Detox and Weight Loss

I've always wanted to try a detox diet. Knowing several people who have tried the apple cider vingar and cayenne pepper cleanse diet, I knew that crabbiness/turning into a space cadet could definitely be side effects and that fact has kept me from ever attempting it.

After 3 days of horrible eating thanks to a hill country camping trip with my granparents (gramping!), I was ready to get back to eating healthy again. Now that I'm a lady of leisure, a detox diet seemed more doable and I was less scared about feeling stabby. Also, it occurred to me that I'm detoxing from bad food and coffee, not crystal meth, so I need to be less of a Nancy about it.

We (yes I dragged Ryan into this too) based our detox diet on this one from Vegetarian Times (yep - I spelled it wrong again and had to spell check), but made some modifications. Actually, we pretty much ignored all the dandelion salads and other stuff completely.

Here's what we did for our 2 day weekend detox:

1. Eat mostly vegan. I say mostly because I didn't have soy milk for our smoothies on Saturday morning, so I had to use milk and Greek yogurt. 
2. Not add stuff to food. We didn't use salt or sugar in our foods. If they needed more flavor, we added some Bragg or some maple syrup (for sweet potatoes - MMM!)
3. Cut out the coffee. The Gabbarts are mighty coffee drinkers - we have like 4 cups a day usually, so this was the toughest part of the experiment. This and not being able to have a taco. I want a taco.
4. Drink a ton of water. We drank regular water, water with lemon, water with lemon and ginger, water with lemon and cayenne pepper, water with lemon, cayenne pepper and ginger - you get the idea. 
5. Took naps. I have a black belt in sleeping, so this was a cakewalk - NAILED IT! *swish*

Things I learned from the detox:

• After about a day, all your food tastes the way it's supposed to. Seriously - you can really taste your food. Apples were explosions of sweetness, carrots were sweet, broccoli was earthy and tart - I really enjoyed that part.
• Headaches come on quickly and make you yell at your husband for whistling in the car.
• Green tea is a Godsend.
• It's not that hard to do for a short amount of time. 
• The genius of a detox isn't some crazy amount of weight loss, it's that it resets your tolerance for salt, fat and sugar. It also helps strengthen resolve and willpower, two things that had been seriously weakened in the food-stravaganza of weeks prior. 

I have heard about 21-day cleanses that folks swear by, but eff that - I'm not going to be successful for 21-days on a plan like this. Life needs flexibility and variety. That said, we're definitely incorporating what we have learned into our regular life - eating mostly vegan at home, great ways to throw meals together with minimal ingredients and drinking a ton of water all the time. 

But dang y'all, I need my coffee. No coffee is a dealbreaker for me (sexually transmitted crazy mouth - bwhahaha!) 

Is there anything that you couldn't give up in diet?

PS: Weigh in Monday will be back next week - huzzah!