Monday- Day 1

It's morning, and I am feeling pretty neutral about starting. I felt a lot more enthusiastic as I was reading up on the Master Cleanse last week, and now that i've had a few days to let it all sink in, i'm feeling less emphatic, but still know this is something I really must do for my body. I took a front and side photo as I want to monitor if my body changes in appearance over the next 10 days.

Last night I had the laxative tea and decided to get a good nights rest. Was in bed by 10pm. Got up at 7:30 this morning and made my daily batch about a half hour ago. I had my first glass in a wine glass, because it looks much more appetizing. Down the hatch, and lovely! Actually, the cayenne pepper is a good touch, no problems with the taste, I like it. Within 15 minutes I had to go to the loo. So, detox in full force!

Detox has been around for ages. I've been doing some fact hunting and found some cool info. It's probably too much information for some who are not so comfortable talking about their bodies.
The colon is responsible for the elimination of toxins in the body. The human colon is approximately 5.5 ft long (almost as tall as me) and 2.5 inches in diameter. That's a lot of space to cleanse! I wonder how much that would weigh if it was full? Excuse my potty-mouth but that's a lot of shit to shift!

Some experts I read about quoted the following:

"In cultures with 70g of daily fiber consumption there is no colon disease. Even the American Medical Association and National Cancer Institute recommend that a healthy diet includes 20-30g fiber daily. Increasing fiber consumption should be a first priority for everyone. The facts are overwhelming…Medical professionals should recommend the use of fiber to all their patients.”
Louise Tenny, Master Herbalist

“Infirmity and sickness, at any age, is the direct result of loading up the body with food which contains no vitality, and at the same time allowing the intestines to remain loaded with waste matter.”
Dr. Norman Walker , inventor of "juicing"

“Dis-ease symptoms are an effort of the body to eliminate waste, mucus and toxemia.
This system assists Nature in the most perfect and natural way. Not the dis-ease but the body is to be healed; it must be cleansed, freed from waste and foreign matter, from mucus and toxemia- accumulated since childhood.”
Professor Arnold Ehret


“Of the 22,000 operations I have personally performed, I have never found a single normal colon and of the 100,000 that were performed under my jurisdiction, not over 6 percent were normal.”
John Harvey Kellog, M.D.

Yikes. And that's just the colon.... There are plenty of other organs that assist in handling toxins and other nasties.

This afternoon a funeral is taking place for one of Andy's friends from football. His name was Mark, and he found out around Christmas time that he had cancer. He was 30, had just proposed to his girlfriend and was going to be married. He past away last week. From the outside, he looked normal, healthy, and strong. It was a shock for Andy, it really affected him. It isn't natural to die at 30. I think that around the age of 30 we start to recognize our mortality, but it really makes an impact when you see people you grew up with getting disease. Everyone knows someone who's gotten cancer nowadays.

We spend so much attention on our exteriors- make up, clothes and spa treatments. So shouldn't it make sense that we spend just as much attention to our interiors, and getting aware of the parts we can't see? In our western culture it is more important than ever to do everything we can to maintain our health. Nothing else matters if we don't have that.

People at my office think i'm fanatical because I have a desk full of vitamins. But I am not sick nearly as much or for more than a couple days. I dont' consider myself at peak health or fitness. But the more I learn about our insides, the more I realise how scary it can be if something starts to act up. Our bodies have the ability to heal if we give it a chance.

It's about the choices we make with the knowledge we learn. Our body can be a temple or a shack. From the sounds of what the experts say, it looks like the western world's body is a shanty town.

1:30pm- at home, tidying up flat during my lunch hour. I am sipping a herbal tea (this is my only luxury), and returning some personal emails. Yeah, I'm feeling the urge to bite into some spelt cracker bread, but I resist. I'm normally such a grazer, eating as I move throughout the day. Some people have snack time, at 11am or so....but not me, i'm used to snacking every 15 minutes or so. I always have something within arms reach. So Day 1, I'm not physically hungry, but I am psychologically starving!

8:14pm- I felt exhausted and really cold just before my shift ended at work. I got home shortly after 6pm, I had a nap on the couch, listened to my clock's second hand tick, beckoning me to change and hit the gym, or go finish off painting the spare bedroom. But I couldn't do it. I had a nagging headache, wanted a shower, and wanted to crawl under the covers of my warm bed.

Now that i've had a shower, I feel somewhat better, although I'm going to make a hot water bottle in a moment. The nagging headache is still there, but I've just drank almost all my juice for the day and that has helped it a bit. I turned on the TV and Heroes is starting up again tonight at 9pm, I might just wait around to watch some.

Although I physically feel like crap, I actually feel good because I made steps towards progress. 1- I passed the first day of cleansing without eating a thing.
2- I told my boss the truth about my visa and that I would be leaving in April.

And as an extra added bonus I saw that the Pet Shop Boys are releasing a new album called YES next month. I caught a preview on iTunes and I'm already drooling over it. Cannot wait!

Tonight in exchange of a saline flush I am opting for Oxy Powder, an oxygen based intestinal cleanser which does the same trick as drinking salty water, but goes down easier.

Day 1 verdict
Body= not hungry
Mind= wants smoked ham and craving savory
Spirit= neutral, releived.
Energy Level= Medium to Low. Tired, headache, cold hands and feet.

Time to make that hot water bottle. g'night!