The Dr. Oz Cleanse vs. My Cleanse

Remember this post where I was all excited about trying a cleanse for the first time? 

Something about the word "detox" just lures me in every time. Like our bodies have some kind of Chemical X floating around and the only way to get it out is via magical cleanses.

Well...let me tell you about that cleanse. If you're interested in trying it out, here is my experience. It could be completely different for you, but I don't think I will be trying it again anytime soon.

So the day before I started it, I cooked up all the food and felt pretty excited to try it all.

This is the quinoa with prunes and almond milk breakfast. I actually thought it was pretty good with a bunch of nutmeg and cinnamon added to it.

(I took pictures of all the food but some most of them are gone...)

So the day I started, I went about my day and felt fine until lunchtime. The breakfast and mid-morning snack were good and kept my pretty full. 

But then I got really hungry at noon. When I had a teeny tiny berry smoothie to eat for lunch. Seriously, it was like a cup of smoothie.

As someone who eats CONSTANTLY, that had me a little worried. 

So I drank that and was still starving. Then, after two hours of shaking and lacking focus, I got a Snickers bar. (Probably not part of the cleanse?)

I immediately felt better and more stabilized. This means one of two things:

1. I hadn't had enough calories at that point and so the Snickers bar helped fill me up.

2. I am a complete sugar junkie who needed a fix.

I think it's probably a little of both.

So I kind of fell off the cleanse train by the evening. I was still eating well, but added a lot more substance to the vegetable soup dinner.

Then the next day I craved a cheeseburger like crazy (thank you PMS) and proceeded to eat my weight in chocolate the rest of the week. 

I'm thinking my timing was a little off.

Because we leave for Ireland on Monday, I wanted to eat well this week to keep myself healthy for the trip. So I set up my own kind of "cleanse" that I could actually stick to.

To give you a rough idea of what I had, here is a typical day:

Breakfast:

-Hot water with lemon (and cinnamon, sometimes.)

-Oatmeal with almond milk, almond butter and berries. (My all-time favorite breakfast. One of the only meals that keeps me satisfied until lunch. Or, well...at least 10 a.m.)

Mid-morning snack: 

Plain yogurt with strawberries and agave nectar

Lunch:

-Hot tea

-Spinach salad with apples, mushrooms, avocado, walnuts and a little olive oil.

Mid-afternoon snack:

-Half an avocado with cottage cheese and a dash of garlic powder (or any spice of choice) on top.

Dinner:

-Lemon Parsley soup (recipe here.)

Additional snacks:

I am hungry constantly, so I eat these throughout the day as well:

-Almond butter and banana smoothie

-Any fruits/ veggies

-Carrots and hummus

-Any kind of green smoothie (I prefer one with a few handfuls of kale, half an apple, juice of half a lemon, a few stalks of celery, a banana and some pineapple.)

So that's what I've been doing instead to prepare for spring break and just generally feel good overall. I have also been doing daily workouts from Blogilates, which I LOVE because all of her workouts are fun and usually filmed somewhere pretty, like the beach, and makes me forget that my life looks like this right now:

Happy Wednesday!!

Things I eat

So it is the winter time.

(Minus the snow.)

The season for cookies and candy and cocoa and things.

My diet is pretty much half elf, half rabbit.

Sugar and veggies.

Not the best, but I do toss in some meat and eggs every now and again.

So I thought I would share a few of my staples!

Green Smoothie

Now, I cannot really take credit for this recipe. It's brilliant, and I found it here, 

from Kimberly Snyder. But I make variations of it.

And it's not very scientific, but this is approximately how it goes:

-1-2 bananas

-Half cup 100% fruit juice

-2 cups spinach (sometimes I use kale too, but make sure it's chopped up really 

well or it'll kill the blender)

-2 cups romaine lettuce

-1 celery stalk

-Apple 

-Pear

-Juice of half a lemon

-1 tbsp ground flax seed

-However much water you'd like. I add just enough to keep things a blendin'.

 It looks a little frightening and at first it kind of feels like you're eating grass. BUT I have been having them pretty much every day since Halloween, and now I crave them. They're totally refreshing, and you get more produce in a day than most people get in a week.

And they give me a lot of energy. So I'd say if you haven't tried a smoothie incorporating greens before, you should give it a go! Not as scary as they look, I promise.

My Favorite Breakfast

-Oatmeal

-1-2 tbsps almond butter

-Some kind of fruit

I love this, especially in the winter. And it's amazing especially with frozen blueberries, because the outside warms up and the inside stays cool.

Delicious, and so filling.

(P.S.-Tommy made that bowl for me last Christmas! Perfect oatmeal/soup/ice cream bowl.)

Mini Cheesecake

So if you're like me and have a constant sweet tooth, this is a great snack. The ingredients seem a little odd, but trust me, they taste like a cheesecake when you eat them all together.

-Graham crackers

-Cream cheese

-Chocolate chips/strawberries/bananas/grapes...lots of things are good with this!

So there you go!

Also, I may do a vlog this week.

Get excited.

Good luck to everyone on finals/Christmas shopping/other December madness!