With the holiday season approaching, I know how I love to cook and especially enjoy my Soul Food around this time, so now is the time to make room for those extra calories. I'm on a mission to lose 15 pounds by the end of the month. I've heard alot about the Lemonade Diet, better known as the Master Cleanse, and thought I would give it a try. In summary, I lost 5 pounds in FIVE days!! I only did it for 5 days, and expecting to keep losing as the days go on...this is day 7, and the only thing I ate since finishing my fast was a bowl of vegetable soup, and a few crackers yesterday and I'm still not that hungry. Today I'll have more vegetable soup and crackers, and drink plenty of orange juice or water w/lemon, and that will do it!! Feeling as if you HAVE to eat all day is a mindset. You can survive without 3 meals a day. :-) Okay, so let's see how my first 3 days went:
Day 1
I woke up hungry with slight hunger pains. Normally that doesn't happen. I even ate some barbecue chips, a few cashews, and a glass of cherry coke around midnight. And I normally don't eat snacks that late, but still didn't expect to wake up hungry. I went back to bed after putting my daughter on the school bus at 7:00am. Woke back up at 10:30am. This is when I drank my first glass of the lemonade.
I prepared my full days' supply the night before so it would be cold. I'm not a water drinker, so if I were to drink this stuff, it would have to be cold. (as its recommended anyway) I used an empty 64 ounce Juicy Juice container to make my full day's supply.
I wasn't sure how it would taste, so I braced myself for the first sip. To my delight, it wasn't bad. Tasted like lemonade without a lot of sugar. So it was pretty tasty. The cayenne added a little kick, but it wasn't overbearing.
By 12:30, I had my first BM. (it was normal)
I never eat marshmallows, but around 1:30 p.m. as I was giving my toddlers a snack, I felt SO hungry & tempted to eat a few. But I didn't. And by the time 8:30 p.m. came around, I no longer felt any hunger and was 2 glasses away from finishing up Day 1's mixture.
Day 2
Today was an okay day. I started out with two BM's before 9:00 a.m. after drinking a cup of herbal tea last night. I didn't have any more BM's the rest of the day. But the headaches did start. I hear that this is common as the body goes through a detox. So I just dealt with it. They were not bad enough for me to take an ibuprofen.
My challenges came when I had to fix my toddlers breakfast. I kept it light to avoid too much temptation, so I fixed them some cheese grits & sausage. Oh! how I LOVE cheese grits, and wanted what was left in the pot SO BAD!! But I have a goal, so i just put the rest down the disposal. Darn it!
For dinner I roasted a whole chicken and made some veggie fried rice. The smell of that chicken coming from the oven was heavenly. Whew! that was a tough one. But I still had to cook for my children, right? Some things you can't avoid, but you must have discipline with this. Anyway, while slicing pieces of chicken to put on my children's plate, I couldn't take it another second. I took one bite, then another, and another until I had eaten the equivalent of 2 wings. That wasn't too bad, except I'm suppose to be on a lemonade fast. Okay, I said it. I cheated. I admit it. (smile)
Well after that slip up, I proceeded to take my daughter to karate class. After getting back home, I finished up the rest of the day's mixture a little here and there, and then had my cup of herbal laxative tea. Oh, by the way, I didn't drink a cup of tea this morning like the recipe calls for simply because I had to go out to run some errands and didn't want to be caught off guard without a restroom close by. But the good news about today is that when I had stepped on the scale, I had lost a whopping FOUR pounds since yesterday!! I was estatic about that. Well, it's 1:15 am and time for me to turn in for the night.
Day 3
I woke up about 9:00 a.m. with a slight heaache. It was much better than the one I had yesterday. So I take it that I had gotten past that stage of the fast. I wasn't tempted during breakfast this morning. I cured that by giving my toddlers a pop tart for breakfast. LOL! The rest of the day went quite well. But I did feel my stomach growling around 7:00 p.m. I chose to ignore it.
Days 4 & 5
I actually finished up my last full day's supply on Day 4. When I stepped on the scale on Day 4, I had lost FIVE pounds!! I figured I was losing weight at a good rate, so there was no need to do the entire 10 days. Day 5 I ate a can of Chunky's Vegetable Soup (no noodles or chicken added- just straight vegetable soup) and drank a glass of orange juice. Nothing else.
Basically, this is a great fast/diet to go on. As for me, I feel as if I have established some self-control in my eating habits and can still lose my remaining 10 pounds by just eating real light from here on out. I will let you know in a few weeks if I reached my goal.
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