Do you remember that old movie Heavy Weights? Early Ben Stiller where he is crazy (evil!) fitness guru Tony Perkis who runs a fatcamp for kids?
At one point, the kids and camp counselors stage a coup, lock up crazy Tony, and have an all-night food-fueled orgy of gorging. If you haven’t seen it, or need a reminder, check out the video clip. The carnage starts around the 6-minute mark.
Anyhow, I was not quite so hedonistic, but when I got home last night, poked at my millet and stared at the box of supplements again, I broke. I could not face imposing this horrible cleanse upon myself for another minute.
Even though it was a day and a half early, I nixed the entire stupid wild rose herbal d-tox and went to Wendy’s.
After a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger combo, with a coke natch, some gummy worms and beer, and a bit of running around at Ultimate (which I haven’t had the energy for during the entire stupid cleanse), I felt orders of magnitude better.
And this is not “I did a cleanse and it made me feel better” better, it’s “I finally gave my body some real food and actual calories and let them remain in my person long enough to absorb some energy and nutrients.”
As far as I’m concerned, I will never, ever do a cleanse again, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else, either.
That’s a shame. I did the Dr Joshi Holistic Detox a couple of years ago now and although the first two days were horrendous, after that I was full of energy, awake early (without an alarm!) and felt great. It was tough though, with fairly extreme dietary restrictions (hard to find gluten-free foods in Dublin!) but well worth it. But it’s too bad yours didn’t work out so well.
I wonder if some people’s cleanse experience is beneficial because their normal diet is very sugar-laden / otherwise bad? Not saying that’s true in Kirsten’s case, or even in every case (I know people who eat really healthily all the time and still say they like cleanses), but surely there are some people who hit up Wendy’s 2 or 3 times a week, then go on a cleanse and marvel at how much better they’re feeling because of it, when in fact they’re just eating more vegetables, etc.
Until I see some real science on cleanses, I’m not going to go on one – especially not one that charges you for pills. I wonder how much snake oil is in them 🙂
.-= Chris´s last blog ..Twenty Questions =-.
Good for you–I applaud your breakage.
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I’d say in some cases Chris is probably right, but it wasn’t the situation in my case. My only real vice was coffee and even then I don’t get the withdrawals that some people get. I’d say part of it is psychological too – maybe a placebo effect of some sort? Especially the ones with pills or supplements. Mine was more like… well kind of the diets you do when the doctor thinks you have allergies or food intolerances. No dairy, no gluten, etc.
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@Chris – I teach in the Nutrition program at UBC and just last year in a fourth year course that I teach, one of my groups of students did research on cleanses. The verdict: there is no scientific evidence to support them. As Kirsten mentions, I think the placebo effect probably plays a role, as well as what you mention – eating whole foods instead of Wendy’s is just good for you!
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I wondered in Jen’s original post whether there was any solid evidence behind these things, or whether it’s just “well, flushing out your car’s coolant is a good thing, so flushing out your digestive system should be good too.”
For most of us it’s probably much better to eat more veggies and less processed food in general, without the weird restrictions and odd supplements of these cleanses. Oh, and just FYI, I get all the intestinal/bathroom “benefits” of a cleanse every couple of days, as a side effect of my chemo pills, while still eating my usual stuff. Bonus!
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