Glutton Free January

I hate making New Year's Resolutions. I pretty much avoid doing anything I will probably fail at. And January is depressing enough as it is without adding failure to it. It's been years since I've made an actual resolution on January 1st, but this year something had to be done to balance out the gluttony that was also known as December. This holiday season I consumed more cookies, cakes, cheese plates, glasses of wine, and general oil-laden merriment than I think any one person needs in a lifetime. That's how you will find me (and my generally willing husband) on day 3 of a detox cleanse.

So what cleanse to do? We are not a Master Cleanse sort of people over here (see above paragraph re. failure). We are not even a Juice Fast sort of people (again, see above). We are a food-loving-people-who-just-happened-to-have-over-indulged-a-tad-and-could-use-a nudge-in-the-right-direction-cleanse sort of people. I couldn't find that one on the Internet, though, so after doing some research, I decided that the Bon Appetit's Food Lover's Cleanse was about as close to what I was looking for as I was going to get (I've mentioned how much I freaking love that magazine before, haven't I?). The idea is basically to eat lots of whole foods, nothing processed. It's heavy on the fruit, vegetables and whole grains, light on the oil, sugar and dairy. Basically how we should all be eating, but don't.

Lunch today - a variety of grain and bean
salads from the Whole Foods salad bar.

The Bon Appetit Cleanse is a thing of beauty, if you have time to cook 3 meals a day. Which I don't. So I'm going for the lazy man's version of this cleanse which is basically cutting out all dairy, sugar, flour, and, um, alcohol for one week. I stocked the fridge with plenty of berries, apples, kale, cucumbers, avocados, and almond milk. I made a batch of the most delicious oatmeal date breakfast bars I've ever eaten (seriously) from the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook I got for Christmas. I armed myself with pages of dinner recipes from Bon Appetit's cleanse. I washed and froze several pounds of grapes to ward off those late night ice cream cravings. And I gave the husband another chance to bail. (He didn't).

So now here we are, 3 days in, and I have to say I'm feeling pretty good. I'm a bit hungry, but it's actually a relief after weeks of feeling stuffed. I have plenty of energy, despite the Winter sinus infection I'm coming off of. And it feels great to be feeding my body things with actual nutritional value. I don't even miss bread as much as I thought I would. But that glass of wine... now that's a different story!