First Day on the Clean Program

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This post isn’t about power cleans, hang cleans, kettlebell cleans or anything involving a weight of any sort.  I’m spending a few days this week trying a dietary cleanse called the Clean Program.  It’s typically a 3-week program but I’m only doing it for about four days.  My wife is on her final week of the program and she loves the way she feels.  I probably wouldn’t have given this thing a shot if she wasn’t a) trying it at all and b) feeling fantastic while doing it.

The idea of Clean is to detoxify the body and give the digestive system a rest. You eat one solid-meal food a day and drink two juices and/or smoothies per day.  Clean has you eliminating a variety of foods–even a good number of fruits and vegetables: tomatoes, citrus fruits, soy products, dairy products, eggplant, raw fish, wheat, corn, barley, spelt, kamut, rye, couscous, oats, booze, sugar, and caffeine among other things.  There’s also a minimum 12-hour fast between your evening meal and your morning meal.  Sounds like a big party right?

Now, I’ve always been skeptical of these things.  Sounds like a lot of gimmicky nonsense and shoddy science.  That said, I’ve never actually done any research on this process.  I do recognize there are health benefits to fasting from time to time and I absolutely understand that even those of us who eat a “healthy” diet are quite likely consuming some junk we shouldn’t be eating.  The biggest motivation for my trying this program is what it’s done for my wife.  It’s very strong anecdotal evidence that something good might come from it.  We’ll see what happens…