Taking Better Care: Cleansing, Skincare, & Exercise! Part 1.

Hi all!  On the eve of my 34th birthday, I decided to share my resolution for this year. Notice I didn’t say New Year’s resolution, right?  I like to let all the hype around New Year’s resolution die off in January and start resetting myself for the year in my birthday month.  By now, the gym traffic has slowed to normal and  the salad lines are smaller at work.

So my resolution is to take better care of myself.  Aging is no joke…it’s getting so much harder to stay awake past 10pm, work off extra holiday weight (I can’t just eat less for a week and be 5 pounds lighter), the sun damage is setting in, and the knees are cracking just a little (or a lot more).  Part 1: Cleansing.  Part 2: Taking better care of my skin.  Part 3: Exercise more regularly.  All in conjunction, but broken down for these posts.

Part 1, cleansing.  Last year, I had researched a bunch and found this cleanse .  I enjoyed it quite a bit and definitely felt so much better after cleansing.  This time around, my ultra smart and amazing girlfriends had told me about the Native Cold Pressed cleanses here in Columbus, Ohio (sorry to those outside of Ohio but hopefully there are cold-pressed juices near you).  Then, coincidentally, I went to a yoga brunch at The Kitchen Columbus with Thank Yoga and they had samples of the juices from Native Cold Pressed .  I had the special green juice which had kale, bok choy, apple, cucumber, mint and lemon.  I was addicted.  I snuck back up there (after everyone had gotten one of course) and took another but this time I tried the special beet with beet, carrot, orange, kale and bok choy.  Again…died.  I decided to try the Special Cleanse (mainly because it had these juices in them and they had a juice called spicy carrot that had cayenne pepper in it!).

So, I did it for three days.  First day, I was wrapped up in some other things going on and did just fine.  The major issue was that I took Ruby (my pup) to a BarkBox event, Open Bark Night, and they had some of my favorite beer there and pizza, which is my weakness.  And I mean, they had boxes and boxes of delicious looking and smelling pizza.  Cleansing sucks! I stood strong with two of my juices in my purse and resisted. Ruby was struggling too!

Second day, huge huge headache (expected with a caffeine withdrawal).  I was actually excited to start it because the juices were so good.  You drink 6 juices each day during cleansing, which come in these really cool glass bottles and you drink them 2-3 hours apart.  Bad news, it was a Friday and at work we have the most amazing Pho brought in.  I gave in a little and asked them if I could just have the chicken broth with the bean sprouts and green onions.  Just an FYI, they say in the instructions if you are feeling extremely fatigued during cleansing, drink chicken broth or eat raw veggies…so that fit, right?

Third day, super super hard!  I was so hungry!! #hangry  but I felt better! I did have more energy and my sleep was definitely better quality than usual.  I ate some carrots and tried to sleep a little more.

All in all, while I was kind of hungry at some points, not nearly as much as I thought I was going to be….I’m ALWAYS hungry.  I highly recommend Native Cold Pressed if you are in the Columbus area or trying a cold pressed cleanse if you are not in the Ohio area.

See the follow up posts for Part 2 and 3!