Fresh Start

Last night I ate three large chocolate-chip-M&M cookies. From Costco, so you know how big they were. It was sort of a farewell to bad foods fiesta, because today is Day One of my Isagenix cleanse. The Hubster and I are doing this, together with Jen, and we hope to flush a lifetime of contaminants and toxins from our bodies over the course of the cleanse.

I have to admit to having been very skeptical about this at first. And not because I haven’t tried things like this before, but precisely because I have. I have an on-again-off-again love affair with our local health food store, and will go through phases of shopping and eating exclusively organic/local/non-GMO/vegetarian…and adding in things like fish oils, greens, herbs, teas and other exotic (and, I should mention, expensive) cure-alls. And then it’s right back to frozen chicken fingers with a side of tater tots and a few carrot sticks to round out the veggie contingent. Yahoo.

So, is Isagenix going to be a case of the same? It may be. I will tell you that it took Jen a bit of convincing to get me to agree to this, but once there, I am pretty much game for anything. And after having looked into it a bit, I realized that there certainly wasn’t anything in this stuff that was going to hurt me, so I’m there…with bells on.

Now, Jen and Hubster are both athletes, at least in the sense that they each have a sport they participate in regularly and in which they expect to see increased performance as a result of the Isagenix program. For Jen, it’s running, which she’s only just been able to participate in again recently, and for the Hubster, it’s cycling which, admittedly, is a little difficult to pursue when it’s -30 degrees outside, and -49 with the windchill. No, I’m not joking. But he has his road bike set up on a trainer inside so he can still do some riding.

For me though, I don’t have a sport that I’m looking for results in per se. I’ll just be happy to see myself perform better with my trainer, and get rid of all the badness I’ve put into my body over nearly 40 years. All the sugar, saturated and trans-fats, aspartame, red dye 40 and whatever else is in the tonnes of processed foods I’ve ingested in my lifetime. Slowly but surely as I age I find myself having a lower tolerance for ‘bad’ things. I rarely drink pop anymore, and I used to be a 3 can per day diet Pepsi drinker. If I take the kids to McDonald’s (rarely), I don’t bother to order myself a meal anymore. It truly makes me want to hurl (and, for the record, I used to LOVE McDonald’s. Worked there. For 3 years. Ate it just about daily. Hmmm…might explain the original weight problem, at least in part, eh?)

So, at this point in life, for me, the concept of this cleanse represents a clean slate, a fresh start. Get the gunk out and relish in the positive side effects a cleaner body will bring: increased energy levels, clearer mind, clearer skin – the list goes on.

Oh. And then there’s my colon. Forgive me for talking about it in public, but it would seem that mine has a scary genetic predisposition to cancer. And colon cancer is one of the nastier ones. So, anything that can help keep my colon clean is good in my books.

Also, I didn’t realize it until recently, but it seems like human beings have been doing cleanses – of one kind or another, pretty much throughout all of history, except very, very recently (and locally…lots of cultures still engage in dietary cleansing to this day). I mean, think about Lent, and how it would have been observed in, say, the middle ages. It would have amounted to a loooong period of cleansing for just about everyone.

So that’s my list of why I’m doing it. And I’ll be blogging, for the next month, on how I’m doing.

As of now Day One has been up-and-down. I did feel like I might have to snack on the lint from the dryer earlier, but now that I’ve had my 2nd shake of the day I feel a lot better. And hey, I’ve got the prospect of two (optional) almonds to look forward to! Rejoice!

Stay tuned tomorrow for my before pic and measurements!

If you have any questions about Steve Bentley or Bentley Coaching or Isagenix contact Steve at performancecoaching@sympatico.ca or by phone at 416.407.6361.