This program is designed to be gentle and light, perfect for a mid-winter cleanse, for after a prolonged illness, or when one needs to work around the needs of prescription medications or other medical concerns.
If you are on a medical program or taking prescription medications, check with your doctor and pharmacist before beginning any fast, cleanse, or making bigger dietary changes. It’s important to know if changing what you’re doing even temporarily will affect how the medical program or prescriptions work. You can do a fast/cleanse even if you’re taking most medications so long as you modify the fast/cleanse program as necessary to accommodate your medical needs.
Adjust the timing of meals in this program to accommodate prescription or medical needs.
Eliminate or adjust ingredients and meals to accommodate prescription or medical needs.
As with all changes to diet and routine, listen to your body. Be gentle with yourself. If you feel pain or strong discomfort with the process, back out of it and return to the diet you’re accustomed to. Contact your medical team if you feel concerned about how you’re feeling during or after the fast/cleanse.
Grocery List: The Stuff You’ll Want Ahead of Time
As much as possible, choose all organic, sustainably farmed/raised ingredients for this week.
- Colon Cleanse Formula
- Complete Protein Powder or similar (affiliate link)
- Apple Cider/Juice (no sugar added)
- Coconut milk
- Fresh Vegetables (Cabbage and beets highly recommended)
- Grass-fed, organic, etc meats (not if following a vegan or vegetarian diet)
- Organic Quinoa or other whole grains
- Black Pepper, Ginger Root, Fennel Seed, Dill Seed, Cardamon Seed, Cinnamon, Cayenne (see note below)
How to Proceed..
Begin each day with a glass of water (before eating or drinking anything else except prescription medications as instructed by your doctor.) Drink plenty of water through the day. Stop drinking water a few hours before bed to avoid disturbing sleep, if you so choose.
Once or twice daily, take the colon cleanse formula. Mix up to 2 Tbsp (30 ml) in 8 oz (240 ml) of water or juice (apple juice recommended) and drink it quickly. If you let it stand, it’ll begin to thicken and clump, giving it an unpleasant texture. I generally follow it with a cup (240 ml) of plain water, too, just to be on the safe side. I recommend taking this at the beginning of your daily eating period and finishing off the daily eating period with it. If you find bowel movements become uncomfortable, do it once a day or every other day.
Feel free to incorporate digestive supporting herbs into each day. These include warming/energizing herbs like Black Pepper, Ginger, Cinnamon, and Cayenne. These also include Carminative Herbs like Fennel Seed, Dill Seed, Cardamon Seed.
Day 0: Get Your Mind Right
If you haven’t already, get to the grocery and make sure you’ve got the stuff you’ll need for success over the next five days. It’s harder to make poor choices when the good options are front and center…and easy.
If you haven’t already, talk to your family, roomies, and friends about the fast/cleanse you’re doing. Especially if this is your first, you might be a bit cranky over the week. Often the first two or three days are the roughest. It’s common to experience irritability, minor discomfort, and a shocking lack of patience for those around you. Make sure they’re prepared to give you a bit more space and to not take your moods too seriously this week.
If you haven’t already, make sure anyone who usually shares meals with you knows about the fast/cleanse you’re doing. If possible, it’s wise to ask them to fend for themselves this week unless they’d like to join you for the journey. I often ask my family to fend for themselves and to think before they cook at home – it can make me super irritable to be smelling someone’s bacon supper when I’m on Day 2 or 3 and struggling to persevere through the program. It’s also tough to come home to a house that smells of bacon or other delectable nibbles even if it’s long after the meal has been consumed. I ask my family to take steps to help by turning on the oven vent or fans, opening a window, turning up the air cleaners, and lighting incense when the meal’s done to help eliminate or mask the smell of foods just for this week.
Lastly, take time today to scribble down a few notes on how you’re feeling and what you hope to accomplish this week. You don’t need to write loads. A few notes will help you recognize the shifts you made at the end of the week. If you keep those notes where you’ll find them again, it’s good to take a look at them a few weeks after you’ve finished the program, too. At that point, you may notice more subtle and lasting changes than you did just as you finished your fast/cleanse.
Day 1: Eliminate Inflammatory Stuff
Eat meals as normal through the day, eliminating all of the following (except when directed otherwise by your doctor):
- Sugar
- All food colorings and artificial ingredients
- Alcohol of all types
- Coffee, black tea, soda of all types, and juices of all types (except that which you’re taking with the Colon Cleanse formula)
- Dairy of all types (including eggs)
Day 2: Eliminate Most Non-vegetable Stuff and Begin Intermittent Fasting
Aim to eat meals within an 8-hour time span. This means that if you eat your first food of any sort at 10 am, your last meal will end at 6 pm. This begins a program of intermittent fasting you will follow for the rest of the week.
Today’s meals will be made with only the following types of ingredients:
- Vegetables (preferably fresh rather than frozen/canned, but frozen and canned are okay if need be).
- Organic, farm-raised meat (chicken or beef preferable. Avoid pork and all fish/seafoods today). Omit if you are following a vegan plan.
- Starchy Vegetables for your carbs (Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, beans, etc are all good choices. Avoid all grains for today, unless you are following a vegan plan, in which case a small serving of brown rice or quinoa is okay.)
Day 3: The Big Day
Aim to eat within an 8-hour time span as you did yesterday. Today is the day to be as strictly compliant as you reasonably can (adjusting for medical directives and prescription medication needs).
Today’s meals will be made with the following types of ingredients:
- Vegetables – this is the most important day for using only fresh vegetables. Aim for all organic vegetables, if you can.
- Proteins – Stick to unprocessed vegetarian proteins today. Take the Complete Protein powder twice during the day. You can incorporate this into your smoothies, if you like, or take it as a shake on it’s own.
Your meals should be light and simple today. I suggest starting the day off with a smoothie (vegetables and protein powder, organic juice if need be, better is organic coconut milk) and having a similar smoothie for lunch. Dinner can be a salad with a simple home-made vinaigrette or similar dressing or a vegetable/vegan soup or a similarly simple meal made with minimal ingredients. The key is to avoid any potential non-organic types of ingredients and to keep solid foods and calorie count to a minimum so your body can focus on removing wastes and repairing damaged tissues. If you want to intensify the healing, aim for just drinking water or herbal tea through the day and take one or two smoothies for dinner (to support any prescription medicines you’re taking).
Day 4: Rebuilding the Foundation
Today, you’ll return to the diet you followed for Day 2. Watch how your body reacts to the foods you’re introducing. Do you have any digestive issues, such as diarrhea, constipation, stomach cramping or other types of discomforts? Do you have headaches or odd aversions to any foods/drinks? Try to link any such symptoms to the foods or drinks that seemed to be causing them. Eliminate those foods from your diet for a few more days then slowly re-introduce them one at a time once you’re back to a healthy regular diet routine. If symptoms reoccur when you attempt to reintroduce them at that point, it is wise to avoid those foods/drinks for at least a few more months, as your body is telling you those are unhealthy for you at this point.
Day 5: The Last Day: Assessing Health and Making Choices
Today, you’ll return to the diet you followed on Day 1. As you did on Day 4, watch how your body reacts to the foods you’re reintroducing. The same advice applies on how to handle it if symptoms arise.
This day’s diet is the one that most closely resembles a generally healthy diet you could follow for the rest of your life should you wish to not repeat old habits. At this point, you’ll have broken the physical part of those old habits. The mental-emotional part of those old habits will likely still be in-play, which can make breaking the old habits harder. Don’t shame yourself if you slip back into the old habits. It often takes several fasts/cleanses like this one to leave the old habit mostly behind. My approach is to aim for this diet (with the exception on tea, as that’s the only drink besides water that I take) every day and to be aware that I’ll often miss the mark. When I do indulge in any of the inflammatory foods to eliminate for Days 1 and 5, I watch to see how my body responds and I aim to return to the anti-inflammatory diet regardless. I reckon this gives me a greater buffer so that when I do indulge my body will have enough resilience to not feel uncomfortable for that indulgence.
Today will be your last day using the Colon Cleanse formula and the Complete Protein Powder. You can use the protein powder regularly, if you liked that as a meal replacement. The Colon Cleanse Formula can be used more often, too, if you so choose, although if you intend to do so it is wise to incorporate more moistening foods into your daily diet, such as plums, apples, and pears, as well as moistening herbs like plantain, marshmallow root, and licorice root.
Day 6: The Rest of Your Life
Notice how you feel today as compared to Day 0. Forgive yourself for the indulgences you have made and will make in future. Notice how the week went. Did you have physical discomforts? Mental discomforts? Emotional discomforts? How quickly did they pass?
Fasting and cleansing are a normal and natural part of life for all species, humans included. That doesn’t mean we need to be doing special diets all the time. One to four times a year is plenty to help your body maintain general health through out a lifetime. Always be mindful of how your body feels for a week or two after a fast/cleanse. Notice, too, if your prescription medicines or medical treatments cause different reactions than they did before, especially if you are new to fasting/cleansing. Sometimes, a good cleanse can cause your body to run more efficiently, making your prescription medications or medical treatments more or less effective. It may be wise to schedule time to have your med levels checked after you’ve completed your fast/cleanse, especially if your treatments normally require precise labs and monitoring.
