The Cleanse

For the past ten days, Suzy, Amy, Rachel and I have been doing a cleanse. The purpose is to clean out our digestive system and lose a little weight. On our last flight, Suzy included special food that would allow us to do the following program:

Days 1-4

8:00 Fruit (1 cup - Mango, Papaya, Grapefruit)
10:30 Fruit (1 cup - Mango, Papaya, Grapefruit, apple)
1:00 Chicken Soup (1 cup)
3:30 Chicken Soup
7:00 Chicken Soup

Days 5-7

8:00 Fruit
10:30 Fruit
1:00 Chicken Soup
3:30 Chicken Soup (Fruit once we ran out)
7:00 Salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, onions, walnuts, cabbage, green peppers)

Days 8-10

8:00 Yogurt and Fruit
10:30 Fruit
1:00 Chicken Soup
3:30 Fruit (Watermelon)
7:00 Salad (tuna and fetta cheese added)

This was a big challenge for me. It was hard to not eat certain things on our menu (cereal, popcorn, hamburgers, etc). I loved the chicken soup so that made it easier. We were only allowed to drink water on this program which was challenging. This morning we finished the cleanse and all weighed in. We each lost weight – between 9 and 13 pounds. Then I indulged in a few treats I had been dreaming about for 10 days – I had a bowl of cereal, a bite of cake from last night, a bite of chocolate and … a mini slim jim!!! Did I just undo all the work of the cleanse? Possibly! I think I got the cravings out of my system and am ready to ease back into eating our normal menu. It felt good to eat healthy and practice self control.

Here is the chicken soup recipe we used. It is REALLY yummy!

1 Whole Chicken
2-4 quarts filtered water
1 Tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
4 medium sized onions, coarsely chopped
8 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
6 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
2-4 zucchinis, chopped
1 pound green beans (we didn't have these)
½ peas (we didn't have these)
4 inches grated ginger (1 Tbsp ground ginger)
4 tbsp extra-virgin coconut oil (olive oil)
1 bunch parsley (cilantro)
5 garlic gloves
2-4 tbsp sea salt
1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (we used regular pepper)

Put everything (but parsley) into a pot, bring to a boil. Cover and cook for 8-12 hours. (We used our solar cooker). 15 minutes before finishing, add the parsley (we didn't have this so we used cilantro from our garden). Remove chicken from the soup and take off the meat from carcass, getting rid of excess fat. Put the meat back into pot and it's ready to serve.

(Weight loss update - 115 pounds lost)