21 Days of Cleanse: Day 1

I've always been skinny.  I was teased for many years, especially by my junior high gym teacher, for how skinny I was, and how I couldn't put on pounds if I tried.  Because of this, I felt no remorse for telling fat jokes or staring and pointing at the chunksters walking out of Tony Roma's, a place for ribs.  My dad, notoriously skinny when he was young, acquired a bit of a belly that his insensitive children poke and poke fun at.  I was too naive to realize that the very same thing would happen to me, so I kept making fun of Gary for his similarities to the same-named stuffed lion I owned.
I am no longer skinny.  Sure, I have chicken legs, but everything from waist-up is much larger than before.  I started packing on the pounds right around the time Hendrik was born.  I graduated college weighing 145 lbs, got married at 155, and had a kid around 165.  From then, I shot up to 195 by last spring, where it plateaued for the summer/fall (maybe all the work outside was keeping it steady?) and then I put on another 10 lbs over the winter.  So now I'm at 203 lbs.  Sure, it's not obese, but you should see my belly.  Size 34 pants used to fall off my waist without a tight belt, but now I can't even button them.  I graduated to size 36 pants last year, bought several pairs, and now they're getting tight.  Something must be done - I'm not buying more pants.

My eating habits aren't spectacular.  I've always loved eating candy and desserts, and of course love junk food and lots of cheese on everything.  One offset is that I do enjoy vegetables and fruit more than the average American, so I still eat quite a lot of that.  I also can't eat too much in one sitting, otherwise, I may be at 225 lbs by now. 

I have decided to do a cleanse.  Just the mention of the word "cleanse" makes me shudder, associating it with annoying, self-important women from rom-coms who dress like Sarah Jessica Parker, have personal assistants, and no time for love.  They're always eating some gyro in between helicopter and taxi rides, and then justifying the gyro by telling the Joan Cusack/sister-who's-married-with-small-children/kooky friend character that they'll just do a cleanse later that week and their personal trainer/dietician will arrange everything for them.

My personal stigmas about cleanses and other health-related trends were erased when my formerly hefty brother Neil showed up at last year's family gathering quite skinny.  He lost around 50 pounds in a very short amount of time, and it was because of a cleanse.  At the time, I was considering losing weight, but not very serious about it.  Then his wife Kristie put the cleanse rules in our family cookbook and I thought about it, but decided that it wasn't a good time to do it.  I didn't want to do it over the holidays or winter, as my appetite is always much bigger when it's cold.  So last month I decided that April 1 was going to be the start of the cleanse.  Why now?  Because Easter was yesterday, in April it starts to get warm, we aren't taking any trips, work isn't too busy, and I'll have more motivation to lose my PMS ("Pregnant Man Syndrome") with beach weather approaching.

Why am I telling you about this?  Because I figure the more people I tell, the more motivated I will be to make it the 21 days that the cleanse is supposed to take.  I've fasted before, and I'm not exactly great at it, so the more motivation I can have, the better. I'm going to try and blog about it frequently, if not daily. 

The key here is my terrific wife.  She read the entire book by Alejandro Junger, and now she's my dietician.  She came up with the meal plan, went shopping (it's not easy finding some of these weirdo ingredients), and got up at 5 AM (!) this morning to make my breakfast and lunch.  Amazing!  So far, I've only had 2 meals:  a pineapple/mango/coconut milk smoothie this morning, and lettuce wraps for lunch.  They were both delicious, especially the lettuce wraps.  Unfortunately, the portions are on the small side, so I'm going to have to get used to that.  The way this cleanse works is that you get a smoothie for breakfast, a portion-controlled meal for lunch, and then juice for dinner.

I hear the first week is the toughest.  I hope I can make it.