Breakfast: Another green smoothie with mango, flax seeds, avocado and kale. I autumnalized this one with a dash of cinnamon.

Lunch: Pureed courgette soup with cucumber and dill salsa. Leftovers from day 12. Loved this.

Dinner: Black beans, avocado and a mixed fruit & veg salsa made with finely diced carrots, courgettes, white onion, mango, pomegranate, radish, cilantro and lime (it sounds weird but it’s actually very good). Not shown: the pretend tacos I made with all of these fixins and little gem lettuce leaves. Sort of like this.

Snacks: I never mention snacks but I should. I usually have a piece of fruit in the afternoon (today an apple with some almond butter) and another piece of fruit (or two) in the evening (today a pear and a nectarine).

Only one week to go of the detox and I’m already feeling a little reluctant to “let it go”. I’m really enjoying this and feel good. The phrase “permanent detox” keeps spinning in my head. If I kept this up for a few months, I think I would be a solidly changed person, both physically and mentally. This won’t happen, because there are things coming up for which a “retox” is desirable (equinox and Marrakech just to name two) but aside from these anomalies, I can totally see keeping up with many aspects of this “diet” in the future. For example, I’m surprised by how much I’ve come to love smoothies for breakfast. And I can really groove on soup, which doesn’t have to be boring, especially when pureed with cashews and adorned with adequate garnishes like tahini and crispy kale.

The bottom line is something I’ve always known: I feel a lot better when I’m not eating lots of bread or sugar, and when I’m not drinking alcohol on a regular basis. The structure of the detox has made it fairly easy to undo those habits, however, I wonder how easy it will be to continue those habits without the detox-imposed restrictions. I guess I’ll just have to learn self control, and to choose my pizza-and-beer nights with care!

It will be interesting to re-introduce other foods into my life that I always thought “healthy” – tomatoes, tofu, eggs – and see how they make me feel. I don’t think I have any sensitivities to such things but who knows?

It’s too soon to know whether this detox has affected my progress at the gym and pool. I think it would take a few months to really test this out and see if I’m getting weaker or stronger. On some days I feel exhausted and hungry. Others (today at the pool) I feel great. I do know that it seems to take me a while to recover from a heavy weights session (2-3 days) but this is nothing new and begs the eternal question for a mostly-vegan person: am I getting enough protein?

I have been saving grocery receipts and will report on the cost of this detox at the end of the week. I’ve been doing this frugally and as mentioned, mostly vegan, saving money by using dried beans which cost very little, and of course the courgette glut which seems endless (but girl cannot live on courgette soup alone). The smoothies are expensive – the orchard apples and pears are still a little early yet, but I have foraged lots of blackberries which come in handy. Writing all this I’m feeling very lucky for the abundance of free food around at the moment! This detox would definitely cost more in the winter. Now there’s an ebook: How to Detox by the Seasons!

Related Links

• What this Clean Detox is all about
• Courgette soup: the brilliance of pureed courgette (aka zucchini)
• Clean: this book describes the detox method I’m following
• Clean Program Manual [cleanprogram.com]
• Clean Program Recipes [cleanprogram.com]
• Clean Program Meal Plan [cleanprogram.com]