50 in '15 #39: Do a full body detox.

We had just returned from a long weekend back home to Iowa/Nebraska where we ate all of the worst foods a person can possibly eat. There were giant plates of fried cheeseballs, onion petals and mushrooms from Bob's Bar in Martinsburg. I personally ate about a dozen spring rolls in one sitting in Cherokee, IA. The first night we were in town we ate huge plates of goodness from our favorite restaurant, El Ranchito. The last night we needed something fast and we ate stuffed crust cheese pizza from a Pizza Hut (yuck!). Throw in about 15 pounds of banana bars and we gained a dozen pounds over the course of our very short trip.

As you can imagine, our bodies were in need of some very clean eating upon our return to Florida. Since completing a full body detox was on our list, there wasn't going to be a better time than this.

Since I'm not a big fan of the idea of doing one of those crazy juice cleanses, we set the parameters of a “full body detox” to mean the following:

1. We'd be doing all of the below-mentioned items from our return date of February 2^nd through February 13^th due to the fact that we have Neil Gaiman and a nice dinner already booked for the 14^th.
2. Ultra-healthy eating, i.e. no processed foods, tons of vegetables, minimal dairy. We pretty much ate like we did when we were crazy vegans, if not a bit healthier.
3. Tons of water. Katie wanted to try drinking a gallon of water a day this month, so we worked that in.
4. No alcohol. This one was tough! I love a good craft beer and Katie likes to have a nice bourbon after a long week, so nearly two weeks was impressive for us.
5. Work in some exercise. We had the plank challenge to do, some long walks, a little pickleball. Basically, we just had to do some sweating to get those ole toxins out.
6. Make sure to meditate. Because your brain is part of the body, so it wouldn't be a full body detox without getting your mind right.
7. And finally, dry body scrubs and a massage. Because one must take care of themselves. Full body scrubs are mentioned all over the Internet when you search any detox and a massage because, well, just because they are awesome.

And we actually accomplished what we set out to do...almost. We cut the detox short and finished on the 11^th instead. It was still a whole lot of days, so we felt good about it. We didn't do the meditation like I wanted to and we didn't do the dry body scrub thing, even though I went out and bought special scrubber thingies. Other than those, what I consider minor, things, we did it.

I won't say that it was easy. After awhile we really just wanted something carb-heavy to put in our stomachs. And the alcohol...that was tough. We basically just had to stay inside and hide so we weren't tempted.

The good news is that we lost all of the weight we had gained over the long weekend home (and then some). The bad news: when we were all done Thursday we craved junk so bad we went all out. We had drinks and dinner out and we probably undid the entire benefit of the detox in one evening.