Cleansing does not require pills, pre-made solutions, exotic ingredients or anything that comes in a box. Cleanses are flexible and can be adjusted to your needs and lifestyle, can involve the use of many homemade juices and cheap herbal teas, and are categorized most importantly by a brief period of abstaining from heavily processed solid foods. The following 10-day cleansing procedure is a template that may be used step by step or adjusted to provide excellent results.
Preparation
Begin by removing foods that are hard to digest, have a high calorie content or are overcooked for preparation. Animal meat, processed grains such as white rice, flour, and pasta, sugary foods, dairy and caffeine should be cut back significantly or eliminated three days before the cleanse begins.
A sample meal plan to prepare for a cleanse would look like this:
Breakfast -- a fruit of your choice
Snack -- almonds and dried fruit
Afternoon -- steamed broccoli with brown rice
Snack -- carrots and hummus
Dinner -- lentil soup
Your prep diet is identical to the type of diet recommended once the cleanse is over. A cleanse is meant to wean you off of addictive foods such as heavily processed grains, sugary foods, dairy, caffeine and animal meat. For your three-day preparation, stick to vegetables, fruits, whole grains and nuts and seeds. Drink plenty of water, herbal tea and juice to substitute for soda, coffee and other liquids with high sugar and caffeine content.
Days 1 to 3
Consume liquids only. Appropriate liquids include fruit juices (preferably not pre-bottled, but if you don't have a juicer, look for unpasteurized juice, and/or juice with the least ingredients--ideally just the fruit used to make the juice), soups (without solids such as potatoes or carrots), vegetable broths, herbal teas and water. Liquids require less effort from your digestive enzymes and digestive organs, taking a load off of the body as a whole, allowing it to focus on cleansing. As you move from solids to liquids, you may notice your bowel movements becoming more strained or infrequent. For this reason, it is recommended that you also flush out your system with a sea-salt solution--2 teaspoons of sea salt to one quart of water. Drink this solution first thing every morning to move the toxic buildup in your colon out through two to three bowel movements per day.
Days 4 to 7
Simplify your liquid diet. A liquid cleansing recipe was created by Stanley Burroughs in 1940 and is still widely used and known today as the "Lemonade Diet." This recipe (2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon, 2 tablespoons maple syrup and 1/10th teaspoon cayenne pepper in a 10-ounce glass of water) is said to provide enough calories to function as you would normally while using ingredients, such as lemon and cayenne pepper, that have healing effects in the body. While citrus is acidic outside of the body, it becomes alkaline once consumed, creating an opportunity for your body to build its immune defenses and detox from waste buildup accumulated through a bad diet, taking antibiotics or past illness. All of this buildup is believed to make it harder for your body to shed excess weight. While weight is often attributed exclusively to body fat, disease weight must also be accounted for in the buildup of mucus, which is broken up and released when consuming cayenne pepper.
There is no one perfect liquid detox mixture for days four through seven. Most importantly, you must eliminate the soups and broths of days one through three and drink only one kind of simple juice. An ideal cleansing juice is freshly squeezed and has minimal ingredients. Supplement with water and herbal tea as much as needed. Continue to do the salt-water flush every morning.
Days 8 to 10
Drink water only. Days one through seven are meant to prepare you to effectively handle a two-day water fast, which is an advanced form of cleansing. If you begin to feel very weak, do not hesitate to add in the juice from days four through seven. If you juice cleanse for days four through 10, you will still see results.
Clean water (bottled, spring, deionized or reverse osmosis) is the ultimate cleansing liquid. It is the cheapest of all recommended products for cleansing and works the best. Your body is made up almost entirely of water, water contains no complicated ingredients, calories or addictive chemicals, and will in turn cleanse you of those cravings caused by highly processed foods containing sugar, dairy, animal meat and caffeine.
You can find deionized or reverse osmosis water at most health food stores, where refillable containers are sold, and the water is released through a machine in the store. If you cannot find these kinds of water, try bottled or spring. Tap water is not appropriate for a cleanse. Deionized and reverse osmosis water are cheapest (about 50 cents per gallon, and about $8.00 for a two-gallon container).
Breaking the Fast
Do not go back to eating as you did before the cleanse. Incorporating heavily processed, high-calorie foods immediately back into your diet has been known to cause irritable bowel. Your digestive enzymes will be weakened after cleansing, so it is necessary to drink a juice with high pulp (such as orange juice or apple juice) for one or two days before incorporating any solids back into your diet. On day three you may add raw fruits and vegetables to your liquid diet. By day six it will be safe for you to eat whole grains and legumes, such as black beans and brown rice, and cook your vegetables. Carry on with a healthy vegetarian diet for as long as possible. Use this 10-day cleansing guide for maintenance as often as once a month, but do not fluctuate wildly from a bad diet to a strict cleanse. The ultimate goal of a cleanse is to create a healthy lifestyle on a day-to-day basis.
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