Friday, March 16, 2007

Spring Detox: Robin's Master Cleanse Maple Lemonade

I need a hard-core detox. All this traveling, too many liquid dinners, late nights and no sleep has caught up with me. Not only am I feeling weak and tired, I ain't looking so good. I'm tempted to hole up and stay inside, which means something must be done.

I've looked into detox approaches (the home kind, not the Betty Ford kind), and found that there are two basic ways of doing it. Take some sort of herbal regimine, which will have you laxing yourself to the latrine for a few weeks, or change your intake. This can be a cleansing diet, or even as dramatic as a fast for as few as one or as many as ten days.

Outside of Yom Kippur, I've never fasted. I used to work with a man from India who would do a juice fast the first day of each month. This impressed me, but then again, I've always been impressed with restraint. I'd ask him about it (usually while chomping on a burrito), and he explained that sometimes the stomach needed to rest. Sometimes the body needs to take a break from managing all the stuff we throw into it, and just be.

This always struck me as generous, and kind. Taking care of the body. Polishing the temple. Giving the old gal the night off. My body has been working over time and would appreciate the generosity.

So I called a hippie pal who I can always depend on to try these things, and she recommended books by a man called Elson Haas. I immediately purchased and tore through his two books, Staying Healthy with the Seasons and The New Detox Diet.

There is a plan for fasting, which includes drinking the "Master Cleanser" 8 to 12 times per day. This homemade remedy helps to push out the toxins in your body (recipe below). There was also a plan for basic detox, which I'd do for 3 to 10 days, which basically starts each day with a bowl of gluten-free complex carb (quinoa, amaranth, brown rice), and includes a lunch and dinner of steamed vegetables. This also helps push out the toxins, and eliminates any foods you might be allergic to. Since I've had a skin allergy for over a year now, I was eager to eliminate whatever was causing the problem.

So I started immediately, yesterday in fact, after I had a rather mediocre meatball parmesan sub. You see, I had to start fast, because I've got a big Home Made Simple party this weekend in DC. So I need to cleanse it all up so that I can enjoy Saturday (tomorrow) night.

And then of course there's next Sunday (my birthday). I can't be cleansing on my 35th birthday; I need to get all that junk out of there so that I can have a big fancy multiple-course tasting dinner.

Then there's Passover, Easter...how can I deny myself a transfatty corn-syrupy macaroon and a chocolate bunny? Plus I'm teaching classes, where I must be tasting food constantly; I might go to Mexico in April...if I am going to go no booze, no caffeine, no bread, no meat...and try to do this for a week, well then, it's quite hard to find a time that works.

Look folks, I'd sooner shut of my cell phone and toss my laptop out the window for a week then I could just say no to a wonderful dinner. Do I not have the self control? No, I just love food. Running a marathon seems simpler to me than a vegan week. The thought of denying this basic pleasure makes me sad and frustrated, and as I'm learning, there's nothing quite so toxic as a really bad mood.

But I will do this, and I will do this before spring is over, because that passion, that near-obsession needs a break to recharge itself. That said, today's Master Cleanse fast was interrupted (thank god) because I found some small print that said one should never fast during the winter. When today's snow became sleet, and I treated myself to a big bowl of quinoa. This is about health, after all, not monastic insanity. Tomorrow is another day.

Robin's Master Cleanse Maple Lemonade
From The New Diet Detox, by Elson Haas
If you're a Howard Stern fan, you'll remember when Robin lost a ton of weight a few years ago, and Howard was constantly making fun of this weird drink she'd have every morning with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. I was always intrigued (as I'm always intrigued when people are able to lose a lot of weight, keep it off, and do so seemingly effortlessly). You can imagine my surprise and delight when I found that the globally-lauded Master Cleanse is one and the same!

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
1/10 teaspoon cayenne pepper
8 ounces spring water

Mix and drink 8 - 12 glasses throughout the day. Eat or drink nothing else except water, laxative herb tea, and peppermint or chamomile tea. Deep the mixture in a glass container or make it fresh each time. Rinse your mouth with water after each glass to prevent the lemon juice from hurting the enamel of your teeth.

2 Comments:

Blogger Nia here! said...

Allison,
This is a nice post. You've got a nice comfortable voice. Please visit me at ttp://master-cleanse.info and leave your comments, questions, experiences. I have the site broken up into different phases of the diet and in a section called "blogsphere citations" I put links to who is saying what about the Master cleanse. I'll link you there today. I really enjoyed what you had to say I could really relate. Makes sense, to me, to be "kind and generous" with our bodies, afterall without our bodies his particular adventure we're having ends. (And I cold almost taste that burrito!) All the best, Nia.

6:07 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

do you have to do this everyday or just one day? I would like to try it but sure I can handle that regimen everyday.

3:06 PM  

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