Day 1: February Cleanse

Today is the first day of a 28-day raw food cleanse I'm starting with Raw Food Rehab. This website is an excellent resource for raw foodists of all levels.

My goals for this month are:

1) to learn how it feels like to take full responsibility for what I put into my body and observe how different types of food affect my body;

2) to cleanse and detoxify my body;

3) to become closer to my true self and learn to distinguish the voice of my intuition clearly;
4) to connect with the Earth through the raw food I consume.

I'm planning to start with juice feasting for the first week or two, then add smoothies, and  add solid raw food by the end of the month and maybe some cooked vegan food later. I don't think I will eat 100% raw for the rest of my life, but I will aim for the highest percentage of uncooked nutritious content in my diet.

In addition to Penni's Raw Food Rehab site, I have browsed other resources and learned about the difference between juice fasting and juice feasting, the Master Cleanse, Victoria Butenko's work. Apparently, tons of information have been accumulated on the raw food life style that I had no idea existed. It will take time for me to learn and absorb this knowledge, but I'll be easy on myself and let myself enjoy the process of discovering new healthy recipes and tools. 

I liked the motivational video that Penni posted today on her website to encourage more than 300 people who signed up to participate in the cleanse this month. So, I'm going to repost it here:


I enjoyed my day today. I made about 2 liters of green juice in the morning and drank it all day. Around 7 pm, I made some more fruit juice that I enjoyed much more.

For juice #1, I used the following ingredients:celery, 1 cucumber, romaine lettuce, 1 red pepper, 1 green pepper, 3 tomatoes, 4 carrots, 1 lemon, 1 orange, scallion.

You can see my beautiful (mostly organic) produce  and the final product here.

For juice #2, I used the following ingredients:
1 lemon, 4 tangerines, 1 cup of each strawberries, sweet cherries, and blueberries, and 1 apple.
Here is before and after pictures. These fruits and berries produced a little less than 2 glasses of very delicious juice.  

I decided that I'm not going to peel my lemons to save time and to preserve many nutrients contained in lemon zest. I didn't scrub carrots either. I doesn't take too long to make juice, only 15-30 minutes depending on how much juice I need to make.

I can't lie, I enjoyed the fruit juice much more than the green one. I got tired of it very quickly. I think it can be a good reward system at the end of the day. It can also make me feel better at work like a healthy desert. I also noticed that the times when I felt hungry were the times when I was tempted to have a snack and break my juice feast the most.

I finished my day with organic laxative tea (Smooth Move). The Master Cleanse diet recommends drinking a cup of laxative tea before going to bed and doing a salt water flush in the morning to cleanse the whole digestive tract from toxins. I'm still not sure whether I should do the salt water flush before going to work, as some people say it is to aggressive for the body. Need some expert advice. I guess I'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Overall, I'm very excited and empowered!