The Real Food Cleanse, Day One

Now that I'm back from Portland and caught up on sleep, I'm realizing that I might have put on a few pounds in Stumptown. My skinny jeans are, um, a little too skinny. So I'm ready to reset my eating habits and get back into doing more long runs. You know how I love a good whole foods-based cleanse to get my ass in line, right?

Well, a few months ago, I downloaded Amber Shea Crawley's e-book The Real Food Cleanse. It's a three-day, high-raw cleanse with no sugar, booze, grains, or processed stuff. I started the plan today, so I'll be posting pictures from all three days of the cleanse this week. Then I plan to spend Wednesday juice fasting until dinner. Juice fasting is not part of Amber's plan, but I have a juicing book that needs reviewing, so I figured I'd tack that on at the end.

Day one of the Real Food Cleanse was filled with delicious, wholesome meals that totally satisfied. I didn't even miss fake meat! Breakfast was this GIGANTIC Strawberry Blonde Bowl — one apple, one banana, 1 1/2 cups sliced strawberries, mixed with a tahini sauce. It made so much that I had to eat it out of a mixing bowl.

I ate this while watching Downton Abbey in my pj's. Then I got dressed and went for a 6.2-mile run. Protein powders aren't on Amber's cleanse plan, but I like to drink Vega after long runs because the high level of protein helps rebuild muscle. I typically drink my Vega in smoothie-form as a meal replacement, but today, I mixed the Vega One Vanilla Chai powder with water and drank it that way. Not as delicious. But not half bad.

Lunch was this Zingy Spring Mix Salad with Black Beans. It had a nutritional yeast-tahini dressing and avocado as well. I loved having the cooked beans in with the otherwise raw salad. It was more filling that way. Sometime totally raw food meals leave me hungry.

Each day on the Real Food Cleanse includes a dessert. But I don't eat dessert after dinner because I'm always too full. I'm a dessert in the mid-afternoon kind of gal. I had these Buttery Stuffed Dates and Blueberries while reading Damien Echols' Life After Death memoir this afternoon. The dates were stuffed with coconut butter, which has long been one of my fave desserts. Few things go better with dates than creamy coconut butter.

Dinner was massive and very filling — Cheese-Smothered Broccoli and Chickpeas. An ENTIRE HEAD of broccoli florets are steamed with a half-cup of chickpeas, and that's topped with a noochy cheese sauce.

One thing I'm loving about this cleanse is all the nutritional yeast and tahini. Raw and steamed veggies are all fine and good, but they're five million times better topped with nooch and tahini!

Now I'm about to start prepping my meals for tomorrow. Amber includes detailed lists of things you should do the night before to make meal prepping a breeze. See y'all then!