Detox Your Body: The Story Of My 30-Day Master Cleanse

It all started with a croissant. Not just any old croissant, but a buttery, warm, flaky croissant filled with one long, dark smear of chocolate. After your first great pastry, or coffee, or plate of sashimi, it's hard not to be passionate about food. And although I complained bitterly when I was disappointed with an order of pastry/coffee/ sashimi that was supposed to be great, there is at least some sweetness-some reward-to mediocre indulgence. Bitterness, I imagined, is when you can't eat those foods at all.

Last November, I experienced several outbreaks of facial hives-a story best told by my last blog post. During the first outbreak, a neighbor took one look at my face and swore that I had a food allergy. She recounted having similar symptoms and said that they disappeared after starting an Elimination Diet-nutritional parlance for eliminating foods that often cause allergies, such as wheat, dairy, caffeine and alcohol. In some circles, Elimination Diets are also called a Cleanse. I couldn't tell who was more horrified-she, at the sight of my face, or me, at the thought of giving up wheat. She loaned me a book-a bible of Naturopathic Medicine-and I took it home and cried all over it.

Some months later, I learned that my rashes were caused by emotional, rather than dietary issues. In my desperate state, I took her advice and started an Elimination Diet the next day. She had suggested 90 days-I hoped to make it through a week.

Initially, I ate broccoli for breakfast, salad for lunch and tofu for dinner while thoughts of freshly baked bread, artisanal cheese and cupcakes danced in my head. And what about the high-end espresso machine I had just purchased? Should I kick it to the curb to demonstrate my commitment to the Cleanse?

Major life changes are hard to bear-but even more so when you don't have any guides to help you surmount the daily challenges of forging ahead rather than falling back on old patterns. Raw food enthusiasts and vitamin-junkies are far too devoted to their way of life to understand the loss that an ordinary person feels when they have to give up the comfort and pleasure of wine and cheese, or coffee and pastry.

But in my desire to "save face," I decided to give it a go. I kept a journal. Having gone vegetarian a decade earlier, I was not altogether unfamiliar with the road ahead. But even so, each day of the first 30 days brought a new challenge-how to make it through lunch without a sandwich or how to dine out without succumbing to a basket of freshly baked bread and butter. Empty fridge moments at the house required large stores of nuts and dried fruit as back-up. But to my surprise, I actually felt satiated and energized by simple meals such as a breakfast of tea, nuts and dried blueberries.

I became a regular at the local health food store and began to make replacements for my home kitchen: organic rye bread (the dark, German, thinly sliced "brot") replaced croissants, fresh bread, wraps and roti; brown rice pasta and quinoa rather than penne, spaghetti, farfalle and couscous; soy milk substituted for whole milk, cream and yogurt. Then, to make use of all the new ingredients, I started to read new cookbooks and experiment with radically new recipes. Despite longing for a croissant every now and again, the Cleanse was starting to feel exciting, as though I had embarked upon a food adventure.

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