Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself (25 page)

DIGESTION STARTS IN THE MOUTH

Tip: Chew all your food well, even your liquid meals. Chewing triggers the production and release of saliva, which then mixes with the food, initiating its digestion, preparing the alkalinity of the stomach, killing germs, and lubricating the swallowed food for a smoother transit through the esophagus. It also releases brain chemicals that decrease the feeling of hunger (which is why dieters enjoy chewing gum).

THE CLEAN PROGRAM AT-A-GLANCE

Copy this chart and put it somewhere where you will see it daily. You can also download it from www.cleanprogram.com.

The Essentials: Do These Daily

Plan and prepare your three meals: Liquid meal for breakfast; solid food meal for lunch; liquid meal for dinner, with any supplements you’ve selected.

Follow the Elimination Diet guidelines for everything you consume.

Leave a twelve-hour window between the last meal of one day and the first meal of the next. Try not to snack in between.

Make sure you have a bowel movement before the end of the day. If this doesn’t happen spontaneously, make it happen with laxatives or castor oil.

Drink enough pure water to cause you to pee often. If more than one hour has gone by without peeing, you are not drinking enough.

Move. Walk. Take the stairs. Jump. Incorporate more movement into your day, as often and for as long as you possibly can. Park your car two blocks away from your destination. Get off the subway or the bus a stop before you should and walk the rest of the way.

Rest. Get enough sleep. And breathe deeply all day long.

The Optional Activities

Do as many of the following activities as you can during each week of Clean:

Exercise. In addition to your increased daily motion, more deliberate exercise practices will pay off big time. Start slowly and increase gradually as the days go by.

Five-minute meditation exercise. Clean your mind and emotions as you clean your body.

Colonics. Daily bowel movements will do the work. Colonics will accelerate the process.

Skin brushing. Spend a few minutes removing dead skin cells before your shower.

Hot-cold treatments. In the shower, use alternating hot and cold water to power up circulation and detoxification.

Infrared sauna. Sweat profusely as often as you can.

Massage. Schedule a massage each week if your time and budget permits.

Laugh. Try to do something every day that makes you laugh out loud. It changes the body chemistry for the better and releases stress.

Lubricate. Drink two tablespoons of olive oil every night before you go to bed.

Write. Keep a daily log of what you eat, what your incessant thoughts are about, how you are feeling, and how you slept the night before.

Record your progress photographically. Take a picture of yourself every day, from the same angle, at the same distance.

Eat a clove of garlic every day. Have it alone or thinly sliced and sandwiched between two thin apple slices.

Read a book related to health and well-being, about the food system, or about the environment. Take this opportunity to educate yourself about what is going on today in your body. Understanding will make it more likely that you will want to maintain the results after you complete the program.

Express your artistic side. Dance, sing, play your instrument, paint, sculpt. Whatever it is that wets your whistle. This will activate your right brain and more strongly imprint this whole experience in that part of the brain, which is more involved with instincts. Far in the future, even if the thoughts of living Clean vanish, your instincts will be stronger than your thinking brain and will guide you to making the right choices for health.

sensation; it’s literally putting the light to it so you can see it better. You’ll probably notice that the sensation is not actually the body crying out for nutrients. It might actually be a very different kind of need that has nothing to do with food: a need for company, for contact, for forgiveness, for acknowledgement, for purpose, or for security. Once this is noticed, you can decide to take no action around filling the belly, and just wait until your next Clean meal or snack. You can also decide whether you need to take action on that underlying need or not (for example by calling a friend or doing something comforting for yourself). Sometimes a simple walk can be enough to change the environment; what you were “hungry” for was stimulation or a change, and that didn’t have to come from food or drink.

When we begin to bring this kind of attention to hunger, it often reveals how we habitually “kill” hunger at first sight. Sometimes it’s because we are so distracted by a busy life that we reflexively reach for food when it’s not actually needed. Or because we’re uncomfortable having that body sensation and just want to get rid of it. Or we’re just bored and looking for stimulation. After completing Clean, my patients often say they’ve learned to be with hunger instead of reactively killing it, which is a very powerful tool for life. When you crack this nut, you acquire the ability to take control over what you eat, when you eat, and how much of it you need to consume to feel your best.

THE CLEAN PLANNER

There is no one way to organize and accomplish Clean. Those who prefer to operate free of structure or planning can simply flip to the recipe section each day and improvise as they go, provided that ingredients are on hand. Others will benefit from writing a plan in advance, using the weekly chart provided for you on pages 192–193. You can download copies of this planner at www.cleanprogram.com. Planning will not only keep you focused and accountable for your actions but also will save you time. However you decide to proceed, please read the material in this section; it walks you through your first Clean program.

Before each week begins, pick out some recipes, being realistic, but as adventurous as possible. Get a sense of what ingredients you’ll need and make a shopping list. Even if you don’t stick to the exact recipe plan, you’ll be well supplied. Fill out the planner, jotting down any supplements you plan to use as a reminder. Note any optional practices you want to include, including treatments or yoga or exercise classes outside the home. Jot down reminders of things you might forget about, like taking time to write. Put your chart on the fridge or somewhere you will see it easily.

Week 1

The first week of Clean is usually the most challenging because it involves the biggest changes. You are not only getting used to putting a different kind of food and drink in your body, you also have to get accustomed to preparing new meals and altering routines of how, where, and maybe with whom you eat. You may have to revisit the intentions you set and keep your inspiration up. Do whatever it takes—and get your rest. The first week is also when some people experience the symptoms of withdrawal from sugars, caffeine, and the chemicals in foods, especially if they didn’t do a short Elimination Diet phase. Headaches, irritability, and other changes in mood and function are common in these first few days, and will pass soon.

Be ready for dealing with possible breakdowns in resolve. Have a sense of humor and acceptance about this whole process. It’s not the end of the world if you waver for a moment, but a strong mental attitude will help you avoid breakdowns—and the wasted energy in worrying that comes with them.

One of my patients once asked me, in the middle of Week 1 of Clean, “I had some wine and some bread last night. Does that mean I ruined the whole program and should give up?”

SEVEN-DAY PLANNER

I told him no. You took a step backward, but you did not ruin the whole thing. Just continue doing the program as if it had not happened, and take this opportunity to transform a breakdown into a breakthrough. The fact that you are interpreting what happened as a mistake stems from your desire for change, and this in itself is very positive! Hold on to that; don’t guilt-trip yourself—guilt is a very toxic emotion in itself—or judge yourself. Just recommit to following the rest of the program with greater resolve. And if you want to make up for the one backward step, take two steps forward. Accelerate your cleanse a little by doing a day or two of only liquid meals.

Week 2

Now that you have gotten used to some new habits and to dealing with hunger, Week 2 is when much of the adaptation happens inside. It can be inspiring, or unsettling. Your body is adapting to a new state, reclaiming energy from digestion and starting some restoration work. If things were out of balance before, this shifting can feel awkward. Patterns can get disturbed (sleep, bowel movements, appetite, emotions). Use the information provided throughout this book to regulate what you need, but be open to things happening off your ordinary schedule and just go with the temporary changes. Accommodate your adapting body. (Meanwhile, don’t overly accommodate other people if you can avoid it.) It can take ten days to two weeks to repair the average intestinal flora, meaning if you have not done a week of the Elimination Diet, you won’t necessarily feel tremendous by Week 2 of the program. But change is happening.

BAD DREAMS

It’s not unusual to have bad dreams at night or bad moods by day. What is getting dislodged and eliminated is not just the toxicity caused by chemicals but also the quantum toxins of stress and anxiety. Anytime we let the body unwind, it will throw off everything that has been clogging it, and that includes negative emotions and trauma. Be kind to yourself if this happens, know that it will pass, and try not to pay it forward to innocent bystanders at home or work. Don’t judge any mood swings; don’t overthink them. It may help to know the meditator’s credo when it comes to this kind of quantum unwinding: “Better out than in.”

HEADACHES

Another problem can be headaches. One patient told me, “I’m getting headaches—wouldn’t it be better to take an Advil than to be distracted by them?” My answer was no. Do not take nonprescription medications during Clean. Ride out the headaches and they will go away just as they came. If the headaches are severe, you can take a nap, take valerian root (an herbal remedy), go for a walk or do some stretching exercises, take a bath, or do anything your instincts tell you may help, including massage or acupuncture. Medications such as Advil may improve the short-term situation, but your headaches will probably return even more strongly when the medication wears off. Headaches tend to disappear after the first few days of the program.

ENERGY SURGES

You may find, when you have done Clean for one or two weeks, that you feel so energetic that you are almost jittery. You can’t sleep as easily or as long as normal and may feel the need to take a sleeping pill. I advise against this. You’re starting to feel the surge of extra energy that has been liberated by reducing your food intake. It may take a little while for your body to know what to do with this extra energy. In the meantime, put it to good work. Go for a walk or a run, even in the middle of the night. Get some house cleaning done and reorganize your closets. Read a book or write those letters you should have written months ago. This is a temporary shifting in energy allocation and can even be fun. Soon, and at a natural pace, everything will fall into place and calm will return.

WEIGHT LOSS

Something else that is hard to predict is weight loss. You may find that you lose weight during the first ten days but then get stuck. You may wonder whether you are doing something wrong. Bear in mind that weight loss might occur in spurts during Clean. Don’t worry. Make sure that you are having abundant bowel movements. There should be an increase in total daily amount compared to before the program started if you want to get the maximum possible effect. You can promote weight loss by increasing your daily exercise. This is also where you’ll see the benefits of getting infrared saunas, massages, and colonics. Drink lots of water with fresh-squeezed lemon juice. To accelerate detoxification and weight loss, try consuming only liquid meals for a day or two more. Just take this day by day; see how it feels and monitor yourself. If you aren’t getting enough food to support you in your daily life, you will know.

MUCOID PLAQUE

An aspect to detox programs that is frequently misunderstood is mucoid plaque. During an intensive cleanse such as a water or juice fast, there can be a sudden upturn in the amount of feces being eliminated which doesn’t correlate with the amount of food that the individual is ingesting. People are often totally shocked: they have had nothing but juice for a week or more, have been eliminating daily, and suddenly, as their program hits top speed, they are dumping out lots of feces. Sometimes it is dark, almost tar-like, or it comes out as long ropes with the shape of colon foldings. Other times it is more like diarrhea.

This is the stuff of legend in the cleansing world. Many books will show you photographs of this matter, if you dare to look. The books, as well as many alternative healers, still (with the best of intentions) give information that is in my opinion, plain wrong. They claim that this dark matter is the debris of years of meals, especially meat, that has somehow gotten impacted on the mucosa or intestinal wall, and is finally getting released after multiple days of fasting. From my experience in both the cleansing and conventional medicine worlds, this legend is just not supported by scientific evidence. Here the technology of modern medicine is very useful in exposing the truth. Any gastroenterologist can tell you what they see in a colonoscopy (a process of looking at the colon wall using a scope, to check for disease). Their patients who have been given a strong laxative to dump the last one, two, or three days of waste in their intestines, have clean, pink intestinal walls. There is no sign of this mythic “years of debris” clinging to the intestines. Even in the sickest people whose mucosa shows the disease of chronic intestinal problems like ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or cancer, there is no old stuck matter.

So what is all this old gunk that might come out (often to the person’s great relief)? It is mucus that is finally getting dumped out of the cells and tissues, back into the blood circulation, and through the intestinal walls into the lumen of the intestine. The technical term for this is the “mucoid plaque.” Because it’s so sticky, it doesn’t just fall into the intestines. It starts to accumulate on the intestinal walls as sweat does on your skin. Drop by drop, it builds up until suddenly, after seven to ten days of intensive fasting, there is a lot of it covering the intestinal walls, sticking things up. This can be a problem for someone who is cleansing or fasting without guidance. If the toxic matter isn’t moved out with the help of strong fiber, excellent herbal laxatives that cause major elimination, and ideally, colonics, it can get reabsorbed and there is retox with the detox. The person might feel sick or even experience some kind of dysfunction in their tissues or organs.