Spring Cleaning: Day 8

Today I started Day 8 of my first ever spring cleanse. I am "house" cleaning, but not just any house. My house. My living, breathing physical body.

It's definitely time. There is so much yeast inside me, I could probably start a very successful brewery. I used to eat so poorly, but even though I've cleaned things up along the way, I still have a yearning for sweets and darn it, Mark-Daniel's morning coffee smells so good!

I started this cleanse once before, a couple of years ago, but I got so toxic from the 3 milligrams of iodine daily that I was taking with it that I had to stop after 5 days. Now I'm doing it as part of a group, timed with the spring equinox, working with a mentor, and armed with a different drive and determination that I didn't have before.

And I need drive and determination right now, because I am hungry.  Ravenous. And not particularly pleasant to be around.

In a perfect world, I would go off for three weeks to a spa, a secluded cabin, maybe a retreat. Someone would take care of me, make me my salads and my fruit'n'veggie smoothies, wash my dishes, massage my feet, give me space to do meditation and yoga every day. I could read novels, and feel the grass in my toes.

But as we all know, this is not a perfect world. This is a crazy, hectic, busy, topsy-turvy world. My world is full of messes, messes from the kids, from the hubby, cooking, cleaning up Legos, sleep-deprivation, cleaning up colored pencils and drawings, nagging, balancing the impossible finances, and in between it all, trying to carve out bits of study time. But I never get to spend time cleaning up me.

And did I mention that I'm hungry? I'm burning so much fat right now (syanara, C-cup) that I constantly have a sweet taste in my mouth. (If I were diabetic, this would be a very bad thing.) On the cleanse, I'm not supposed to eat after 6pm. The problem is, by the time 9pm rolls along, my stomach feels so empty I think it is going to implode. Then I wake up ravenous, and spend the morning eating and trying to make up for it. Granted, I'm eating foods that are alive and nutrient dense, and at 7 in the morning, red cabbage salad has never tasted so delicious. At least I seem to have a lot of energy, though there are definitely times when I feel, in cleanse lingo, totally pooped out.

I don't mean to sound so negative. The best part about giving up caffeine, chocolate, sugars, bread, grains, dairy (including my beloved butter), and meat is that everything tastes good. Did you know that lentils and chard are  transcendental with a fresh (albeit hydroponic) tomato? I've also realized that I tend to overeat. I've become a pretty decent cook over the years, and sometimes food tastes so good that my mouth overrules my stomach. On the cleanse, I'm not able to eat nearly so much quantity, though everything is high quality.

Yesterday afternoon the sweet cravings hit. How did my body know that I always have a piece of dark chocolate at 2:30pm on Tuesdays so that I can stay awake and focused in epidemiology lecture? (OK, the awake and focused part may be an excuse, I'll grant you that.) It was as if I was being followed by a giant square of Trader Joe's organic dark chocolate. Torture! Fortunately I used up the energy scrubbing the shower with baking soda and vinegar in preparation for my sister-in-law's visit tomorrow. Had I not been doing the cleanse, I probably would have done it the quick way with one of those bleach sprays from Safeway, but it just seemed like betrayal to use bleach while trying to purify my body.

The only place I'm really falling short on the cleanse (besides finding time to rest) is finding time to move. That's possibly where some of my frenetic cravings are coming from, and certainly, I think I would not be so, ahem, easily vexed, were I moving more.

The good news is, Yogamama's Virtual Yoga Challenge is starting on Friday. I'm looking forward to the motivation to practice daily! I'm not sure, though, if my loved ones should be looking forward to the Challenge, because me doing yoga and meditating every day (especially while I'm cleansing) means one thing: Personal upheaval. And I'm not talking headstands.

Maybe I should start looking for that cabin in the woods.