The Master Cleanse: Day One

Day One was EASY. As long as I don't let myself get hungry, things seem to be going smoothly. Once you get hungry you kind of need to drink lemonade immediately. So the important thing is to be prepared. It takes a while to figure out how much and how often you need to drink to stay full, so it helped that I had the day off. I spent much of it making several batches of lemonade to stay stocked up and preparing for work tomorrow. I seem to go through about a litre of lemonade every three to four hours. This also means a lot of peeing.

So far I don't miss food at all, though my sense of smell seems a lot more keen, and everything smells delicious. But I am kind of enjoying taking a break from eating. It's much more simple. No Omnivore's Dilemma for me.

During band practice tonight though, I discovered one major drawback to drinking lemonade all day: it makes you lose your singing voice.


There are a few major differences between the lemonade I'm making this time, and the lemonade I made back in 2005.

• In 2005 I used a blender, resulting in a lot more pulp (I figured this would be more filling). This time, I am using a manual citrus juicer. This way I can also measure lemon juice more exactly. (It ends up being almost 6 Tbsp of juice per lemon, at least for the giant 69 cent lemons from No Frills.) There is less pulp, and less mess. It takes a lot less time to halve a lemon and juice it than to peel and cut it into pieces, and it doesn't get all over everything.

• Last time, I started out boiling water to purify it, and eventually I got lazy and just used water straight from the tap. This time I'm being more wasteful and only using bottled water. I even bought some FANCY water (see photograph).

• I am using Naturally Luc Bergeron's Canada No. 3 Dark Organic Pure Maple Syrup. I don't remember the maple syrup being so expensive ... I think it happened to be on sale last time. At regular price, it is $28.99 for one litre!

• The first round of lemons were California Lemons from No Frills, at a whopping 69 cents each. They are quite large and have just a couple seeds. Last time, I tried a variety of lemons and made a list somewhere around Day 5 comparing them all. I'll probably do that again. I might try limes too this time.

Let's see how things were going on Day One back in 2005:

Friday, November 4, 2005 – Day One: My first disappointment comes when I take a big whiff of the first batch of lemonade I've prepared in the blender (using freshly boiled water) ... for some reason I had just expected it to smell good. It really does not.

Attending a party on the first evening = extremely bad idea. Surrounded by various stages of boisterous intoxication, I degenerate into an untalkative, staring lump on the wooden step, fixated on the fact that for the next nine days, the only thing I can consume makes me want to gag.

Everyone tells me I should stop. Except Max, who drives me home. Despite all my doubts and rationalizations, he urges me to stick with it. I go to bed early, feeling like hell.

Well, doesn't that make you want to embark on the lemonade diet? I remember the sense of alienation at the party while everyone else was drinking ... it wasn't an entirely bad feeling. Maybe it felt like I had a stronger purpose. Or like I was doing something more meaningful than just getting drunk again on a Friday night.

The only meaningful thing really was to prove to myself that I could stick with such a strict (and somewhat ridiculous) regimen for ten days. I am still surprised that I made it through, that time around. I tried it again a couple years ago and only lasted a few days. I didn't really mentally prepare myself this time around, and I don't entirely expect to succeed. But I'm trying to just do the cleanse without making any kind of a big deal about it. I think I was a lot more dramatic back then.

Who am I kidding, I still overdramatize everything. Hell, I keep a blog of what I eat for dinner everyday. And in case you weren't sure: today I had lemonade for dinner.