The Cleanse

This week, me and two of my small group girls, Kristen and Jessica, are doing a cleanse.
It's a fast of sorts, but we're not doing it for spiritual reasons (although they are a huge encouragement to me in that area).  We are simply doing this to better our health.  I can't speak for us all, but my diet has been pretty terrible lately.  This cleanse will remove all those toxins from my body and have me ready to jump into a healthier diet at the end of the week.

Here is what The Cleanse consists of:
1 day of fasting
3 days eating only fruits and veggies
1 day of fasting

The only beverages we can have are water, tea and black coffee.  Since tea of nearly every kind literally sets my gag reflex into action, I won't be doing tea.  If I had an autobiography, I could probably write an entire chapter on how much I despise tea.

Today is my first day of fruits and veggies.  This afternoon I had the a terrible, pulsating headache (caffeine withdrawl much?).  So... I did the unthinkable.  I drank a 1/2 a cup of black coffee.  I'm a cream and sugar kind of girl, so I had never actually attempted to drink a cup of black coffee before today.  I'm happy to report, that I didn't hate it as much as I hate tea.  But it was a very close second.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am allergic to nearly everything outside... trees, pollens, molds, birch, bark, grass, ragweed, you name it.  I used to get allergy shots each week to alleviate some of my misery, but I recently weaned myself off of the shots.  Anyway... as a result of my multiple plant allergies, I have what is called Oral Allergy Syndrome.  Basically, because of this, nearly all raw fruits and vegetables cause me to have a mild allergic reaction.  It's not severe or life-threatening, but it makes eating them very uncomfortable.  My lips, throat and tongue get all itchy and tingly and swell just a bit when I eat fruits and veggies.  This is because the proteins in the produce are similar to those in pollen and grass and all that good stuff, and my body recognizes them as the plants that I am allergic to. Long story short... this makes The Cleanse a bit difficult.  The good thing is though, that cooking the fruits and veggies kills the proteins (and the nutritional value) and I can eat them without discomfort.  Thus, I've stocked up on frozen broccoli and such, that I can steam in the microwave.  So not nutritional whatsoever, but what am I going to do?  Also, strawberries for some reason seem to be the exception to my allergies, so I am throwing those back like it's my job.

For someone who LOVES carbs and LOVES red meat... these next few days will continue to be a challenge.