The first day of the lemonade diet, in the can!  Good for me, if I do say so myself.  It was a good thing I did the ease-in or I think I would have found it pretty tough today. And it’s also a good thing I have Mike Olaski as my personal cleanse coach too.  He’s been invaluable.

Day Four

I wake up today fully rested.  But I just can’t get out of bed.  Seriously.  I wake up, felt great, but refuse to leave my bed. I am absolutely dreading drinking the cayenne pepper lemonade.  Despite being vivacious I go back to sleep for a little while.

Finally I muster the motivation to get my butt out of bed but still refuse to get going. Finally around 10:30a I cut my first lemon and juice half of it.  The juice comes out to about 1 2/3 tablespoons so I only juice that half. I mix it up, and think to myself, what the hell am I doing. iPhone camera goes on and I take my first swig.

To my surprise it ain’t bad! Seriously. For anyone who hasn’t done the cleanse before, I’m sure you’re reading this thinking I must be off my rocker. But it’s actually kind of good.  The lemonade itself is pretty tasty. I can’t taste the cayenne pepper at first, but then it catches me with the after taste.

So I take my cleansing concoction, have a seat and start working for the day. It probably took me about 30 min or so to get through the drink. I’m just kind of casually sipping it. Once it’s done, I wait about an hour or so and mix up the rest of the lemon. Round two, same as the first. No problemo.

I hop on skype with Mike and he recommends I strengthen my dosage, and that I basically chug the elixir, as opposed to sipping it. The reason? After 10 days of this the taste is pretty horrible, so don’t let it linger in your mouth. This technique makes it more bearable for longer. Also, the fresh lemon juice contains living enzymes that should be consumed as quickly as possible. It will help with my hunger pangs and create a better flow as well. I drink the full glass, wait about 30-45 mins, have a half glass of water, wait another 30-45 mins, mix up another glass.  It’s a pretty good flow and it keeps you from getting too hungry.

**Author’s note: I recorded the video above earlier in the day and posted it on YouTube. I’ve authored a few mini-series on there (Culture Files chronicled my half-year in Ukraine, The Marketing Minute is one I’m currently doing to share good marketing knowledge, and now this).  A subscriber of mine, Renzero89, watched the video right after it went up and commented, “Hmm well its not beer.. but .. ok. ? Good luck on your trip to be ‘cleansing.’ :)”. I”m with Renzero on this one.

The lemon juice is also really bad for the enamel of your teeth. On Mike’s advice once I finish the lemonade I do a thorough job of rinsing, swooshing, gargling, and cleaning my teeth with a few mouthfuls of water.

Now I should note that I did also have a bowel movement between glass number one and glass number two.  And usually I wouldn’t include this in my blog posts. But I think it is actually relevant. Two observations: it stunk a lot worse than usual, and it came out with a lot of liquid. Oh, and I third observation. When my bowel decided it was time to go, it was time to go.  It was like, Hey Jeff, I don’t care what you’re doing right now, we gotta hit the john. Giddy up amigo, no time to waste. Fortunately the whole episode was basically quick and painless.

For the rest of the day I was good. I followed Mike’s instructions of chugging the lemonade, and rinsing with water afterwards. So Day one is successfully in the books. I hear a lot of people quit on the very first day. Not me! Now on to day two…

How do I feel?

Pretty good actually. Sometimes my stomach feels really empty. I don’t like that feeling. But I am damn cold!  I talked to Mike and he suggested that my core temperature has a lot to do with how active my digestive system is. All that breaking down of food is like a furnace burning in my belly, and without it that’s probably why I’ve been so cold. I’ve taken to wearing a toque indoors (for you American’s, a toque is like a beanie).

My outlook going forward?

I have another terror barrier to get through tomorrow.  I am doing my first salt water cleanse.  It’s a good thing that I work from home, as I can’t imagine what a brutal process this would be to do if I had to leave my place at 7:45am to make it to the office by 9am. I sympathize with those poor souls.