So I promised I wouldn’t give you my daily routine each day, yet thought you would be interested to know overall how I am doing with the program.
For Day 1, I slept like a baby that night. Very very deep sleep…yet when I woke up this morning, I felt a bit hungover/hit by a Mack truck. Was quite an odd feeling given that I hadn’t had any alcohol for 48 hours. Am assuming that this “hungover” feeling was the result of all the toxins being stirred up between the clean eating, detox tea, and the bottle of the 7-day detox yesterday. I made myself have a big glass of water (16 ounces) followed by some Detox Tea, and then I was totally back to normal 30 minutes later.
For Day 2 (today), I noticed that I was getting cravings for sugar/chocolate and felt hungry a lot. For those of you that know me, you know that I rarely ever get hungry, hardly ever have an appetite, and basically have to force myself to have meals… and now all of a sudden I am feeling ravenous? I take this as a really good sign that my metabolism has been kicked into gear by the program. I am able to combat this feeling with having detox tea, or fizzy tab drinks, or big glasses of water between my meals and soon after it does pass.
Now the sugar craving was very interesting to me as I hardly ever eat chocolate or sweets (yes, we all have the occasional binge, yet in general, I keep this stuff out of my regular diet)… and tonight, here I was raiding my cabinets for a piece of chocolate like a druggie needing a fix. It wasn’t quite that extreme, yet I was very consious of my body saying it needed/wanted sugar [insert Cookie Monster voice here]. So why the sudden craving for sugar? Oh, duh! I just removed beer, pasta, and the vanilla syrup of my Starbuck’s from my diet… all of which I was having signifigant doses of on a regular basis…and all contain or convert to sugar.
Apparently this feeling like a druggie thing is very common in the first few days. In my search, I found this site that said, “The behavioral effects [of sugar] are similar to the neurochemical changes in the brain that also occur with addictive drugs…Both sugar and the taste of sweet activate beta endorphin receptor sites in the brain, the same receptor sites that are activated by heroin and morphine.”
Luckily I had a granny smith apple on hand to make the cookie monster go away…
…and had thrown out all of my hidden Ghirardelli chocolate squares as part of my Day 0 prep.
Your sugar craving could be due to a lack of protein. I went through a cleanse and my nutritionist explained this to me. I increased protein and felt fine.
Thanks West, that’s a good point. I did actually skip my second protein shake of the day because of meetings etc and didn’t have a recovery shake after my workout. I’ll be sure not to do that again today. Appreciate the comment!