So, B and I had been considering doing Master Cleanse for about a year now. Each time thwarted by dinners, parties, laziness, Mexican food fantasies. Finally, we decided: set a period of 10 days and stick to it. Parties and delicious enchiladas be damned. We're both fairly healthy, athletic people and while weight loss would be a natural result, we're primarily in for the mind-body experiment, evaluation of our relationships with food, system reset. And also, to see a difficult but potentially enlightening experience all the way through. No quittin', unless it becomes harmful to our health for whatever reason (don't really see this happening).
We collected our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next week and a half at Whole Foods. A couple bags of organic lemons, a mini jug of grade B 100% pure maple syrup, Smooth Move Senna tea. Refilled our 3 gallon water container and dug out the cayenne pepper from the spice cabinet. I already had sea salt without iodine ready for the infamous salt water flush.
Day Before D-Day: Prepared a cup of the Smooth Move tea right before bed. The first step towards poo. Despite what I've read, the taste is pretty good: orangey, with a licorice finish. It's a package of 16 tea bags and I'm thinking we will split the load and drink this for 8 days. Besides, the warning says it's not recommended beyond about a week and a half. Slept fairly early.
(Warning: Put down your sandwich. Graphic defection talk ahead.)
Day 1: I woke up around 6am to a rumbly in my tummy, and not the cute Winnie the Pooh kind either. Well, maybe just the plain pooh kind. I was planning on getting the salt water flush (SWF) together, but instead, had to make a beeline toward the toilet. A hurricane was a-brewing. I made a solid brown python and then some yellowish nuggets. Softer than normal, but pretty hearty. That was the last true solid elimination I've seen thus far. I didn't do the ease-in, so it was probably the Chinese dinner I had the night prior making an exit. A productive start. It's a holiday – Labor Day – so I have all day to pad around and poop around, if necessary.
I got the SWF together in a big 32 oz. bottle with cold water (I know they say lukewarm, but I'm trying to kill the salty taste here). I sat in front of the yammering Today Show people and starting chugging. Not bad. The chilly water kind of numbed my tastebuds and so I kept huffing it down. Glug, glug, glug, staring at Al Roker, glug, glug. It took me a whole 30 minutes to get this sucker down because I kept stopping. Last thing I wanted to do was to gag. It got a bit tougher toward the end mainly because of the salt coating my tongue. About a half hour later, boom. There were islands, there was a brownish moat, all liquid. I thought there would be more solids and wondered if I did something wrong, but I've come to think that it's probably normal. And then there was butt pee. It came unwarranted, shooting out like a jet stream, about every 10-15 minutes until all the SWF was gone. Pretty powerful, my butt.
We juiced the lemons using our new enameled hand held lemon squeezer, which was pretty easy and effective in extracting. The lemonade tasted pretty good on the first few swallows, except for one thing: the cayenne finish. Gack. It was tolerable, but made me wish I put less of the spice, even though it's an important ingredient to move mucus and help out the gastrointestinal system. It kept me satisfied all day and every time I had a hunger rumble, I shut it right up with the lemonade.
This seemed like it was going to be easy. We'll see.
Still from 'One Day...' with David Cross as 'The Turd'.
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