I’ve definitely gained weight since the 5k. My rest/recovery period turned into a full on break from everything, which is very bad. So when the opportunity presented itself for me to try a 21 day cleanse, I figured why not. A few people at my work were doing it, we’re all trying to get healthier, so why not and do it as a team!

Something to take of note, this is a cleanse/purification system. So the goal of this is NOT to lose weight, but to detox your body. Weight loss may be a part of it, but the whole point of this is to rid yourself of toxins, so you have to go in with that mindset.

We even decided to do pre and post cleanse blood drawing to see the improvement. Here’s how everything went down.

We worked with an organization named Wellness Revolution, they were incredibly helpful in getting us prepared for the cleanse. During the cleanse, they gave daily emails saying how we should feel and overall motivation tips.

As for the cleanse itself, we used products from Standard Process as our supplements.

• We had a shake that we were supposed to drink 2-3 times a day.
• Once a day added a scoop of Whole Food Fiber
• The first week we took 7 SP Cleanse pills 3 times a day (for a total of 21)
• Weeks 2-3 we took 5 pills twice a day of SP Green Food (so 10 a day)

I’m one of those types that doesn’t like to take pain killers for a headache, so I was a little set back by the number of pills we were expected to take. But reading the ingredients, it’s all plant extracts. So, pretty much you eat a ton of concentrated vegetable powder, so that eased my mind.

As for meals, we are supposed to stay away from all potential allergens, which leads to a diet that’s a mix of Paleo, Diabetic, Gluten Free, and anything else you can think of. Short answer, eat only vegetables and fruits (with twice as many veggies as fruit), and only a couple servings of lean protein. Ideally you’d go organic for that time too to avoid pesticides.

Also, drink a ton of water. Their recommendation is half your body weight in ounces, which is what I’ve read on other fitness blogs, so it’s something that we should be doing anyway.

How it went:

The first few days were incredibly rough. I didn’t think I drank that much caffeine, but the withdrawal headaches were pretty intense. But after that I really started rebounding.

The end of the second week I really felt was the “cleanse” portion. Without getting too gross, there was an evening where I feel I completed the colon cleanse portion…one of those where I left the bathroom skipping and had crazy energy the next few days.

I read up somewhere (don’t know how solid the science is on this), that part of the length of cleanses like these are that there’s a lot of bad bacteria in your gut. A lot of those bad bacteria feed off of bad food, so when you stop eating the bad food, the bad bacteria starve and have to get expelled from your body.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it seriously looked and felt like concentrated evil for real.

By week three my energy really picked up and some things that I thought were hipster bs were actually true, like my skin felt softer to the touch. I was sleeping much better at night. My clothes were even fitting a little better.

I’ll make a couple other posts of the food I made from the recipe books they gave, a lot of tasty recipes I can add to the rotation.

Blood tests:

The blood tests showed the most improvement in cholesterol, I also dropped 17 lbs and my blood pressure improved. The remainder stayed within the green “healthy” zone, so good news overall.

In conclusion:

I’ll admit, I believe a lot of that weight loss is in water, poop, and probably some muscle. I was pretty weak and couldn’t work out the whole time, they suggested 30 minutes of light aerobic exercise (no anaerobic exercise because you aren’t replacing the carbs/protein so you’ll just break it down), which I’d admittedly didn’t do that much of.

That being said, I’m glad that I did it. It can be argued how much the actual cleanse/detox portion worked because it’s difficult to truly measure, and how much of the blood work improvement was due to simply eating better for 3 weeks.

In the end, I feel it was overall beneficial, and I hope to use this opportunity to hit the reset button and get back on track for good.