To Cleanse Or Not To Cleanse? That Is The Question.

As I mentioned on facebook an twitter, I recently did a cleanse, for the second time in my life. The first time was in college when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, veganism and then food in general. Because of the celiac disease (this was before my diagnosis in 2002), becoming a vegetarian and then a vegan made me incredibly sick, so after I attempted to go green, I did a cleanse because my body was screaming for me to do something to improve the way it felt. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I knew that being a vegetarian and vegan did not suit me or my body well. So I did the The Master Cleanse. I didn’t do the ease-in phase of the cleanse as is recommended and only lasted 7 days rather than the 10 that they suggest, but I felt incredible after wards. I literally looked at the world afresh and with a new found appreciation for life and food. More than the physical benefits I felt, I was most grateful for having the time to really reflect about the kind of lifestyle I wanted to live and how I wanted to live it. And I wish I still had that piece of paper to scan in here, but I don’t. What I do have is an ironclad memory and this is what I wrote:

1. to be a writer-poetry; if that doesn’t pan out, a journalist?
2. to find true love
3. to do something that will help others
4. find a chef to teach you the finer points of cooking

(I am a writer, but not of poetry; I found true love and then lost it; I am doing something to help others; and my ex-husband is a chef and he taught me the finer points of cooking)

Flash forward 14 years and here I am again, having almost the exact same experience the second time around, only this time, it was to reflect on what I had taken for granted, and it wasn’t just my body, it was me. I had taken my whole self for granted and let my health suffer as a consequence.

I am by definition, a people pleaser, so if I ever got a last minute order for some cupcakes for a birthday that was the next day, rather than saying no; I just couldn’t stand the thought of that disappointed little girl that couldn’t have birthday cake, so I would drop everything and make it happen. My heart would say yes, when my mind was saying no; my heart always won the internal conflict.

Then, with all my heart, I wrote my cookbook, which was an incredible experience, but on the personal side, I was drowning. I was trying to run my online bakery by myself ( I only had one employee the entire time, god bless her), raise my son while going through a divorce, and still manage to find time to go to yoga, get my hair done every couple of months and somehow find time to see my friends.

Crazy as it may sound, I didn’t know how to ask for help. I always had to do everything on my own and asking for help was akin to admitting a failure of some kind, so I blindly drove myself on, but at a very high price. The 14-18 hour days wore me down to a nub and I began to resent my work, which caused me to feel very disillusioned about my work, myself, my path, my life. So to stay in love with what I do, I closed my online bakeshop and focused on the aspects of my work that I love the absolute most: developing exquisite gluten free recipes, writing more cookbooks, teaching those who want to learn, and spreading the gluten free gospel that gluten free can be better than what came before, but I still felt rudderless. What was wrong with me? By this time, I had finished shooting the gluten free cooking show, GLUTEN MORGAN with Whole Foods, and although I’d have days of absolute levity, nothing felt certain, and fear crept further into my bones.

Even though I follow a strict gluten free diet, my body just kept feeling off; out of balance. My digestion has been abnormal for two straight years, but rather than address the problem right away, I always found some excuse to keep me from making that appointment. So I put it off and I put it off until my body literally tanked. The stress of trying to do it all finally caught up to me. It wasn’t until I had gained a few extra pounds that I was forced to finally admitted to myself that I, my body and me, was in desperate need of some serious TLC.

Andrew Millner, 2006
Shaw’s Magnolia

So I went to my therapist, for guidance and tools, and I went to Dr. Gupta for the blood work; I went to yoga to work it out and I read books of all kinds in search of the meaning. I finally went to my acupuncturist to relax and re-align my body. I did it all because I felt it all slipping away. What had I done to myself? My therapist informed me that I had worked myself into a stress induced depression; my blood work came back normal (thank god), but Dr. Gupta duly noted my weight gain. The books told me about the beauty of resisted acceptance (totally not beautiful by the way) and how resistance only prolongs the inevitable acceptance; I wept and I felt sorry for myself. I cried in anger for being so short sighted and then, I began to take action.

I immediately started taking an anti-depressant. I promised myself to loose the weight and plopped myself back into the yoga studio four times a week. I put bookmarks in my books rather than dog-earing them, and I made a series of appointments with Laura Farb to find out what minerals I needed to take and what steps I could take to heal myself. The first thing she told me was that I needed to do was a cleanse. So, like the young woman of 14 years ago, I wrote down the kind of lifestyle I wanted to live and how I wanted to live it. And then I cleansed.

I didn’t want to do the master cleanse just yet. The idea of it was just too extreme and I didn’t feel emotionally strong enough, so I began reading about different cleanses and there are many. The one that spoke to me the most was Dr. Alejandro Junger, MD CLEAN, because it included a small meal a the end of the day. Unfortunately, his supplements are not gluten free, so, armed with the information from my acupuncturist, I had to create make my own cleanse, which I was fine with. I did follow Dr. Junger’s model of having two juices a day and a lean protein and vegetable dinner at night. This is how I adapted to his model:

First, I eliminated all refined sugar, grains, alcohol, dairy, and caffeine as was prescribed by my acupuncturist, Laura Farb (see my Loving section to read my interview with her). The goal of my cleanse wasn’t just to loose weight, it was to get my body in a more alkaline state, so I had to eliminate foods that were causing acid reactions in my body. Interestingly, the nature of the food doesn’t necessarily cause an acid reaction in the body. For example, lemons and citrus fruits don’t cause acid reactions in the body, warm lemon water is actually very alkalizing. Dairy, refined sugar, grains, alcohol, red meat, and coffee are acid inducing foods, so in order to get my body back to homeostasis, I needed to give it a break from the things that were causing the imbalance in the first place.

During my time off the acid-inducing foods, I began researching more into which foods carry the highest acid load in the body so I could better understand how to tweak my day to day diet after the cleanse so my body didn’t fall back into acidosis. I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I was a competitive swimmer with Longhorn Aquatics and earned a state record in the 100 meter butterfly when I was nine. When I wasn’t in the pool, I could be found slalom skiing on the lake. I ran track and played tennis in junior high and high school and now I am a power yogi, so I’m very familiar with the aches and pains that come with routine rigorous exercise. The biggest challenge I had to deal with was recovery. Sometimes my body would be so sore, I couldn’t get to the same performance level. I knew that the reason I was sore was because of the acid build up in my muscles, but I never knew that the source of this soreness wasn’t so much my activity level but the foods I was eating. So I would take Epsom salt baths to pull the acid out of my body and I would drink tons of water, but I was almost always sore. My soreness decreased exponentially after my diagnosis with celiac, but I didn’t connect the dots as to why. That is until now. What I discovered in my research brought it all together.

The highest acid load-bearing grains for the human body are wheat, rye, and spelt. The lowest acid load bearing grains are all GLUTEN FREE. Sorghum is the lowest of them all and rice is the highest. That’s when it finally clicked. No wonder athletes perform so much better on a gluten free diet. They are no longer ingesting foods with such a heavy acid load which results in far less acid build up in the muscles, so their recovery time is drastically reduced. I was wonderstruck and now I believe everyone should go gluten free, because “acidosis is extremely common for most people, they just don’t know it,” Ms. Farb explained, “so yes, a gluten free diet is a fabulous idea for everyone.”

Keeping all this information in mind, here is the plan I came up with for myself, because as Ms. Farb noted, I needed to create a cleanse for myself in a way where I wouldn’t be more stressed out, so I kept practicality in mind. She provided the Chinese herbs and minerals that I needed to take for the best possible results. Since these are administered on a case by case basis, I feel it would be irresponsible of me to suggest you take what I did, but I will tell you what I now take on a daily basis to bolster my overall health and gluten free wellness: probiotics, chlorella for vitality and detox, and coral legend for overall body support including bones, joints and alkaline pH.

Week 1

Take probiotics (and herbs) with warm lemon water and sea salt upon waking up

breakfast
18oz. all green juice with egg white protein (no wheat grass or ormus supergreens as they are not gluten free)

lunch
18oz. fruit smoothie with banana, a nut butter, coconut water, spinach, hemp protein, chlorella (an incredible liver and skin detoxifier)

dinner
lean 6oz. chicken, pork or fish with seasonal fresh vegetables (no potatoes or yams)

probiotics before bed with 18 oz. of warm water (follow your manufacturer’s instructions on how many times to ingest your probiotics. I take Jaro

Week 2

Take probiotics (and herbs) with warm lemon water and sea salt upon waking up

breakfast
14oz. all green juice (no wheat grass or ormus supergreens as they are not gluten free)

lunch
14 oz. fruit smoothie with banana, coconut water, spinach, egg white protein, chlorella (an incredible liver and skin detoxifier)with b-complex vitamin

dinner
lean 6 oz. fish with seasonal fresh vegetables

probiotics before bed with 18 oz. of warm water

“At the end of the cleanse, it is crucial to slowly begin inviting grains and dairy back into your system,” Laura advised me.

“To do so, choose a grain and have very small amounts of that grain three times a day and then the next day, repeat this until your diet is back to normal. If your stomach feels upset after the re-introduction of any given thing, then your body is telling you that you need to keep that component out for a bit longer.”

You can obviously do this cleanse for 21 days, and it is doable, but I had to start doing recipes for the holidays, so I had to cut my pre-holiday cleanse short, but when I do my post-holiday cleanse, it will be for the 21 day stretch. If you’d like to see how I curtail the foods on the third week, let me know and I’ll do a follow up post.

The results? Absolutely life changing for two reasons-I was ready to make the change and because I followed the plan to a T. On the physical level, I lost all but the last 4 pounds I wanted to shave off, my skin cleared up and my energy level shot through the roof. I eat less than I did before, and I love having a fresh juice or smoothie for lunch in lieu of the normal mid-day meal. My plate is now loaded up with tons of fruits, vegetables and meats when the moment strikes with the occasional sweet treat. And although I am a baker, I am now very conscious of balancing my dairy and grain intake with plenty of alkalizing foods so my body will always be in balance, from the inside out.

The most important thing this cleanse did for me, however, was akin to putting glasses on. Suddenly, life is very much in focus. I am grateful beyond measure for the life that I am I living right this moment. I am thrilled that living gluten free is one of the healthiest diets out there and I am living it to its fullest. My body is now thriving, putting my mind at ease so that I can rightly say that I have a very solid sense of myself and realize that in order to help others, I must first help myself.

Jean-Auguste- Dominuque Ingre, (French, 1780-1867)
Odalisque in Grisaille, 1824-1834
Oil on Canvas, 32.75 x 43″
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York