Operation: Juice Cleanse, Day 2

Two Days Down

Oh, man. Day 2 was a rough one.

I woke up feeling pretty good. I’d gotten 7.5 hours of sleep, which is pretty normal for me. I wasn’t feeling super refreshed, but also not exhausted either. So I figured that was a good sign.

As I was waiting for my lemon water to boil, I realized that I wasn’t even particularly hungry. So I started slow with my lemon water and then some herbal lemon tea. (Truly, so many liquids).

When it came time to use my neti pot, my sinuses were completely open! This was probably the most exciting part of the morning. Typically, I have one side (usually my left) that just doesn’t want to be flushed out. But today, no problems at all. A result of the juice cleanse? Not sure, but I’m gonna go with it.

I ended up having Juice 1 an hour later than expected (7:30 instead of 6:30), so my day looked like it would shape up like this:

1. 7:30am
2. 10:00am
3. 12:30pm
4. 3:00pm
5. 5:30pm
6. 8:00pm

But boy was that NOT how it went at all! The first wrench in the plan was 9:30 yoga. Only unlike the day before, I had barely finished Juice 1 before it was time to leave for class. So I ended up not having Juice 2 until 11am!

Although I really like the taste of Juice 2, I wonder if it actually is too sweet for me. I may be imagining things, but I definitely feel like I lose a lot of energy about 30 minutes after finishing it.

So I definitely wasn’t complaining when Juice 3 was up next. Even though it’s not my favorite, it is a good change from Juice 2. And to be honest, I was really too hungry at that point to care.

Although I should have waited until 3:00 for Juice 4, I Could. Not. Wait. So I had it at 2:30 instead.

I then sunk to a new low, deciding to wear a pair of CMU sweatpants and a CMU sweatshirt. UGH. So much apparel. For someone who owns almost no CMU clothing, this is an extreme fashion statement. At this point, I knew I’d transitioned into Do-Not-Bother-Me mode. The rest of the evening looked bleak.

I was able to hold off on Juice 5 until 5:00, mostly because Su was home and I chatted with her in the kitchen while she made her dinner. Which, by the way, was SO TEMPTING! She’d just roasted a pan of cauliflower that looked amazing. The pan was sitting out on the stove while she finished the rest of her recipe, and I was so close to snatching a cauliflower right off. It just looked so good. So crispy.

And then, because apparently I had not tortured myself enough, I went to the Whole Foods. Truth be told, I love wasting time in grocery stores. It’s actually something I do quite frequently. But I had a mission this time. I wanted an avocado for Monday (the first day off of the cleanse) and another box of tissues.

I was sipping Juice 5, taking a swig whenever the lure of the hot food bar or the bread section started to overwhelm me.

But while I was there, I stumbled across a Whole Foods Miracle.

I fell in love with this ice cream over the break, when one of my friends told me about it. It’s, hands down, the best vegan ice cream out there. But of course, I fell in love with it right before it was discontinued. Or something like that.

To be honest, the people at the Whole Foods didn’t seem to have a great idea about why it was never restocked after January. This confusion continued for literal months until Lady J finally found out that this ice cream, the best ice cream, had been discontinued.

By the time I finally found this out, I’d emotionally disconnected from the situation to protect myself. It was disappointing, but so was finding an empty ice cream shelf every week. I moved on.

So when I meandered down the frozen aisle and saw this sitting on the shelf, I almost peed myself! (But actually, that response probably had nothing to do with the ice cream and everything to do with the insane amounts of liquids in my body.)

There were only three left. One for me, one for Lady J, and one for some other lucky soul. So now I have something to look forward to when I add sweets back into my diet, post-cleanse.

That was completely a tangent, and nothing to do with juice. So let’s wrap this up.

After I got home, I finished off with Juice 6 around 7:15. Juice 6, the cashew milk one, is awesome, by the way. I don’t think I told you guys about how great it is in my post yesterday. But it is truly delicious. It’s also a little chunky, which sounds gross, but TRUST ME, after a day of all liquids, those chunks are crazy good. And it smells like the most aromatic vanilla milkshake you’ve ever had. Definitely a nice way to end the day.

A few thoughts…

On NEVER Being Full

I would really like to not be hungry. That is all.

On Doing Yoga

I feel like my decision to maintain my normal yoga routine is the most controversial of my decisions on the cleanse. As I rolled out my yoga mat next to my friend today, she asked how the cleanse was going. “It’s going pretty well,” I told her, because that was mostly true. To this, she looked at me and said, “Don’t you feel kind of…” and then gestured in a circular motion around her head in a way that I’m pretty sure only people who have done a juice cleanse will fully understand. Because I got it, immediately, without her having to say anything else.

“Yes, I do feel like that!” I laughed. Because that foggy-headedness is so real.

But I do wonder if maybe I’m doing this whole thing wrong? From what I read online, you can continue to do yoga if you feel up to it. And, to be honest, the times that I’ve been doing yoga and the roughly two hours that follow are definitely the best parts of my day. So I would hate to sacrifice that. But is it burning me out too fast? Is that why I was so hungry this afternoon? And what am I actually getting out of all of this?

So many questions. So many things left unanswered.

Maybe Day 3 will offer some insight? Fingers crossed.

Til next time, friends.