My 10-Day Detox Cleanse… Was It Worthwhile?

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A detox cleanse?? What is this, some sort of health blog now?!

Nah, that’s only a small portion of what I like to talk about. However, one of the things I continue to strive for is to better myself. And with that comes improving my health, which really isn’t much fun, to be honest. Who are these people who enjoy working out and eating all the right foods?!

Nonetheless, my goal is to live a long and healthy life, and unfortunately ( 😉 ), one of the best ways to make that happen is with exercise and a good diet.

I’m also game to try new things… it’s an ideal way to continue learning and finding enjoyment in life.

Mix these things together and somehow doing a detox cleanse found its way into my crazy brain. A little while after talking about it with my wife, Lisa, she decided that she was going to do it and set a date. At that point, my daughter Faith and I had to join in or risk looking like cowards, of course!

We decided on 10 days for the cleanse. That also meant 10 days of missing my after-dinner treat. Oh my dear sweet chocolate, I’ll miss you!!

We finished the detox cleanse last week. Here’s what the cleanse entailed, how it went, and the changes I want to make going forward.

What did the detox cleanse consist of?

Although you can define a detox cleanse in different ways, we were essentially aiming to cut out the garbage from our lives for 10 full days. Each of us did a few things slightly different from each other our “rules” for ourselves so I’m just going to focus on what I did… or didn’t do. In particular, here’s what I decided not to be allowed in my diet for this stint.

My banned list for the 10-day cleanse

• Sugar – Although I think it’s hard to find a lot of food without it, I wanted as clean of a breakup for the 10 days as possible. That even meant kicking my savory milk chocolate to the curb for a while.
• Bread and Pasta – Guess that rules out a PB&J or spaghetti!
• Dairy – We don’t usually drink regular milk anyway (we buy almond milk), but that meant no cheese or butter, for example.
• Ultra-processed foods
  • Yup, that rules out what seems like almost every “food” on the planet
  • It also includes my lovable snacks – no chips, pretzels, or anything like that.
• Alcohol – Easy for me since I stopped drinking over 2 years ago!

Pretty short list of things I couldn’t eat, right? Too bad that eliminates the far majority of what you find in the typical American grocery store!

It’s worth noting that we do a relatively good job of eating healthy. It’s far from perfect – or even great – but we do a decent job…

My typical day of food before the cleanse

Breakfast:

• Pack of Lance Whole Grain Peanut Butter Crackers
• Banana
• A small handful of almonds

Lunch:

• Honeycrisp apple
• A sandwich of some sort (maybe PB&J or tuna fish) or a tin of sardines (yeah, I said it) in oil with saltine crackers
• String cheese stick
• Small bag of chips
• Sometimes I sneak a cookie or two in there

Snack:

• Skinny Pop popcorn or more almonds
• A small amount of berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

Dinner:

• A bowl of salad with oil and vinegar
• Salmon, chicken, tacos, or pasta
• Cooked vegetables

Dessert:

• A piece or two of chocolate or, on Saturdays, a very small bowl of ice cream with Faith

And I pretty much always drink water throughout the day. It’s rare, but sometimes I’ll split a ginger ale or something with Faith or Lisa.

So it’s not too terrible, especially for our main meals (though we did need to make some changes for this cleanse). But the snacks were the biggest change for me and that wasn’t going to be easy.

Just to be clear, this isn’t every day. We’ll still occasionally order a pizza or go out to eat and those are things I don’t want to give up completely. Life would be boring by letting go of special treats completely. But I would say that 2/3 to 3/4 of the time it’s similar to what you see above.

My typical day of food during the cleanse

Breakfast:

• An egg cooked up in a little bit of olive oil
• Banana
• A small handful of almonds

Lunch:

• Honeycrisp apple
• Tuna fish (with oil and banana peppers) or a tin of sardines in oil with saltine crackers or a salad
• Berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries
• Cut up veggies
• Skinny Pop popcorn

Snack:

• Skinny Pop popcorn or more almonds
• More berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

Dinner:

• A bowl of salad with oil and vinegar
• Salmon, chicken, or chicken tortilla soup
• Cooked vegetables

Dessert:

• Skinny Pop popcorn or more almonds
• More berries – strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

And then, I just drank water the whole time throughout the day.

So for the most part, it was a matter of removing my precious snacks with some small modifications on the main meals.

How did it go?

The first handful of days of the detox cleanse were pretty much a cakewalk, believe it or not. The one exception was struggling with not having my after-dinner sweet that I’ve come to know and love. That small piece of chocolate after dinner is truly a wonderful treat!

But I did fine for about half of the detox cleanse. I mean, I’m already drinking water all day anyway and the meals stayed mostly the same.

The struggle I had was trying to find something good to replace my snacks as you saw above. I basically just ate more almonds, more berries, and more popcorn.

The problem was that I was eating a ton of fruit each day… like a lot of fruit. And while we all know fruit is good for you, let’s just say it’s a little taxing on my digestive system so I was making more routine trips to the bathroom.

And I was starting to feel like I wasn’t eating enough solid food for some weird reason. Even though my meals generally had meat as a portion of them – mostly fish or chicken – my body started to feel like it was having too much mush throughout the day. Don’t ask me why – maybe it was some weird psychological thing going on.

But I will say that I was counting down to the end of the detox cleanse pretty intensely. I was ready to bring some junk food back in and loosen the reins somewhat.

In the meantime, I didn’t experience anything too crazy. I wasn’t out to lose weight and I doubt that changed too much (I don’t usually weigh myself). I didn’t get the headaches some people experience from sugar withdrawal. I didn’t sleep any better or worse. Honestly, the slight increase in the number of bathroom visits was about it.

What did I learn from 10 days of this?

I think most of us know the basics of what constitutes healthy food and what doesn’t. So, I’m under no false pretenses that the snacks I enjoy aren’t good for me.

But I’ve been getting more and more concerned about the effects of both sugar and ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are getting a lot more media attention lately, and obviously, not in any good way. We put these science experiments in our bodies as if they’re food and then get addicted to them because they’re chemically engineered to be that way. It’s no shock to me that they’re finding all sorts of cancer links from them.

So why do I still eat ’em? Because I’m addicted to them just like any of us.

Just because it’s something everyone’s doing though doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. And I’m generally happy to veer away from the crowd in life. If I had followed the masses, I never would have retired early or moved to a foreign country for a few years, which turned out to be two of the best decisions in life.

Going through the detox cleanse was a great opportunity to see that I could skip some of the bad-for-you snacks and desserts (even though I do love them!).

So, now I need to take action and reduce my consumption of them. I don’t envision eliminating them entirely, but it would be great to make this stuff an exception rather than the norm.

That means I need to find a replacement for eating things like chips, pretzels, cookies, and chocolate. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that there really is such a thing as eating too much fruit every day so that’s not going to work! 🙂

I think chocolate will actually be the easier one to replace because I’m going to replace it with itself… sort of. The problem is that I’m eating milk chocolate, which isn’t good for you. However, dark chocolate could be a good drop-in replacement. It’s got a lot of benefits, including nutritional ones:

• Higher cocoa content: Dark chocolate typically contains between 50% and 90% cocoa solids, compared to milk chocolate, which has only 10% to 50%. This higher cocoa content means dark chocolate is richer in essential nutrients such as iron, magnesium, copper, and fiber37.
• Less sugar: Dark chocolate generally contains less sugar than milk chocolate. This can lead to fewer blood sugar spikes and better overall metabolic health45.

Plus, it has a lot of antioxidants and provides cardiovascular health advantages. It can lower blood pressure, reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, enhance blood flow, and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The list can go on and on. It’s no fruit or vegetable, but it would be a happy medium to still get my chocolate fix and satisfy my sweet tooth after dinner.

The harder replacements for me to figure out are the chips and other garbage snacks. I’d love to find something that’s easy (I’m too lazy to make anything) but not ultra-processed. I think the crunch and the salt are what I enjoy most about that stuff.

Two that come to mind are:

• Popcorn (like Skinny Pop or homemade) – I’m already eating this and I think that’s good, but I eat too much of it.
• Carrots/Cucumbers with a little bit of salt – This one’s a winner for sure!

I’d love to say a granola bar or trail mix, but it’s hard to find either of those not filled with sugar or reasonably priced if they’re healthy.

PS I’m open to other thoughts on this area. Feel free to throw some ideas out to me in the comments.

The other problem is my normal pack of peanut butter crackers in the morning. I like it because it’s easy, doesn’t hurt my sensitive stomach, and lets me fool myself under the “health” guise of “whole grain” and “peanut butter.”

I’ve been trying to find a good replacement for this for a while now. My thoughts after doing this detox cleanse is that making an egg is simple enough to do (I’m super lazy when it comes to food). I don’t want to do this every day, but if I do that a few times a week and mix in other things, that won’t be too difficult.

Faith tells me that she’s going to try to make overnight oats for us more, so that could be a good option for a couple of days a week. Also, Lisa makes healthy peanut butter, and banana smoothies with a bunch of veggies maybe once a week – those are delicious. And then I might just fall back to my pack of crackers a couple of days a week until I can phase them out completely.

Outside of these changes, I’m pretty content with what we eat. We’ve gotten pretty good at eating healthier for meals and that’s usually the biggest part of the battle.

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Doing a detox cleanse was an interesting experiment. Although I was chomping at the bit near the end for it to be done, I’m glad we tried it. I have a feeling this might be something we try every year. If I can make the changes I want before then though, the cleanse shouldn’t be anything too jarring to deal with.

Challenge accepted!

How about you? Have you ever done any type of detox cleanse before or have you considered trying it?

Plan well, take action, and live your best life!

Thanks for reading!!

— Jim