Six Weeks To Wellness

The afternoon of Day 1 rolled around and despite my good experience with my morning smoothie, I had some reservations about its mid-day companion. I can’t really bring my Ninja to work and the Magic Bullet is on the fritz. It was just going to be me, a little juice and a packet of ground fruit dust. Again, I decided to go with a water/juice combo as a base. Since I was using the glai roong (daybreak) packet, I chose to use pineapple juice (8 oz.). I mixed the juice with 12 oz. of filtered water and added the juice and contents of the packet to the blender cup that came with my cleanse. I didn’t add the Step Up Fiber Supplement this time because…well, honestly, I accidentally left it at home.

As I looked at the contents of the packet floating on top of the juice and refusing to sink, I got a little queasy. That feeling intensified as I pushed the blender ball down into the cup. I got my shake on and didn’t stop until I was satisfied everything was dissolved and/or rehydrated. It actually got about as thick as the smoothie I made with the banana and blackberries for breakfast.

I took my first sip and had a “momma, I don’t want to eat my peas” flashback from childhood. The first sip was gritty and made me miss my Ninja. I went back to shaking. The second sip was much better. The smoothie wasn’t sweet but with the addition of the pineapple juice, it was actually pretty good—tasty even.

That smoothie held me over for the rest of the work day. On my ride home from work, I had a few carrot chips (about 6) and some hummus while sitting in crawling traffic.

For dinner, I kept putting the smoothie off. First, I just drank water. Then I had some dinner because I needed to satisfy my craving to chew. The craving was made worse by sitting next to Ash who was sitting next to me having grilled chicken with sautéed kale and mushrooms. I had sugar snap peas, ½ an avocado, sliced peppers, sliced cucumber and a bit more hummus.

Suddenly, bedtime (the new one) was looming and I still had a smoothie to consume, a shower to take and a blog post to write. Ugh. Something tells me better time management is going to be something else I pick up during this cleanse.

I was halfway up the stairs to my bedroom—talking myself out of smoothie 3—when I decided if I was going to do the cleanse, I was going to do it right. I went back to the kitchen and got my blender cup. I decided to mix the third packet (reunn or “joyful”) with 2 oz. of almond milk, 2 oz. of pineapple juice and 20 oz. of filtered water. In dumping this packet into the blender cup, I made a mess. It seemed to be clumpier (totally not a word). I shook it up and headed upstairs where I tried to down it in a short series of gulps. The taste, which I’d seen described as medicinal, was surprisingly good. In fact, all was going fine until a chunk of the mixture floated out of the cup and into my mouth. I should mention that I don’t do well with mushy textures. I couldn’t tell if it was smoothie contents that didn’t dissolve or reconstituted berries. Either way, no bueno. Ash saw me gagging and asked to taste the smoothie. He was also pleasantly surprised (he watched some of the reviews with me). His verdict was he’d had much worse protein powders and pre-workout drinks. As for the chunks, he shook the life out of the blender cup and I was able to gulp down the rest without another berry chunk.

I finished the night by oil cleansing my face (I’m trying to get better at removing my makeup before bed) and trying another guided meditation, which I fell asleep on. At the end of Day One, I’m feeling confident in my ability to get through this cleanse. None of the smoothies were vomit inducing. In fact, with just a little juice, they were quite good. My morning headache went away around mid-day and I slept really well. I didn’t feel like I was starving at any point. I think the weekend is going to be quite a challenge but I feel like I’ll be able to get through it. My fridge is certainly stocked with every veggie I can think of in case I need to chew.

I won’t bore you with all of the daily smoothie details. I think my recipes will be pretty consistent with the ones I used on Day One. I am, however, making Six Weeks To Wellness a regular feature during this process. The focus will vary each time but the post will always connect to something in my wellness journey.  I hope you’ll share your own stories along the way. Here’s to health.