My doctor reminded me this morning that I need to schedule my annual physical.  Ug.  As an added bonus she drew 8 vials of blood for the battery of tests that give me numbers that usually make me cringe.

I dutifully scheduled the appointment for July 1, which is a mere 2 weeks from now.  Of course that will come immediately after a weekend in Las Vegas, so I figured it would be a good idea to schedule a 2 day Nektar Advanced Juice Cleanse for the 2 days immediately preceding that visit. 😉

Since I was already at Nektar to pick up the nifty reusable cold bags full of my two days of punishment, of course I meant healthy eating, I went ahead  and grabbed a third bag so I could do a 1 day and see just how rotten, oops good, I am going to feel.

I prepped 1/2 gallon of water with sliced cucumber, blood orange and lemon in it for between bottles and dove in with both feet.  I should have started at 8 this morning so I had to adjust the amount of time between bottles to be able to get them all in before bedtime.

• 12:00 – Time to open bottle 1.  This is the green one and I was not impressed with the taste.  Made of apple, celery, cucumber, lime, kale, parsley, spinach and mint I expected this one to taste pretty good.  I immediately tasted the celery and couldn’t identify any of the other flavors except the kale, which I still do not like.  I drank the 16.9 oz in 3 large gulps, glad to have that bottle done and hoping the other 5 would be better.  This one was very salty.
• 2:00 – Anxiously anticipating bottle 2.  This one looks like Tang© and I sure hope it tastes better than bottle 1.  Looking at the ingredients: filtered water, lemon, agave nectar, turmeric, and cayenne pepper, I wasn’t optimistic.  I tasted the lemon and the sweetness of the agave nectar and then WOWZA!  The burn of the cayenne (not full power, but it’s there) hit the back of my throat.  Again, polished this bottle off in 3 great gulps.  Thanks to the 33.8 oz of the cleanse juices and the 32 oz of water I’d already had, all I feel is the overpowering need to pee.
• 3:30 – Time for the beet red bottle.  I hate beets and have been dreading the 3rd bottle in the bag.  I took a huge swig and reaffirmed my intense dislike for that bold red root vegetable!  The label says it has apple, celery, beet, lemon, parsley, spinach and ginger inside.  All I taste is beets.  Add to my displeasure of having to down this gross concoction that I also had to run to the bathroom mid-drink 3.  My intestines are starting their own revolt against the juice cleanse and I am not a happy camper.  The only solace I can find is that I didn’t eat a ton of solid food yesterday, so hopefully the internal revolution that’s keeping me in the bathroom will pass quickly.
• 5:00 – Time for the scary looking dark blackish-purple bottle.  The ingredient that catches my eye is “Coconut Charcoal.”  WTH is coconut charcoal?  This bottle scares me!  According to science, the fine particles of coconut charcoal keep toxins and gas from settling in your digestive system and causing problems.  I will need to examine coconut charcoal in more depth in another post, it seems to good things.  It didn’t taste good, but I choked the bottle down and followed it with a 16 ounce bottle of water with lemon and mint to wash the taste out of my mouth.
• 7:00 – Bottle 5 beckons.  Eerily similar to bottle #2 with the same cayenne effect.  Drank this one down in 2 big drinks and waited for something to happen.
• 9:00 – Last Bottle!  This one looked like coconut milk and had a chunky/grainy consistency.  My guess is that it’s attempting to fool my system into thinking it’s ingested food at this point.  Very sweet and it took about reminded me of the rice cereal in formula mix I used to put in my sons nighttime bottles to get him to sleep longer at night.

Other than needing to pee more often from all of the liquids I had ingested, I really didn’t feel any of the effects that my girlfriends were complaining about.  I experienced no increase in needing to poop, no diarrhea, and no added gas.  Really I don’t feel like the one-day cleanse did anything at all for me.  I didn’t notice any change on the scale, I wasn’t hungry, so I guess that was a good thing, but honestly, I just felt full from all of the liquid.

I was more conscious of what I ate over the weekend, at least as far as trying not to shovel large meals in to make up for my foodless day, but I either had few toxins in my system (I find that hard to believe), or had just had a particularly clean eating day the day prior.  I honestly can’t remember what I ate before doing the cleanse, but I doubt it was super healthy.  I do know that I had been enjoying a nightly indulgence from the bag of “Chicago Style” Popcornopolis I foolishly bought at Costco.  In my defense, I did go hungry (Cardinal Sin) and couldn’t pass by the huge bag of a mixture of cheese corn and caramel corn.  It screamed my name and found its way into my cart….

Maybe I’ll notice a bigger difference when I do the two day cleanse next Monday and Tuesday after my weekend eating and drinking like a glutton in Las Vegas. 😉

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