The Bitch Stopped Feeling Fat and Tired - Part Zero

Tomorrow I (Maria) am starting something that is extremely uncharacteristic and foreign to me.

I have been feeling really uninspired by food lately, I’m sick of all my recipes, and I keep just buying food and letting it go bad in my fridge. I have also been feeling pretty low on energy and I feel like my skin and my waistline have also been feeling a little low on energy. When I was in college I could eat whatever I wanted and I would never feel the difference, but lately I haven’t felt so lucky. In order to bring back my energy and perhaps feel a little better in my bathing suit this summer, I decided to try a cleanse. Don’t stop reading just yet!

I can still eat FOOD and I don’t have to drink maple-syrup-cayenne-pepper-and-cat-litter concoctions all day every day. This all started when I hadn’t seen my friend Gina in about a week and I had class with her last week and she sauntered in with a new glow, great hair, and a water bottle with some yellow stuff in it. With concerns that she was now way out of my friend league, I asked how she was looking so damn fine. She told me she had started this cleanse I was very skeptical. Then she told me more about it and it turns out you can still eat, it’s only 4 days long, and you don’t have to get obsessed with calories. I can do that. The cleanse turns out to be “phase one” of a 3-phase antioxidant-based diet plan called the “o2 diet”.

I think that the structure will be helpful for me because my lack of culinary inspiration has made me put off eating until I am starving and then eat something bad for me that I probably spend money on. With the cleanse, you eat the same thing every day for four days and I went to the grocery store today and bought everything I will need. The next “phase” lets you eat more quantity and variety, but the focus is still on antioxidants. We’ll cross that bridge (or perhaps stay on this side of the river) when we get to it, but I wanted to blog about the cleanse for two reasons. I want to stay motivated to do it by writing about it (because I know our thousands and thousands of readers will yell at me if I don’t) and I also want to let you all know about it in case it turns out to make me look as wonderful and feel as fabulous as Gina. Because if it does ya’ll will have some catching up to do.

Here is how it goes. Every day for four days I have to eat the following:

Throughout the day:

8 cups of water, each with 1oz lemon juice and some lemon zest

2 cups green tea

Breakfast:

1 whole egg and three egg whites*

1tsp basil

Snack:

Granny smith apple with 1tsp cinnamon on it

Lunch:

Spinach (as much as my little heart desires) with 4oz salmon, oil, vinegar

8 pecan halves

Snack:

Steamed artichoke. Yeah, I’ll let you know how that goes.

Dinner:

Romaine salad with 4oz lean protein, oil, vinegar, veggies

Steamed asparagus

Dessert:

1cup blueberries

*Hey, do any of you have any thoughts of what I can do with the egg yolks I don’t use every day? I could make something delicious for Dan, perhaps. Ideas?

Note that there is no dairy, sodium, or sugar. I'm going to get so clean inside! We’ll see if that all keeps me full. Note that two things near and dear to my heart are missing. Coffee and red, red wine. I think green tea miiiight stave off caffeine withdrawal headaches, and I think it is the whole curling-up-on-the-couch-with-a-glass-of-wine-at-the-end-of-a-long-day thing that I like the most, so maybe I’ll just put my blueberries in a wine glass. Turns out both coffee and red wine are high in antioxidants, so if I do continue with it then I can consider bringing them back into my life.

I am sure I will be fine without the wine, but I am actually a little concerned about the coffee. I might have to resort to drinking 750 cups of green tea per day; I did the math and that is how many I would need to match the caffeine I regularly get from coffee. I am also a little concerned about this thing you all call breakfast. I can barely brush my teeth in the morning without gagging and the thought of straight eggs makes me cringe, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I can switch the mealtimes between the blueberries and the eggs. Although I don’t really want to eat scrambled eggs out of a wine glass.

There are some other components of the cleanse. You are supposed to take good care of yourself by pampering yourself, getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night, and it turns out that making whoopie (the no-calorie kind) is good for you, too. You’re also supposed to get 45 minutes of cardio. Not sure if those are one in the same. I’m going to use the wii fit every evening (after curling up with a glass of scrambled eggs, of course) for cardio at least for the first couple days because I won’t have time to ride my bike and I am allergic to all other types of cardio. I think the wii fit will also be helpful because then I can monitor my weight as well.

So, I’ll try it, I’ll keep you posted (literally), and if you don’t hear from me for a while it’s safe to assume it’s because I’m going to be so gorgeous and energetic that I’ll be off on some tropical island with Gina and all the other Beautiful People.