“Food, glorious food!
We’re anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day —
Our favourite diet!”
Lionel Bart, writer “Oliver!“
(1930 -1999)
For those who don’t know, I love food. Foie gras or chicken wings. French fries or radicchio gratin. As long as it tastes good, I’m in. As someone who’s aware of health, I try to factor that into my diet as well. Generally, I manage to keep fairly balanced. You know, everything in moderation.
Anyway, I sometimes go a little too far in one direction. And I have been known to drag Mister along for the adventure. Be it a fried food spree or, well, ahem…
So I read about Dr. Oz’s 48 hour cleanse (http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/48-hour-weekend-cleanse) in “O Magazine.” It seemed simple enough, and not at all about weight. To my understanding, the whole point is to cleanse a few major organs and help them function better. Sounded good to me, so I presented the idea to Mister. He wants to be healthy, too, so he gave his endorsement. I did the shopping and we began to cleanse.
The 3 meals (and snacks) were the same each day. The shopping was easy enough. The prep wasn’t much different from other meals, but there was a lot of chopping involved in the dinners (which did equal a lot of time). I don’t have a juicer, so the snacks were whipped up in the blender. I’m telling you this so you’ll know that I wasn’t put out by the preparation of our food. No, that didn’t put me out at all. The food on the other hand… That put me out quite a bit.
Breakfast was filling, yes. And it did have flavor. No salt, but fresh ginger and nutmeg almost made up for it. The snacks tasted like they looked: green. I would have liked more pineapple, but that wasn’t the recipe. Instead, I got a lot of kale. Lunch was a fruit smoothie. It was okay, though the ground flax seeds took a little getting used to. Dinner was a vegetable broth and it was pretty. (That helped.) The fermented sauerkraut and apple slices didn’t bother me either. It was all fine. Nothing more.
Mister and I made it through the first day okay. Considering we had hiked first thing that morning, and didn’t feel hungry or weak at day’s close, I thought all would be well. And it almost was. I didn’t sleep well that night but Mister didn’t report any problems. The next morning, I got up and made the quinoa with prunes. I didn’t enjoy eating it, but I downed it all. Then I got some exercise. I was only gone 30 minutes, but when I got home I couldn’t stop watching the clock. When would it be time for that damned fruit smoothie?
Lunchtime arrived and I made the smoothies. And just like that, it was gone. I had some kale/pineapple juice. It didn’t move the chains. I was hungry. I was tired. I started feeling weak. I wasn’t happy. This wasn’t what I’d signed on for. Dr. Oz had written that one shouldn’t feel hungry or weak. So what was I doing wrong? I started feeling worse.
At some point, I looked up the cleanse on Oz’s website. That’s when I realized “O Magazine” had left out quite a bit of information. Little things like you can eat all the veggies (from a given list) you want. That was a bit of knowledge I could have used from the beginning. I checked the fridge and the only thing I had on the list was a couple of cucumbers. I prepared them as described and Mister and I wolfed them down in seconds. I hoped that would save me.
But it was too late. My body had gone too far toward flipping out and I couldn’t stop the downward spiral. I started shaking and getting a little dizzy. My head was hurting. Still, I was determined to see the cleanse through.
And that’s when the service porch flooded and I absolutely lost it. For about 30 seconds, I was yelling and shaking and probably not making any sense at all. And I broke. I absolutely broke, friends. So I called the bar down the street and ordered a couple of cheeseburgers. Since I didn’t trust myself to drive, I walked there, picked up the food, hit the local market for a Dr. Pepper and walked home. Much like the cucumbers, I hoped my non-cleanse dinner would save me. Alas, like the cucumbers, the dinner was too late as well. I had gone and made myself ill.
By the time I went to bed, I was just hoping to get some sleep. Some time during the night my body recovered. When I woke the next morning, I felt great. And for the record, Mister was hungry and dissatisfied, too. But he didn’t flip out. That honor was reserved for me.
Here’s what I missed: fat. I missed salt. I missed meat. I missed variety. I missed having enough food, too. A lot of us have too much to eat. This experience reminded me that just enough is just enough.
Dr. Oz wrote that he felt more than a physical satisfaction after his first time doing this cleanse. He wrote of feeling a spiritual satisfaction. I can’t speak to that. I only know I’m glad it’s over. This cleanse was a bummer. My liver, kidneys and lungs might claim otherwise, but until they start typing for themselves, I’m in charge. The closest thing I got to spiritual during this experience was when I felt my body taking in that heavenly cheeseburger and fries.
Though I’m disappointed in “O Magazine,” I won’t be canceling my subscription. (I won’t cancel my “Esquire” subscription either — they feature Dr. Oz columns, too.) But I will try to remember to take everything in moderation, friends. Everything. Even Mehmet Oz, MD.