t Quit Now

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Day 6 of the Lemonade Diet often begins to feel easier; like you’re really beginning to hit your stride.

Day 6 is a turning point on the weekend, marching confidently towards the goal. Next Friday, we start on the orange juice. I chose this timing to highlight the milestones. You can be psychologically complete on that Friday, so only one full weekend on the Lemonade Diet is required.

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I love thinking in terms of milestones. It makes things so much easier. Little spoonfuls of elephant, as the saying goes (“How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time”). Breaking things up into accomplishable goals really helps. By setting the Ease-In and the beginning of the Lemonade Diet with the timing we did (for a 10-day cleanse), we only sacrificed one full weekend to drinking just the lemonade. To me, it breaks things up and feels a lot more manageable.

What are your thoughts on the timing?

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 6 – Hitting Your Stride

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Gazing down the home stretch of the Lemonade Diet can be incredibly empowering. You can feel the momentum building towards the finish line, which at the same time can seem so far away.

“Those last few days were hard, I’ve got five more to go.”

“I’m getting in the zone, I feel like I can go forever.”

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These are common sentiments as you approach the midpoint of the Lemonade Diet. Where are you in your process? Are you hitting your stride, or are you struggling? Have you experienced a breakthrough yet, or at least feel like you will soon? Is it still as hard as ever, or is it getting easier? It can seem a lot like breaking through the wall into the runner’s high, the feeling you get when an incredibly difficult activity begins to eases, sometimes bringing a kind of euphoria. There are few things better than that – the feeling of “I am doing it.”

This feeling isn’t guaranteed for everyone at this point; for some, it may arrive later. That isn’t to say that you are doing the Lemonade Diet wrong; we are all different. Many people who don’t reach that smooth-sailing point end up quitting, and thinking the whole process was hard – but worth it. It’s my belief that, had those people persevered, they might well have arrived. Then again, maybe not. Each person responds completely uniquely.

I hope you are over the worst of the physical and psychological hunger pangs that you experience early on, and are now able to use the routine to handle all the false social and psychological cues that are telling you you should be eating.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 5 – Half Done

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Day 4 may bring a clearing on several fronts. Often, you begin to get over the physical symptoms of what people call “Healing Events” (although they are reported to come throughout the cleanse, at any time). You may also get over the psychological need for food (although you do often feel a little tweak of “want”, not of “need”). The psychological “need” for food isn’t always a centered thought. We think we need the worst kinds of foods. We are socially conditioned to think “I need meat”, or “Three squares per day”. These ideas are artifacts from old concepts we can now disprove to some degree or another.

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Perhaps the greatest benefit from the Master Cleanse is the new-found recognition that you don’t have to stuff yourself. Or that a big, beautiful piece of broccoli can sustain like a nice breast of chicken. The social adaptation we have made to meat can be replaced with a new norm, a new paradigm.

Healing Events are the sniffles, rashes, coughs and other symptoms mostly experienced around day 3 or day 4, but which can occur at any time throughout the Lemonade diet. These events are thought to be the removal of toxins that may have caused sickness on the way in. They say “sick in, sick out,” after all. If you pick up a bug, your body isolates it and tries to expel it through a variety of ways (mucous, coughs, sneezes, fevers, rashes, zits and more). The same is true when the toxin is leaving, so you get the symptom. That is the prevailing notion on healing events encountered during the Lemonade Diet.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 4 – Healing Events

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If Wednesday is hump day of the work week, day 3 is the hump day of the Lemonade Diet. Most people describe day 2 and day 3 as the very worst for cravings. By day 4, your body has adapted to its new routine and is no longer expecting meals at the usual times and the familiar stuffed bellies provided by processed foods.

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While this may be hump day for cravings, I don’t believe it is the same for the detox. Starting on day 4, many people describe getting headaches, rashes, slight colds and runny noses, and I believe this is due to the expulsion of toxins in our bodies, as they leave our system. Sick in, sick out. When we ingest toxins, we often have similar reactions – a sneeze, a stuffed nose, even a temperature. All of those things are reactions to contaminants detected by our immune system.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 3 – Hump Day

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

The false bravado of day 1 often comes crashing down on day 2. The first time I did the cleanse, I went flying into day 2 like the king of the world. I figured I got through day 1 so easily that this would be no problem. By the time lunch rolled around on day 2, I had changed my tune.

The days ahead of day 2 can seem endless. In fact, that is one of the strangest sensations I get when I do the cleanse. It is such a commitment. Event thinking about breaking it causes pause, because you have to take time to break it. Mind you, on day 2, I have heard from many people who have quit the cleanse with a Whopper with cheese, or some other comfort food. But later on in the cleanse, we seem to recognize that if we are to break it, we will need to do it slowly.

That said, day 2 is still relatively easy at first, a mere precursor to the “healing events” of day 3 and day 4, and the psychological pinnacle of the social addiction to food. If it seems like you’ve hit a wall, just climb up over and keep on going. The good news is that you CAN do it. I know you can. You can do anything. And if you don’t do it this time, you WILL do it next time.

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 2 – The Wall

Latest posts from The Master Cleanse and Lemonade Diet

Well, we are past the Ease-in (if you did one at all), and we are onto the main event – The Lemonade Diet. Whether you are a Master Cleanser in the true sense, doing your fifth or even tenth Master Cleanse, or you are a rookie going at it for the first time, the first day of the Lemonade Diet can be a mixed bag.

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Generally, the sense of excitement and adventure provides sufficient motivation to make it through day 1 without too much trouble. On the other hand, many people may feel the full impact of the desire to eat if not at breakfast, and still not at lunch – many of us get so busy that we often don’t eat until late in the day – then at dinner time, when the cravings hit hard. This is usually the time when we would gorge ourselves to make up for the whole day of no food. But this time you simply can’t do it.

Preparation is the key to the first day, especially if it is your first time. Some people prepare their juice the day before. I like my lemonade as fresh as possible. I prepare half of mine in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. The process of preparing and drinking the lemonade is always causing confusion, even though it is quite simple.

Congratulations on starting a wonderful experience. I am sure your first day will go well and help psyche you up for the hardest part of the cleanse – days 2 and 3 (or so they say).

Read the full post here: Lemonade Diet – Day 1 – First Day on Lemonade