Detox Redux

As I write this, I am at the 42-hour mark of dietary detoxification.

No, I am not ready to haul off and slug someone. Though there are plenty of candidates.

Why am I detoxing? And what exactly is detoxing?

Well, all I’m really doing is eating healthy. Super-healthy. Me and the wife; it’s a joint effort. For the next nine days all we’re allowed to eat is fruit, vegetables, raw nuts and brown rice. Oh, and also a little bit of cheese and/or yogurt every day (something like 6 ounces or so), but I’m avoiding that because I think dairy is my problem. Sunday morning I had a ham and cheese omelet that was more like a half-pound brick of melted cheese with a little bit of egg and ham thrown in. Toss in the two metric tons of pizza I eat on an annual basis, and, well, you see where I’m going.

When you eat super-healthy, you’re like Tom Brady. The first seventy-hours, though, you’re like Tom Brady in his last Super Bowl: suffering high-velocity sackings again and again by Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul. Only Tuck is Sugar and Caffeine Withdrawal and JPP is Toxin Elimination.

See, from what little I understand about all this, when you begin to eat super-healthy, after about a day of so eating, you’re subjected to headaches, bodyaches, fatigue, irritability. Some experience other symptoms, but that’s what I’m blessed with. It’s my body craving all those cookies and all that chocolate and all the Diet Coke and chips and pasta and pizza ad infinitum that it’s no longer getting. And it’s p.o.’d in a mean, serious way.

Good news is, per most of what I’ve read, this withdrawal only lasts about seventy-two or ninety-six hours. In most cases.

I’ve lived through this a handful of times before, and it’s true. I’m approaching the halfway mark of this part of the dietary detox experience.

At the same time, and, unfortunately, lasting for about two weeks, the body begins purging all the junk it’s been storing for years and years and years. I’ve been pretty much cleaned out during my hospitilization in 2009, so I only have about four years’ worth of accumulated crp in me. Once the body realizes I’m not compounding the problem, it, in its God-given wisdom, begins a very thorough and very efficient housecleaning.

These toxins come out in three ways: via your bladder, your back end, or through your skin. But in order to get to their point of disembarkation, they gotta travel your streams of blood and lymph. Toxins are brought out from being safely sealed away to get expelled, and that’s why – the doctors say – that’s why you can expect headaches, flu symptoms, fatigue, fevers, aches and pains, rashes, moodiness, irritation, etc. for the next two weeks.

Once that’s all behind me, the body begins rebuilding internally. But that’s the subject for another post. For the record, my longest stay on this path was twelve days, back in ’07 or ’08. So I’ve never experienced that aspect of detoxification and clean-living.

Why am I doing this? Yeah, I could stand to lose 10, 20 pounds. But basically I’m sick of the lack of energy. Life’s going by, and I’m just there, moving from bed to couch to car seat to chair at work, reverse and repeat. Got lots of dreams and goals, but no energy to actually get something done past the planning stage. Oh, and overhauling my diet is one of those goals. I once read that if you have a ton of things you want (need) to do in your life, major things, start with the Physical, cuz that’ll spill into all other areas of your life more than anything else.

As of October 20, 9 pm, I did.