Veggie and Fruit Detox- Day 1-4

Detoxify : to remove a harmful substance (as a poison or toxin) or the effect of such from

My co-worker and I decided to start an all fruit and veggie juice detox for 10 days. If you would have asked me  10 years ago if I would ever do a detox or put myself on a diet, I would have said “heck no”.  Fast forward to today, and it seems to be a reasonable idea.

I love chicken wings. I mean I really LOVE chicken wings. It is a new obsession, but I admit, it is an obsession. My co-worker has the same obsession as me, which was one of the reasons why we both wanted to try this detox.

After deciding on the detox, we laid some ground rules.

1. Salt, pepper, herbs and olive oil are allowed
2. Coffee, black or with soy milk are allowed (we both did not want to have headaches from going cold turkey)
3. Nuts are allowed- he needed these for protein
4. Veggie Burgers are allowed
5. Naked Juice and V8 are allowed
6. No alcohol
7. No meat, or grains
8. No deep frying the veggies in oil (ie. no french fries)

Now, the days leading up to this detox were not pretty. I went to the MN Sate Fair, more or less ate my way through the MN State Fair, as did my partner in the detox. We really did look at this detox as a sentence.  A sentence to not eat anything good for 10 days. So why not load up on unhealthy food before we start? And that is exactly what we did. I also prepared myself by going to the grocery store and stocking up and tons of fresh produce, of which made me really happy. I love when I do not shop the center aisles at the store, it is like a unspoken goal accomplished.

My cart included: strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, bananas, carrots, kohlrabi (from my garden), cucumbers (from my garden), apples, grapes, potatoes, kidney beans, black beans, sweet corn, broccoli, veggie burgers.

Now let me take you through the experiences of the first 4 days.

Day 1:

I woke up feeling normal, made myself a smoothie. Making my normal morning smoothie was harder than normal, I could not add yogurt.  I also broke a spoon in my blender and needed to remake my smoothie. Warning: do not place spoons in blenders while they are running! Common sense I know, but it just seemed so right when the fruit was not turning in the blender.

By lunch time I was starving! No yogurt/protein in my morning smoothie left me famished my 11am.  For lunch I filled up on tons of carrots, kohlrabi sticks and an apple with a side of water. Again I was hungry by 2pm. I snacked more on left over lunch veggies and grapes with more water.

By 5pm when I arrived home, I was super tired and hungry. I decided a nap was much more important than food. After my nap, it was time for flag football. I was the poorest performer on the field. My feet didn’t want to move from under me. I was tired. Super tired. Dinner after the game consisted of a baked potato, corn and kidney beans. Soon after exhaustion caught up with me again and I was out for the night.

Over all feeling for the day: hungry, no energy and tired. Blah!

Day 2 -3:

I was quite tired and irritable day 2 and 3. I was eating almost every hour, something small, a banana here, carrots there, on top of veggie packed meals. Cravings of food that I could not eat, chicken wings, pasta, chips, beer, all flooded my thoughts.  Also, my friends had a BBQ/tailgate before the Twin’s baseball game. Now that was torture. No hot dog. No beer. Torture.  The only bright side of these 2 days was learning that I liked veggie burgers. These really helped me make it through.

Overall feeling for the day: hungry, sluggish, tired and irritable.

Day 4:

The day I started to feel better. I was starting to tune in to what my body wanted, and was able to satisfy my hunger with veggies and fruit I knew would hold me over. Smoothies in the morning, and a banana 2 hours later, kept me full until Lunch. Veggies sticks and a juice two hours after lunch held me over until Dinner. By Dinner I was not so famished that I wanted to break and eat anything in sight, I was just hungry enough to eat a modest dinner.  My urge to sleep all the time was subsiding. This was the turning point. The point where I felt I could make it 10 days on this detox. The only sticking point of the day, no alcohol on a Friday. Boo.

Overall feeling for the day: slightly hungry and average energy.

So far so good, but I have 6 more days to go. Stick around to see how day 5- 10 work out. The weekend was a little rough…..