I’m officially past the halfway mark on the 21 day Rebuild version of the Clean Program, & I wanted to let you know how I’m going!

It has been so much easier than I thought it would be! I spent the first couple of days feeling equal parts obsessive & anxious about what I was going to eat for lunch, but have since settled into a routine of food that I love! I definitely get fixated on foods & can eat the same thing for weeks on end, so it has been fine for me. A lot of people who do the Clean Program get really creative with it, & there are masses of recipes to emulate if that’s your thing, but it’s not really what I’m into! So I have kept it really simple.

I have a shake for breakfast & a shake for dinner. They’re made up of three different supplements: Move (which is mostly fibre), Nourish (proteins, minerals & vitamins) & Cleangreens (spirulina, chlorella, Icelandic kelp, dulse, probiotics & about a million different other things!). I usually add them to smoothies from The Juice Press (best best best juice bar in New York City). The shakes are surprisingly filling. You’re not supposed to eat anything after your shake for dinner, so you give your body plenty of time for detoxification while you sleep. The first few nights, I found it really hard not to snack during this time, & I would clench the bed-covers with a gnarly fist & growl at my boyfriend, “Talk to me about food!!!!!!” However, those feelings quickly subsided & now I am 100% disinterested in heading for the fridge after my shake. Progress!

The idea with the Clean Program is that when you eat, you eat from the elimination diet. Click the link for the list of foods! You can see it’s not actually as restrictive as you might think. The idea with the elimination diet is to remove “all the foods from our diet that are known to cause food allergies, food sensitivities, & cause disruptions in the digestive process” (source).

So, my lunches have been simple but delicious. My favourite is to make a salad, usually baby spinach, red onion, some roasted garlic, celery, & sunflower seeds, add some shredded rotisserie chicken & pour on some balsamic vinegar. Cannot even tell you how good it is! I also love Wholefood’s “Mom’s Chicken Soup”, which is all natural & super-tasty. Sometimes I’ll have a stir-fry of vegetables & brown rice.

My favourite snacks are apple wedges with almond butter (WOW, this tastes SO good), raw cashews, or homemade guacamole (2 avocados, red onion, garlic, sea salt, cayenne pepper, lime juice) with crackers. Or I’ll just have a smoothie or juice. I really haven’t been that hungry, which is amazing, & as the days tick by, I think about food even less.

The whole thing is really easy to follow. You basically don’t buy anything in a packet, & you use fresh produce as much as possible. It takes a little bit of an attitude adjustment, but once you’ve made the shift, it really is smooth sailing.

The best thing I’ve found about doing the Clean Program (so far) is the incredible amount of mental clarity it’s given me. Even though I am juggling so many things at the moment, I feel totally on top of them all, & my creativity is at an unprecedented high. This is how I remember feeling back when I used to eat raw all the time! My favourite part is that I’m not just having ideas; I actually have the energy to see them through to fruition! I have been incredibly productive & it makes me SO HAPPY!

Doing this has really reminded me that what we eat makes a difference to how we feel & even more, how we act. It has definitely been the wake-up call I needed! Momma Darling was so right when she used to tell me to eat my greens!