After The Master Cleanse – Keeping The Momentum

Well, you’ve finished the Master Cleanse, now where do you go from here. You’ve already cleansed your body, and probably feel terrific for having done so… but some of those old (bad) habits might still be lurking and you don’t want to fall back into a regular cycle of eating junk food.

The good news is that the moment you finish the Master Cleanse is the perfect time to implement a new diet. I say that for a couple reasons:

• After you’ve finished the cleanse you’ll have little or no desire to eat fatty or sugar filled foods. For some people just the smell of fast food will make their stomach queasy.
• You’ll feel how light and energized your body feels when it’s not burdened with junk food and you’ll have a strong desire to keep that feeling.
• After you’ve finished the Master Cleanse you’ll find that you have a new found ability to control your eating. The Master Cleanse is not easy. It takes discipline and internal strength. If you can make it through the cleanse you’ll find that making other improvements in your life will come easier. Not many people talk about this one, but it’s actually one of the biggest benefits of doing the Master Cleanse.

Okay, lets go over some of the different ways you can “keep a good thing going” and maintain, or in many cases improve your health after you finish the Master Cleanse.

When I’m not doing the Master Cleanse my daily diet is a combination of three different diets:

1. Raw foods diet
2. Alkaline diet
3. Liquid Diet *mostly liquids*

Before we get into these 3 I want to share with you a few things I’ve learned about leading a healthy lifestyle.

First of all whatever type of diet you choose to follow make sure it’s not too complex. I’ve tried a lot of diets, and the ones that require complex meal preparation, scheduled eating, and spending hours a day in the kitchen preparing the food are the ones that never worked out.

Lets see, I’m hungry, should I spend the next 2 hours chopping, slicing, dicing, boiling, and baking or just toss a frozen pizza into the oven.

Also stay away from diets that don’t allow any flexibility in your eating. Atkins is a good example of a diet that doesn’t allow any wiggle room in your choice of foods. Atkins does work, but even a small amount of carbs will throw you off the diet.

The 3 different diets I’m going to recommend are easy, flexible, and require almost no preparation for the foods you’ll eat.

You might be thinking this is some horrible diet that wont let you eat any of my favorite foods. Don’t worry. I know that feeling well because being locked into bland, boring diet is another reason most people don’t want to follow a healthy eating plan.

My advice is simple. Take the worst of your current diet (pre Master Cleanse) and replace it with some of the things I going to tell you about. I’m taking about the potato chips, fast food, candy, and soda. That’s the stuff that’s really sabotaging your health to begin with.

One final thing. You don’t have to choose just one of the diets I’m about to tell you about, In fact my daily eating is a combination of all 3. Take the things that will work best for you from each of these, and apply it to your diet.

Alright lets get started with the easiest one – The Raw Food Diet….

The Raw Food Diet

The Raw Food Diet is relatively simple to follow, and it’s very good for you. Basically you eat raw fruits and vegetables.

The average person who’s currently leading a life of junk food consumption will have a hard time with the Raw Food Diet, but after you finish the Master Cleanse you’ll naturally crave this type of healthy food so you’ll have a much easier time following the Raw Food Diet.

Any fruits and vegetables are fine, but try to use organic, and always be sure to thoroughly wash the produce before you eat it. Even if it’s organic you never know who or what has touched it so always wash the food before you eat it.

The foods should be fresh if you want to get the maximum benefit. Frozen fruits and vegetables are okay, and you can use canned as long as it’s packed in water not syrup. But whenever possible use fresh fruits and vegetables.

Remember when I told you about how I felt easy preparation was important to a successful diet? Well, this ones about as easy as it gets. Grab it – wash it – eat it!

How I use the Raw Food Diet:

I use raw foods for snaking and side dishes.

• Instead of a candy bar have some water melon.
• Instead of macaroni and cheese have green beans.

There’s not much to cover with the Raw Food Diet. Your local grocery store is stocked with a variety of raw foods to choose from so you shouldn’t get bored with this way of eating.

The next diet is a little more complicated, but it’s recommended by nutritional experts from around the world as a way to energize your body, lose fat, and help cure disease. It’s called the Alkaline Diet…

The Alkaline Diet

Most people probably haven’t put a great deal of thought into what I’m about to tell you, but it’s something that effects almost every bodily process. It’s your body’s ph level.

If you can picture a scale. Starting at zero you have acid. Moving up the scale to 14 you have alkaline, or base as it’s sometimes referred too. A healthy ph level for your body is between 7.36-7.4 which is slightly alkaline.

What does this have to do with you? Well if you’re like most people you’re likely consuming many acidic foods, and keeping your body in a slightly acidic state. I say slightly because your ph levels will not vary much because your body will buffer the excess acid, but this leads to other problems which I’ll cover in a bit.

Why Is Acid Bad For You?

Many of the things that can compromise your health thrive in a acidic environment. Things like bacteria, fungus, and other microforms flourish in acid.

Having too much acid will also prevent your body from absorbing vitamins, protein and other vital nutrients which can lead to fatigue

Your Body’s Natural Defense Against Acid

I get worried anytime I hear someone say that what you put in your body doesn’t make a difference, and that your body will naturally balance itself out no matter what you eat. This is what opponents of the Alkaline Diet claim. While they’re right about your body having mechanisms to neutralize acid in your body, they’re wrong about that process not having any effect on your health.

To deal with excess acid your body tries to buffer the acid (neutralize it). It does this by stealing important minerals from your bones and other places. When it adds these minerals to the acid, the acid becomes neutral. That takes care of the acid, but causes other problems…

Your body takes the calcium out of your bones and moves it into your blood to get your pH more alkaline. But then your bones don’t have enough calcium. So they get brittle which can lead to osteoporosis.

This calcium builds up in different places in your body. For instance, some of it can build up in your joints, giving your painful arthritis. Too much calcium can end up in the liver and gall bladder, too. That causes liver stones and gall stones.

Another buffer your body uses to neutralize acid is cholesterol. Your body DELIBERATELY makes extra cholesterol to bind with the acids and protect your tissues from them. So this extra cholesterol is actually protecting you. But it causes strokes and heart attacks.

A third type of buffer your body can use is hemoglobin. Unfortunately, it has to steal the hemoglobin from the red blood cells, and this can cause anemia.

Your body will also use magnesium as a buffer. It pulls the magnesium out of your muscles, making them small and weak.

So you can see that just because your body has a system in place to deal with acid you should still try to prevent your body’s ph level from getting to the point that it has to use them. Here’s how you can do just that:

• Reduce that amount of acid forming foods in your diet
• Increase the amount of alkaline foods in your diet

Sounds easy enough right? But before we get in to that lets look at the benefits of the Alkaline Diet.

• Most people notice an immediate increase in energy when they follow the Alkaline Diet
• Skin conditions like acne go away. The bacteria that cause acne thrive in an acidic environment, by following the Alkaline Diet acne can be significantly reduced or even cured
• Weight Loss. The Alkaline Diet can also be used for reducing
• Less sickness and quicker healing. As I mentioned above a lot of the bacteria and viruses that cause you to be sick flourish in an acidic environment. By following the Alkaline Diet your body will be better able to defend itself from all types of sickness and disease

Acid Forming Foods

To start with, acid forming foods are not the same as foods with an acidic pH.

Some foods that contain lots of acid–such as lemons–are alkalizing! How can this be?

When your body burns food for energy, “ash” is left over. The left over ash is either acid or alkaline. Alkaline ash is easy for your body to use and it alkalizes your blood. Acidic ash isn’t easy for your body to use, and it makes your blood more acidic.

Here Are Some Foods That Leave Acidic Ash:

• Meats
• Milk, cheese, and most other dairy products
• Soft drinks
• Sugar
• Most breads and other things made from flour
• Other white starchy foods like potatoes and rice
• Fried food

Foods That Are Alkalizing:

• Green foods (spinach, lettuce, bean sprouts)
• Most vegetables, except starchy ones (corn and potatoes)
• Lemons, oranges, and grapefruit
• Watermelon
• Cucumber
• Almonds
• Spirulina, chlorella, and other blue-green algae
• Grasses (wheat grass, barley grass), alfalfa

Looking at these two lists you’re probably thinking that almost everything a normal person eats is acid forming, and there’s no way you could eliminate all those foods from your diet! I agree, it would be a very difficult for the average person to go without all acidic foods, but just by cutting back on some acidic foods and eating a few more alkaline foods you can make a big difference in the way you feel.

For more about the Alkaline Diet there’s a book called “The pH Miracle” by Robert O. Young and Shelley Redford Young. This was the book that got me interested in the Alkaline Diet, and I recommended it to anyone who wants to really understand the science behind this diet.

One more thing about the Alkaline Diet. Emotions and stress levels also affect your body’s ph level.

Negative emotions and high stress cause your body to be acidic. It shouldn’t surprise you that these things have a very real physical impact on your health. On the other have positive emotions such as happiness keep your body more alkaline.

Liquid Diet

This brings us to my final recommendation for your post-Master Cleanse diet, the liquid diet. And we might as well get the most obvious liquid out of the way first which is water. Preferably filtered water. Water is so important that it should be the corner stone of any healthy diet.

I mentioned in the beginning of this guide that the liquid diet was my favorite. I like it because after doing the Master Cleanse staying on a partial liquid diet is really not that hard, and most of you who finish the Master Cleanse will find the transition fairly simple.

Like the other diets I talked about you shouldn’t stay on a 100% liquid diet, but replacing just 1 meal a day with liquids can shave 1000′s of calories a week off your diet. Not to mention give you more energy.

The staple of this liquid diet is meal replacement shakes, or protein shakes. If you’ve never tried some of the different shakes available they’re actually very tasty, not at all chalky tasting like when they first came out.

Most brands are filled with vitamins, minerals, and of course protein. Speaking of protein I’m willing to bet many of you are not getting enough. Some people think that drinking protein shakes is only for body builders, but that’s not the case. Anyone can benefit by replacing a carb filled meal with a protein shake.

Here’s another tip: If you’re trying to lose weight, but you’re always hungry. Have a protein shake first thing in the morning. It will fill you up, and give you more energy throughout the day.

You have a lot of options for protein shakes, but I suggest going to a vitamin store and talking with the sales person. Some brands are geared towards hardcore body builders, and unless you’re lifting a lot of weights you should steer clear of these. Ask for something that could be used as a meal replacement. They come in a lot of different flavors, but when in doubt go with vanilla because you can always add some fruit and blend it up to make your own custom shake.

I drink at least one protein shake a day, usually in the morning.

Other liquids:

Tea: Another favorite of mine is tea. I prefer green and white tea. There’s been a lot of talk about the benefits of drinking tea. It’s been linked to everything from a cure for cancer to helping with weight loss.

I also find it gives me a boost in energy, and unlike coffee it doesn’t make me jittery.

If you find the typical green/black/white tea too bland for your taste you can try some of the herbal teas which come in a variety of flavors, or you can always mix some fresh fruit juice in with the tea to spice it up.

Fresh Vegetable Juice: I have to come clean here. I bought one of those expensive juice machines and only used it about 6 times. I loved the fresh juice, but the machine had so many pieces which had to be washed after every use that I could never fall into the habit making the juice

If you don’t mind the clean up, fresh vegetable juice is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body. One piece of advice. If you go shopping for a juicer find a machine that’s easy to clean up.

Fresh Fruit Juice: Fresh fruit juice, like fresh vegetable juice is very good for you. Fruit juice do tend to be higher in calories then vegetable juice so you don’t want to drink too much. A glass a day is good, and stay away from concentrated fruit juice because it’s loaded with sugar.

Coffee: Yes, coffee is high in caffeine, but it has almost no calories, and many people love how it tastes. It’s okay to drink coffee, just don’t add any sugar, whip cream, or any other calorie filled condiments. A little cream is fine, and so are flavored coffee’s. I like hazelnut myself.

To recap here’s my top choices:

• Water
• Meal Replacement Shake / Protein Shake
• Tea
• Vegetable Juice
• Fruit Juice
• Coffee

Putting It All Together

Here’s how I use these 3 diets. This is just my preference, and you should do whatever works best for you. I start every day with a glass of water, 1 protein shake (or meal replacement shake), and a cup of green tea. I can’t think of a more perfect way to start my day.

• It’s light on your stomach
• It’s satisfying
• There’s a perfect balance of carbs, protein, vitamins, and minerals
• It’s only about 300 calories
• It tastes good and it’s quick, even faster then the drive through window at a fast food restaurant

Throughout the day I drink plenty of water, and if I want a snack I’ll usually have a piece of fruit. I eat a normal lunch, and a normal dinner. I try to keep my lunch and dinner healthy, but I’m not overly strict. I’ll even have a slice of pie every now and again. Ala mode of course.

I’ve always been a late night eater. I don’t know why but I just seem to lose all my will power after 8pm. But I’ve managed to tame this tiger by drinking wheat grass juice when I get my late night cravings.

The funny thing is I don’t really like how the powdered wheat grass tastes, but after drinking it for a few days I actually started to crave it. Just like when you’re thirsty your body tells you to drink water, well now my body tells me to drink the alkaline green drink.

It really does help get rid of my late night snacking. If you would rather not drink the powdered wheat grass mixed with water you can use capsules, but they will take a little longer to work.

That’s all there is to it. When I follow this diet I’m never hungry, and I don’t feel in any way deprived. The biggest change is switching to a liquid breakfast, but once you see how satisfying it really is I don’t think you’ll miss the 1,500 calorie bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, cola breakfast.