Anyone who has been on my blog knows I’m a devoted Farmers Market advocate (just enter Farmers Market or Cary Downtown Farmers Market in the blog’s search function to bring up tons of my posts on the subject). So opening day of the regular season has always been a big day for me. However, yesterday I was particularly grateful for the wonderful food I got at the market for an unusual reason….

Today I’m starting a 30 Day Food Cleanse/Food Detox program.

It is Spring, and Spring is a great time for trying new things. But the timing is actually coincidental. At my spiritual center, we are fortunate enough to have a very special person (among the MANY very special people there….like everyone) who is both a medical doctor AND a holistic health practitioner. She is offering our center the opportunity to do her 30-Day Body Reset (Detox) Program together. The program is designed around foods that optimize liver functioning because the liver is the body’s primary organ for eliminating toxins. It is a diet that is based on unprocessed organic/organic-ish (most of the farmers at local farmers markets can’t meet all the regulatory requirements to be certified as organic but follow organic procedures) food, along with drinking filtered water, getting enough sleep, and doing daily exercise. It is a plant-based diet of healthy natural foods.

This isn’t necessarily a low-carbs diet, but it is a low-sugar one. Here are the things we aren’t supposed to be eating for at least the first two weeks:

• No meats of any kind
• No dairy (cow dairy, that is…we can have plant-based “milks” and “cheeses”)
• No (or as little as possible) added sugar (although we can eat fruits and sweet potatoes and such that contain natural sugars)
• No processed foods (including most crackers, chips, or other things that come pre-made in a box, bag, or other container)
• No alcohol
• No caffeine (but I don’t drink caffeine much, so that’s not a biggie for me)
• No diet or sugary sodas (I don’t drink those either)

There are some specific fruits and vegetables we are also supposed to avoid (like bell peppers, for example…that’s a big loss for me), but those are the basic rules. So it’s a lot of fresh home cooking or restaurant cooking…no frozen pre-made meals or such.

This isn’t a HUGE stretch for me. I already cook most of my food and primarily use fresh, natural, ideally at least organic-ish ingredients. For example, I NEVER buy canned beans; I cook them myself in my well-used Instant Pot. I don’t make “instant” rice or potatoes or oatmeal; my standard rice is organic brown basmati rice made in the Instant Pot. I already track my water consumption, and many if not most days I drink at least the 64 ounces of water that is the minimum for this regimen. And I’m comfortable with vegetarian and even vegan cooking. My youngest brother has been a vegetarian since he was 8, my oldest brother became a vegan as an adult (with the occasional seafood meal), and my son decided he wanted to maintain a vegetarian diet since a couple of Christmases ago. So making meatless meals isn’t really an issue for me.

However, I realized how much I do like dairy. It’s not usually the main ingredient, but I do like topping my vegetable-heavy tomato sauce on whole wheat spaghetti with some parmesan, or using cream instead of milk in my mashed potatoes, feta on my salads, and my black bean chili or tacos don’t seem complete without some extra sharp cheddar cheese in or on them. Intellectually, I’ve been trying to reduce my dairy use because I know it’s not a Earth-friendly protein source, but in practice…not so much. So this will force me to see if I can’t get along without so much reliance on dairy add-ons.

I’m not nearly as reliant on sugar as I am on dairy, but I like ending the day with a bit of dark chocolate or a single cookie or something. And I definitely enjoy a glass of wine or something with my dinner. So we will see. But it seems like I could avoid all those no-nos for a couple of weeks…I think? Hope?

So instead of a glass of wine at night, we start off the day with the picture above…a warm glass of filtered water with lemon or lime slices. That’s supposed to kickstart our liver…or something like that. This morning, soon after I woke up, I went downstairs, heated up some water, and sliced some limes into it. It wasn’t bad.

I’ll probably be sharing some of my meals and FORBIDDEN FOOD work-arounds as I go through this program, so stayed tuned for some of my discoveries around that.

Wish me luck! Or more practically, wish me SELF DISCIPLINE….