5 Day Detox

My name’s Codie, and I am a chocoholic. And a sweetie monster. And a McDonalds nommer. In fact, I do not eat well, at all! If I have the munchies at work, I won’t just grab an apple, I’ll get a 5 pack of Timeouts, and several packs of sweets. When I get home from a stressful day at work (which is like, everyday!) I like to head to bed, with a Big Mac, and share a bottle of wine and a family sized bar of Galaxy with the other half. So when my yoga studio (Yoga Euphoria Birkdale) decided to run a Detox week, I figured I could really do with it! (I did a tea detox a few months ago, so look out for the blog about that coming soon!)
I paid £10.00 and got the most beautiful little gift bag, tied up with gingham ribbon and actual lavender – lush! Inside was a lemon, some herbal tea bags, some epsom salts (for my detox bath treat at the end of the 5 days!) and recipe suggestions for smoothies and healthy evening meals. The set up was, a hot lemon on rising, smoothies at 9am, 12 noon and 3pm, water all day and a healthy evening meal. I’m a peckish kinda person, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to do just smoothies throughout the day, so I packed the trolley with celery sticks and fruit to snack on at my desk – much better than the usual “share size” (pah!) bag of Malteasers!

I got up early (like 5:45am kinda early!) on the Monday, ready for the first hot yoga class of the week. It felt weird to be up before the rest of Southport, but after the class I felt pretty ready to tackle the rest of the week (though a little nap beforehand might have been nice!). I decided to go hard, and make my smoothies out of kale, and spinach and celery. This was not a good choice. It tasted gross and had a horrible consistency. The rest of the week my wonderful other-half got up early to make my smoothies, and managed to get the flavours perfect! Apparently fruit makes a lot yummier smoothie than greens! Add a few porridge oats to slow down the sugar release. The first day was difficult and there’s a pretty big chance I slipped up by mistake in the first few hours when offered a biscuit in an important meeting with directorate – Ooops! To counteract this I’m going to add on a few hours at the end! It was hard eating celery all week when the rest of the office were gorging on chocolate cupcakes for a birthday, but I’m a stubborn little thing and I managed it. The first day I felt dreadful. I thought my head was going to fall off! Turns out, this is a result of not giving my body the caffeine, alcohol and chocolate that it so loves. By the third day, these withdrawal symptoms had gone and I was feeling pretty good! I usually only manage to squeeze yoga in on the weekends, but knowing I had a class to look forward to after work was a lifeline I needed this week! Nothing in the world eases the days tensions like breathing, sweating and stretching in a room filled with good energy.

Detoxing is hard alone, but checking the Tweets everyday, seeing that other people are finding it hard, or the people who were a day ahead of me Tweeting how good they felt really helped! Everyday someone tried to tempt me with something delicious, but I managed to resist!

I’m so glad I did because it’s my 5th day now and I feel great! I’ve lost 2lbs, and feel much less bloated (bloating is such an issue for me as I have IBS). I’ve got more energy and my skin looks better. I couldn’t do it 24/7 but it’s made me far more mindful of my habits. I’m going to limit the takeouts and wine (sadly!), and not drink anything but water (or hot lemon) at work. No more fizzy drinks (except as the occasional treat!) and I’m going to keep up the smoothies for breakfast! But tomorrow, when I am free from the detox, I shall indulge in a little weekend wine!