01/05/2023
PREPPING FOR THE CLEANSE
Before beginning the cleanse, there are a few things we need to prepare. I try to do this before my ‘Fast and Flush’ as it can be really difficult to cook when you are not allowed to eat. Since we are eating whole foods with many restrictions, we will need to prepare some foods ourselves. I like to make my salad mix for up to a week. Anything after that seems to go bad, and I also try to make sure that my base salad mix only has greens, lettuces and cabbages in it, as onions, celery, carrots, or whatever else you would like in your salad tends to deteriorate the salad mix quicker. I also make my own broth, mayo, and vinaigrette. See my mayo recipe below.
HOMEMADE MAYONNAISE
2 Egg Yolks
1 ½ Cups Avocado Oil
2 Tbsp Lemon Juice
1 Pinch of Salt
Combine the egg yolks, ½ the lemon juice, and salt at the bottom of a standing mixer. Begin to beat on medium-high. Slowly, drop-by-drop, begin adding the first ½ cup of avocado oil. Once you get through the first ½ cup of oil, you can start adding another ½ cup in a slow stream. Your mixture will begin to emulsify. Add the remaining lemon juice, and finish adding the oil in a steady stream until finished. Immediately transfer mixture into a food safe jar. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour and then refrigerate for up to one month.
THE FAST AND FLUSH
For the next 72 Hours, we will be fasting, drinking only Alkalized Water with a pH of 8, and Mineral Water rich in Calcium, Magnesium and Sodium. Mineral water also contains the appropriately measured natural oligoelements like Chromium, Copper, Iron, Chlorine, Manganese, Selenium, and Fluorine. I know that some of these elements seem scary but all are useful and necessary for our bodies in small doses and Mineral Water is one of the most natural ways to obtain the appropriate amount of these elements. Plus, Italian Sparkling Mineral Water is a nice variety during this time and its carbonation comes from natural carbon dioxide from the spring where it is retrieved.
Drink as much water as you can and use this time to catch up on your sleep. The important thing about this Fast and Flush is to expel as little energy as possible since you are not taking in any energy. I will start our Fast on Sunday after we eat dinner. We will finish our dinner at 8:00 PM Saturday night and will start eating again at 8:00 PM Wednesday evening. At 11:00 AM on Monday, I will consume our concentrated electrolytes. I recommend using Keto Chow. You can buy them on Amazon for $20. You will merely double the number of electrolytes for the amount of water you will be drinking this evening. So for me, I usually take a small capful per liter of water. In this case, I will take 2 capfuls per liter of water that I plan to drink in a shot of water. Knowing that I need to drink 3 liters of water for the entire day, I will take 6 capfuls in a 12-ounce glass of water which I will down in a short period of time (less than one hour). When I am finished with my shot, I will begin to hydrate heavily.
This will make you p**p! Oh yes, p**p like crazy! To a point where you should inevitably get to a place where every glass of water that goes in, is also coming out… meaning, you are p**ping water. This just ensures that you have completely cleaned out your entire colon. We want to start with a clean slate. Over time, foods moving through our system tend to cling to our intestines. The worse we eat the more mucus builds up in our intestines and the more food will stick to it. Those foods can be in our system for years and will remain undigested. Bad bacteria that get filtered out of our system will cling to the undigested foods causing all sorts of problems, but most commonly, a leaky gut. The bad bacteria will live in our intestines latching on to our insides feeding off all the sugar we intake. The more sugar, the more the bad bacteria can grow and breed, causing other health problems as mentioned above. The Flush creates an extreme evacuation of anything stuck in your intestines and colon, helping push out anything trying to still hold on. The Fast helps them loosen and die out. With a combination of the two, you should be able to clean out your intestines, so we can begin our Cleanse detoxing without obstruction.
The key to fasting is ideally getting to Ketosis. Ketosis is a process that happens when your body doesn't have enough carbohydrates to burn for energy, so your body eventually stops producing insulin. Instead, it burns fat and makes things called ketones, which it can use for fuel. There are 3 different ways of being able to get your body into a state of Ketosis. One, is Fasting. Fasting is the process in which you only consume liquids, typically less than 25 calories, in 24+ hours. In this cleanse, we will be exploring 24–48-hour fasts, as well as multiple fasts throughout the week.
The second way to get your body into Ketosis is Intermittent Fasting. This is the process in which you fast for only part of the day. To establish a state of Ketosis, where your body doesn’t produce insulin and your body naturally begins to burn fat, you must go 12+ hours of not eating. We have gotten so used to eating. All the time, eat and veg, eat and sleep, eat and f**k! We are eaters; we have been trained to be eaters. But we can achieve the same levels of Ketosis by Intermittent Fasting as we can with Fasting. At a minimum, I recommend an 18/6, 18 hours off of eating, 6 hours of eating. I personally like the 22/2 window. It helps me consume a very minimal number of calories while eating whatever I want.
The final way to achieve Ketosis is to eat minimal carbohydrates which is our first 10 days of this Cleanse. As you may have already seen in the diet I have attached to your Welcome email (Phase 1), we will be actively applying all 3 of these techniques into our Cleanse to receive maximum results.
Another benefit to Fasting is Autophagy. Autophagy is the body's way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. “Auto” means self and “phagy” means eat. So the literal meaning of autophagy is “self-eating.” Autophagy aids in cleaning out toxins, eating up cancer cells, and even tightening up loose skin from excessive weight loss or from pregnancy.
CALORIE COUNTING AND YOUR BMR
I also get my weight logged into my calorie counter the day before I begin my ‘Fast and Flush’. I want to do it before I eat that day as that is when I will be weighing myself every weigh-in. If you have a Fitbit or exercise watch/tracker, you can do this directly from that technological counter. It will also account for your steps and exercise. For those of you, like me, who do not have a fitness tracker, you can use your wonderful smartphone. My android has an app called ‘Samsung Health’ which counts all my steps and exercise. However, it isn’t the greatest when accounting for calories. For this, I choose ‘My Fitness Pal’ App. This lets me create my own recipes for my foods, accounting for the calories. It also lets me sync my ‘Samsung Health’ App to it so it will log all of my calories burned from exercise, making my life a whole lot easier.
Currently, I am working towards my Max Goal Weight (125 lbs). I want to be at my Minimum Goal Weight (118 lbs). So how I will measure my BMR is by using this site: https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html I find it to be the most accurate calculator out there. Now, since I want to be 118, I will base my BMR off the calories that my goal weight is. At the age of 42, and female, at my height of 5’4” tall (on a good day), my BMR is 1180 calories per day. This means that this is the maximum number of calories I want to consume while I am eating to get to this particular weight. As someone over 40, it is hard to lose weight. People will say that you need to exercise more, and you do, but I find that those calories lost from exercise should just be bonus calories. Sticking to the calories that you need to consume to be the weight you want is the quickest and most efficient way to get to the weight you want.
In order to lose weight and keep the weight off, which is a big part of my cleanse goals this year, I will be needing to shrink my stomach. So for the first 14 days of eating, I will be going 5 days, restricted to 500-800 calories per day, and then I will go 2 days where I will allow to eat up to 1180. Then another 5 days at 500-800 calories. So by the time I start Phase 2, eating my BMR per day will be extremely satisfying.
Where do I come up with 500-800 calories? Well, there is a school of thought around intermittent fasting that says that a person can gain all their nutritional needs in a day if they consume a minimum of 500 calories. Allowing for an extra 300 gives you room to grow into the 500-calorie mark. Remember, we want to set ourselves up for success, so by giving ourselves a range instead of an exact mark, we give ourselves allowances to breath.
For more information on this or other parts of my cleanse, please visit https://www.facebook.com/sandwichboardspecial
Happy Cleansing!
A Road towards Healthier Habits and Delicious Foods.
