Wild Rose Detox

A couple of weeks ago I completed the Wild Rose Detox cleanse program.  It’s something I have wanted to do for a couple of years, but hadn’t gotten around to yet.  Basically it’s a system of herbs that you take over a period of 12 days, accompanied by following a strict dietary regime.  No flours of any kind, no dairy, no sugar, no vinegars, no tropical fruit, no white rice, limit salt intake etc.

I actually was ready for a bit of a “reset” in terms of my diet.  Somehow I’d gotten into having a few too many sweets over the course of a day and I figured it was time to give my body a break.  The Detox program sounded like it could do the trick.

The first couple of days were the hardest.  The herbs were really disgusting (especially the liquid drops) and I felt lethargic and a bit headachy both days.  But then things started to right themselves and I actually started feeling pretty good.  I’ll admit that it was a hassle to follow the diet, and I found that preparing food from scratch for every meal and snack was time consuming.  I actually do like to cook from scratch a lot, but it makes things a lot more difficult when you can’t just have a cracker and cheese snack or something to tide you over in the middle of an afternoon.  I ate a lot of fruit during those 12 days!

The hardest meal of the day for me to “correct” was breakfast.  I love my milk and cereal in the morning and found that having plain oatmeal with water and fruit was pretty bland.  I was allowed to have eggs, though, and did develop the skill of making a pretty mean “over easy” fried egg!  Though I wouldn’t want to do that every morning in my “real” life, that’s for sure.

I think doing the Detox would have been easier if I had been doing it completely alone and didn’t have to feed my daughter along the way.  Sometimes all I wanted to do was lick the peanut butter spoon, have a dollop of yogurt, mow down on a muffin or cut a slice of cheese.  Temptation was in my way every day!  Twelve days didn’t really sound like a long time in the beginning but believe me, I counted those days pretty carefully when I was in the middle of them.

A happy result of the detox was that I think I lost about ten pounds.  We don’t own a scale so I don’t know this for sure, but my pants did start to feel quite loose quite quickly.  In general, I still feel pretty great even though I’m now back to my wheat and dairy-eating days.  I could definitely see myself following the Wild Rose Detox diet plan again in the future to “reset” my system … but I’m not sure if I can do those herbs!