I have to say that the child obesity topic I started put me in a tail spin. The more research I do the more frustrated I get even to the point of anger. The North American diet is not designed for human consumption and is definitely not beneficial to our kids. We lack fresh living foods in our lifestyle and when we do eat them we don’t eat enough.

So who do we blame who do we point our figure at? Is it the parents, health system, educational system?
Does the government lack the control of what is good or bad for us? Are the advertiser using such strong tactics that we are so tempted to buy their products that we know is bad for us? Are we losing focus on what is most important?

These are really tough questions to answer. I am just going to say that the best way to prevent obesity in both ourselves and our children is to personally take charge and responsibility.

Well it’s been almost 2 weeks since I have written to this blog. I have had some technical problems and was on vacation for a week. Part of my vacation was spent with Tony Robbins at his Unleash the Power Within event. This is one event everyone should check out it is truly life changing.

While on vacation I traveled all over Ontario Canada. The one thing that I saw over and over no matter where I went was the enormous number of obese and overweight children. I remember sitting in a large mall one day and started to keep count of children I believed to be less than 10 years of age who were overweight or obese. Within the course of about 30 minutes I counted 27 children who were overweight and 8 that were obese. I sat there dumbfounded how could this be? When I was in elementary school I only remember one kid who was really overweight. So how has a society that has the World Wide Web a source of great information, a number of books that deal with eating and nutrition in the market place. Just a wealth of information on how we can live healthier and better lives? Yet we still have these overweight children?

I personally think that the biggest problem is that we have allowed ourselves and our children to be influenced so much by the companies that promote fast and processed foods that we have lost sight of the health of our children and ourselves. It’s time to change and I am going to commit this week to our children.

My cleanse is completely over and my life goes back to normal today. I am going to review with you my experience of this cleanse it all started here.

The purpose for me of doing a cleanse is that I live in an environment that is heavily polluted. You can see the layer upon layer of smog that sits over my city. Day after day you breathe in these toxins that are in the air; we drink the water after all these pollutants have fallen from the sky. Even the foods we eat now a day are full of different types of poisons from fertilizer, pesticides and the environment that we have created. Even if you choose to eat organic (which I do) we are not completely immune to these problems. Fertilizer and pesticides wash down from one farmers field to the next infecting our food. This all leads up to a build up in our body, specifically our colon and kidneys. That is where cleanses come into play and how we rid ourselves of all of these toxins.

I personally made a commitment to myself that I was going to live a healthy and active lifestyle. Part of that commitment is to eat a diet that is going to support me in preventing sickness and disease. I did a lot of research over the years on how to accomplish this goal and the one thing I always seemed to come across is that doing a cleanse a couple of times per year will help me achive this outcome. Not only will I get my digestive tract nice and clean it will also help me in digesting, and allowing the intake of nutrients very efficiently.

The first 4 days of my cleanse was fairly easy, my goal was to reduce my food intake and calories to about half of what it normally should be. I was also reducing the amount of meat protein that I was currently getting and switching to a vegetable protein source.  I also removed things like coffee (one bad habit I have) with senna and green tea. If I actually ate sugar that would be out as well. I also took salt out of my diet completely and used a substitute instead.  The key thing was to have my diet reduced to half and be on a completely vegan diet for the main part of the cleanse which was going to last for seven days.

Days 5 – 11 this is where the main part of the cleanse was going to do its work. This is the hardest part of the cleanse because of the lack of food that I was going to eat. My body change very rapidly losing close to 13 lbs over this seven day period. As I moved through this week I went through all kinds of emotions from anger to frustration. I had my ups as well having some days were I felt almost giddy and excited. There were days mostly days 7,8,9 were I had some bloating and abdominal pain. This is to be expected as the colon is basically being scrubbed clean. The pain was not extreme just a little uncomfortable and nothing a trip to the bathroom would clear up. The one thing that I really did not enjoy was how tired I had felt, it was almost like I was only getting about 2-3 hours of sleep a night. I can attribute this to lack of food. You can read how I cheated here and how I felt afterwards. Another thing that drove me bit nuts was my level of concentration and my memory seemed to fade. I am sure that if I stayed on this type of diet any longer my boss would have asked me what was going on. Even writing my blog posts were a bit difficult.

The last four days of the cleanse is where I started to reintroduce foods into my diet that I removed at the beginning of this journey. Adding about 300-400 calories a day until I got back to normal was the plan. I did this because of an experience I had before, if you read this you will understand why to take it slow. airy. Things are back to normal, except now I have way more energy and clarity.

If you want to read more about cleansing go to this blog or you can read about Oprah’s experience here. Here are some compelling reason for not doing a cleanse  here by Mike Howard.

All in all I am very happy with the results that I got from doing this cleanse. In fact it didn’t affect my life in anyway other than having to take a few extra supplements a day. The key for me and anyone else is to have the flexibility to make small adjustment to your diet so that you feel better when on such a restricted diet.

In my opinion I am going to recommend this product to anyone that is interested in doing this sort of thing for themselves. I will also be writing a review in my new review section of this blog for future reference.

If interested please visit this link to learn more.

Well I just feel great, I have my diet back to where I want it to be calorie wise. I feel very light and incredibly clean both inside and out.

I am not going to do a day 14-15 but instead I am going to give a summary of my experience both the ups and downs. I am also going to tell my readership what this product is so be sure to check in tomorrow.

I am on day 12 with three more days to go. I am just going to say that I am very happy today if you read this you will understand. My diet went like this:

Breakfast

The omelette

3 egg white and one whole omega3 egg

½ a cup of red and yellow pepper

½ a cup of red onion

Dash of Tabasco Sauce

2oz of roasted turkey chopped

Big handful of baby spinach

2 big slices of pineapple

Lunch

Tuna Salad with lots of chopped veggies

Dinner

2 loin lamb chops

Large vegetable salad with light oil dressing 1tblsp

2/3 cup of mixed veggies

I feel very satisfied my calorie intake was increased by 400 calories. I will be following this diet adding in a new snack a day until I am up to my regular calorie intake.

Yea, I made it this far, today is the last day that I am going to be on this reduced food diet. I can start eating more to suit my body and activity level. The thing that I must keep in mind is that I cannot gorge myself, as this can be very dangerous.

A few years back I spent a week hiking through the woods on a survival week. We only lived of the land and there was hardly anything of substance to eat. When this week was all done I had lost a total of about 15lbs (unhealthy initself). When I was heading home the one thing that I kept thinking about was getting myself a hamburger. As soon as I came to the first resemblense of civilization I saw it “Harvey’s” I couldn’t wait. I went through the drive through and ordered a combo. I parked and enjoyed my combo and was ready for the 3 hour drive home. The one thing that I did not think of was that my week without a great deal of food, my stomach would shrink. Within about 20 minutes of eating I was pulling to the side of the road with intense stomach pains I could not focus on driving.

This time around I am going to increase my calories by 300-400 per day until I am back to normal. I continue taking supplements for another four days and will be complete with this cleanse. My journey has been real interesting and I do totally feel clean inside and out.

If you would like to see what others are saying about cleanses visit this link. You will see a number of other links including a link to a blog post by Oprah who did something similar to myself.

Today was pretty much the best I have had since entering into a total vegetarian diet. A friend and coach who has just an amazing grasp of nutrition and specifically working with athletes was following my blog. After my post the other day about this experince I was clearly not helping myself at all by reducing my calories this much. With the active lifestyle that I live I was doing more harm than good and likely creating a very catabolic state when working out. I have another day on this diet then can start introducing more and more food daily until I am back at my 3300 to 3400 calories per day.

I do feel an overall cleanness about me at this point. My skin feels amazing and I am also getting compliments about how I seem to have this glow about me.

Well I am going to be completely upfront today so read this first. I didn’t have pizza or hotdogs, but I did cheat a bit today. During the cleanse you are to refrain from eating meat, fish and dairy to allow the digestive system to work with less strain. This step is not completely necessary but definitely helps to improve the effectiveness of the cleanse.

So my friend showed up at work today with a nice Tupperware full of her dads famous grilled chicken that he cooked the night before. I told her what I was doing and that I am blogging this cleanse and sort of breaking the rules.

She said “hogwash” and lifted the lid. Immediately I started to salivate as the smell from inside the container hit my nose. I caved I couldn’t resist so I took the Tupperware from her and dove right in with it I had a nice bountiful salad filled with avocados, tomatoes, pepper and mushrooms. It was good I will tell you, I just had 1 piece of chicken and felt very satisfied afterwards.

I don’t feel guilty, or upset with myself because I cheated. I actually feel great and have a ton of energy. So, all in all I think this is a good thing.

Day 8 the reduction in food is really having a toll on me. I have so little energy, to make it through the day. I tried to do my daily workout and lasted about half an hour lifting half my normal weight and feeling truly burnt out.

The other thing I am having a real problem with is my memory and concentration. Yesterday, was my best friend’s birthday, I have know him for close to 20 years. Every year I have always made a point to call him and wish him a happy birthday. Today I forgot, or I remembered then forgot I don’t really know. He is so use to my call, and when it didn’t happen he called me and to make sure I am ok. I apologized, and then pointed him in the direction of my blog hopefully; Dave will forgive me this time. (I owe you dinner after this cleanse is done, brother.)

I did a calorie count on my current diet with fitday and figure I am getting about 1900 calorie from this diet. My maintenance level is 2800 per day, so tomorrow I am going to add another 300 calories and hope I feel better.

I feel much better today compared to yesterday.  I still woke up with a headache so I decided to add a little more fruit to my diet. One of the great things about Ontario this time of year is you can get some really nice fresh fruit. So today I added a large handful of strawberries, blueberries and some cantaloupe in my lunch bag. For breakfast instead of just having my power oatmeal the way I describe it here. I added some bran cereal to it and had a couple of slices of fresh pineapple. My headache disappeared within the hour.

I don’t want to go into any graphic details of what is coming out of me, however I will say “Oh my god” Even though I mention in this post how the number of times I have done a nutritional cleanse I have not achieved these kind of results this quickly. I have lost a total of 3 ½ lbs of weight and about ½ inch around my waist. I do imagine that some of this weight is water because I find myself dehydrated a lot throughout the day. I am also certain that I am removing a lot of waste that has been trapped in my colon and bowels.