I’ve Tried Almost Every Cleanse. Here’s Why I’ll Never Do One Again

By Tara Fuller

I remember my first cleanse vividly. After months of gorging on French bread, Brie, potato chips, and more beer than I care to admit, my pants no longer fit. Even my Spandex felt tight—a testament to my willingness to consume anything and everything while studying abroad. I had to jump up and down to squirm into my jeans, only to have my button nearly explode off when I sat down. That’s when I knew it was time for a change. And I wanted a quick fix.

One simple search on the Internet for “lose weight NOW” lead me to the Master Cleanse, a 10-day liquid diet consisting only of “lemonade.” Apparently Beyoncé drank the Kool-Aid (err, lemonade) and lost 20 pounds. It’s perfect, I thought. My roommate agreed, and we decided to embark on our first cleansing journey together.

Hours later, we were back in our flat with countless lemons, a huge tub of grade B maple syrup, cayenne, several jugs of the purified water, and a bottle of sea salt (for what I fondly started to call the salt water flush from hell). Game on.

The Beginning of the End

The first glass was fine. It definitely didn’t taste like Stella Artois (my preferred beverage at the time), but that was OK. It also didn’t taste like pizza (my preferred food at the time), but the lemonade mixture was oddly satisfying. The prospect of dropping 20 pounds in 10 days probably helped make the drink taste even sweeter. “Six-pack abs, here I come,” I repeated to myself while chugging the spicy-sweet mixture.

A full day of cleansing came and went, and I didn’t felt tortured or skinnier. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for either. Disappointed but not defeated, I charged on.

Day two, I was miserable. I had no energy. I felt like I was suffering from a rare disorder in which a parasite eats all of your organs, causing a slow, painful death, and my patience level was at an all-time low. After walking two miles to work, I thought I was going to collapse in agony. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. On top of my lack of physical stamina, I had close to zero brainpower. Staring at my blank computer screen felt as strenuous as running a marathon in a snowstorm; hilarious gchats were the most annoying things I’d ever read; I hated everyone; I hated the Master Cleanse; I hadn’t lost weight.

Being the stubborn person that I am, I pushed on. But by day four, my friends abandoned me, my Spandex still felt like it was going to burst at the seams, I was on the verge of being fired from my unpaid internship, and the sight of anything edible—or inedible for that matter—made me hallucinate. (It looked eerily similar to this.)

Then I found evidence …read more

Source:: Greatist