So any of you that know me will know that I never try colon flushes, cleanses, diets or anything that prevents me from eating crisps and drinking beer! However, recently, I was feeling very bloated and sluggish all of the time. I think it’s because myself and Phil have been eating out a good bit over the past couple of months (and drinking). So I decided maybe I would try one of these cleanses that I always hear people talking about.
I found one online, which was only a three-day cleanse. I knew three days would be enough for me as, well, I like eating too much to go without food any longer than that. The cleanse I found was a smoothie cleanse and since myself and Phil recently purchased a NutriBullet, I am all about the smoothies, so I thought this one would suit me perfectly.
To start the cleanse, you first do a salt flush (optional) on your first day, to clear your colon and fully detox. Now, again, I have never participated in a “flush” of any sort, so I thought, okay, this is probably a good idea to clean out my colon. However, the salt flush did work for me but it firstly made me vomit, which isn’t supposed to happen. But I think that’s the problem with a salt flush, different people can have different reactions to it. I couldn’t keep the salt water solution down and I puked some of it up. I then experienced the actual intended results of the salt flush after about a half an hour. I would say that if I was doing a flush of my system again, I wouldn’t do a salt flush, I might try another option. I think maybe I drank the salt solution too fast, and that’s what caused me to puke. A salt flush won’t work for all people and you can read about some of the dangers of it here: http://www.allaboutfasting.com/salt-water-flush-dangers.html
However, lots of people swear by a salt flush. It’s important to note that if partaking in a salt flush, you shouldn’t just use your table salt. You need to use 100% untreated salt. So once I got over the puking, and the salt flush effects started to kick in, well lets just say, my colon obviously needed that cleanse. The blog that I was following had mentioned the effects of the salt flush would last for 30-60 minutes but mine lasted for about 2 hours. So I warn if you’ve never done a “flush” of any sort before then don’t make any plans to be too far away from the toilet for the first few hours and if you have housemate, maybe give them some advance warning 😉
After the effects of the salt flush stop, you can have you first smoothie and then from then until the end of cleanse, smoothies is all you can have. So on day 1, after my excessive time in the bathroom, and after drinking my 3 smoothies for the day, I was feeling tired and had a bit of a headache. I think that’s to be expected for day 1. Day 2 I was feeling much better, not tired, more alert and the bloated sluggish feeling I had was gone, my body actually felt lighter. Today was my first day eating food again and not only having smoothies and I have to say, I feel great. I was really sceptical when starting the cleanse and I thought I would be really hungry, but I actually wasn’t. The smoothies have your necessary calorie intake for the day and if you’re still hungry you can snack on raw vegetables, which I actually didn’t even need to do. I found the hardest part was not going through the motions of actually eating and enjoying a meal, especially dinner. Phil didn’t do the cleanse so he was still eating dinner as normal and that nearly killed me; him tucking into his steak and me sitting across from him with my smoothie, giving him the evil eye.
Also, the blog I followed gave the recipes for your 3 (or 4) smoothies a day. It was the same 3 or 4 everyday, which again, made it difficult. I didn’t overly enjoy any of the smoothies so on day 2 and 3, for dinner, I switched up one of the smoothies for my own – blueberry, banana, greek yoghurt, orange juice, flax-seed and avocado – just because I couldn’t face another one of the smoothies from the blog.
You can get to the blog here and see all the details of the smoothie cleanse, as well as find the smoothie recipes:http://thegreenforks.com/smoothie-cleanse/
Overall, the cleanse has left me feeling really good and I would be willing to do a cleanse again sometime. I’m thinking I might try do one once a year because after all, it can’t be a bad thing to detox and cleanse out your colon, however, I won’t do the salt flush again. Not because it didn’t work, it definitely did, but because it made me feel crap and it made me puke. I think there are teas you can get which act as “laxatives” almost and help to clean out your colon, so maybe they would be a better idea than the salt flush. But if you are looking for a good cleanse to start with, I would recommend the smoothie cleanse, you don’t have to participate in th salt flush and you can just do the smoothie cleanse for 3 days and hopefully you’ll feel as good as I do after it 🙂
