I first heard about the master cleanse in the summer, did some research and decided after Labor Day, when the kids are back in school this is what I am going to do. It was an interesting journey as I prepared my daily potion and ended each evening with an all cleansing salt water flush. I will not miss downing the salt water mixture and running to the john 45 minutes later each night.

Overall I am very pleased with the results as I have dropped some serious lbs. and have a renewed sense of energy in my day. the only thing that did not happen as I expected was the “cleanout” of my insides. Maybe I was not all that bad to begin with? Not quite sure but I am not going to stress about it. I have just launched a message board for master cleanse related topics here.

Now I am embarking on the first phase of the South Beach diet. I will chronicle my journey here with some hopefully interesting and insightful posts. A South Beach diet message board is also available here.

We recently had an exchange student from France staying with us and when I was driving her to our home from the airport we were talking about general differences between our countries. I asked her to tell me the first thing she noticed that she did not expect to see here in America (in the 60 minute ride from the airport); and her response was… “all of the flags”.

Never forget the sacrifices made on that day..nor forget the sacrifices of the thousands of other Americans and their families in the days, months and years that followed.

Day 8 has been real good.  Energy level still sky high, still not hungry at all but I will admit to really really really looking forward to eating something just for the taste, smell, etc..  I have decided to push this to 14 days which will be next Monday.  I do not want to end on Thurs, to have to ramp up to nomal food over the weekend.  I will go to Monday…ramp up over the week and then celebrate my victory with a very tasty meal.  Might be something up at the club or maybe a chilli dog over at Gilley’s. 

Read on another board about you temperature going down during this.  Mine is 97.6, must be the reduction in metabolism.  Also for those of you out there doing this…bright-dark piss means you are not getting enough fluids.  Was on conference calls all day and really did not drink much resulting in the same thing as this past weekend.

I will admit to picking up a piece of french bread off the counter and taking a look sniff.  I call it a Food Hit(tm)… and yes I inhaled  ;-).  Not sure if that is cheating; but certain foods smell so very good.  I may have to come off the cleanse just to enjoy good foods again.

Gotta run out and meet with a client, let’s see how I feel when I get home tonight.

Still feeling well, but had a very large challenge ahead of me as we took the kids to the Seafood Festival down at the beach.  Walking through the tents of lobster rolls, frid clams,clam fritter, sausage subs and fried dough was providing sensory overload.  The smells were so good but I stayed true and did not get hungry.  I am really looking forward to eating solid food soon just for the anticipation of having those tastes.  I am expecting that I am going to savor my meals more and hopfully this will be a postive change in the overall plan to move forward with my future dieting habits.   I’ll post on that in a few days.

This poker tournament fell on day 5 of my cleanse. Once again, I was not hungry at all all day, even with guys snarfing cheeseburgers and onion rings all around me. Smelt real good..but I did not crave. Was very conscious about my breath (as it has gotten stinky) so I picked up some of those Listerine breath strips and that seemed to do the trick. I had a couple of bottles of water and in hindsight should have drank a lot more during the day. I did not stay as hydrated as I had in previous days so i skipped the SWF (will do it tonight). Good thing as I think I may have been a little dehydrated. Day 6(am) my piss was a really dark orange, almost red color. Kinda freaked me out.

Still have not weighed myself…will do it first thing tomorrow am.

Excercised a bit today riding bikes to school with the kids in the am followed up by picking them up in the afternoon.  My legs were a little sore, I wonder if this is due to the lack of real protien in my diet for the past four days.  Keeping an eye on that.  I am not in any real pain, and to be honest I feel very good.  Bridgit and Julia are probably going out to dinner tonight, I am not really dissapointed that I will not be able to partake.  I am going to head out and play in the local 5pm poker tournament and see if my heightened levels of concentration and pick up any tells from my competitors.

 Tomorrow is the big day for the weigh in…not sure if I am going to do this in the morning or evening.