{"id":2894,"date":"2013-05-21T19:12:33","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T01:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/?p=2894"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:39:08","slug":"the-cleanse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/the-cleanse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cleanse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Still losing weight! The Somae Health<\/a> program is kicking my butt, but it’s working better than I expected it would.<\/p>\n

So with Phase One complete, it was time to move into Phase Two, which is a lot like Phase One, except with fewer calories. But prior to fewer calories, it was time for essentially, well, no calories. The transition from Phase One to Phase Two includes – THE CLEANSE.<\/p>\n

Basically, a cleanse is a two-day non-religious fast where you can drink all the water you want, along with a wild concoction consisting of water, freshly squeezed lemons and limes, and grade B maple syrup, with just a dash of cayenne pepper thrown in. It sounds nasty, and it tastes… well, it tastes OK, actually. Sort of a rugged lemonade with a kick. You’re not supposed to add all the cayenne pepper at once, because you prepare a gallon of the stuff the night before, and cayenne gets hotter the longer it sits in water. So I mixed up a gallon, poured it into 12-ounce water bottles, and dropped in a dash of pepper before consumption took place. <\/p>\n

The next two days did not allow me to separate myself from the food-eating public. My kids were in a huge group piano recital at the mall, and their piano teacher had bamboozled me into playing the role of “The Phantom,” a generically evil guy who would do dastardly deeds while a horde of prepubescent pianists accompanied me with a song by the same name. <\/p>\n

I didn’t want to play The Phantom. In the first place, it was stupid. In the second place, it was very stupid. I grumbled and mumbled and made excuses, but she cornered me the day before, and when asked point blank, I found I couldn’t say no.<\/p>\n

“Oh, that’s terrific!” she said. “Let me
\nmake it up to you – dinner anywhere, on me.”<\/p>\n

When your only dinner is cayenne lemonade, that’s not the most exciting offer in the world.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, I phantomed, a process which involved me peeking around pianos and making goofy faces while dressed in black pants, a black turtleneck, a black wool trenchcoat, and black sunglasses. <\/p>\n

The black pants were skinny pants that I hadn’t been able to squeeze into for several years. I should have given them away, but there they were, ready and willing to accommodate a phantom. My neck size has also shrunk an inch and a half, which allowed me to squeeze through the tight turtleneck without feeling like a cow. All in all, if the choice was between food and fat clothes and phantoming in skinny clothes, I liked my options.<\/p>\n

(I should note that I took liberties with the costume. She wanted to put a kid’s Dracula cape on me and paint my face. I preferred the phantom-as-mugger look that wouldn’t require makeup remover.)<\/p>\n

My parents came to the recital, and my mother, the diet and fitness guru that she is, couldn’t stop congratulating me on how skinny I looked. She was also impressed that as he took my kids to lunch at the food court, where they gorged themselves on Panda Express and some mustard-covered bunned beef thing, I sat and ate nothing, dutifully sipping my pepper juice. That night, they took the kids to Sweet Tomatoes, an all-you-can-eat soup and salad place, and, again, I came armed with the drink that cleanses. I kept offering sips to my kids and my brother’s kids, who joined us at the restaurant. <\/p>\n

“Do you know what that looks like?” my nephew asked.<\/p>\n

“Yes, but it doesn’t taste like that,” I replied. <\/p>\n

They weren’t convinced. I took another sip, and they buried their heads in all-you-can-eat frozen yogurt. Only my lovely bride was brave enough to sip from my cup, but she wasn’t willing to do it unless I avoided adding pepper. <\/p>\n

Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me much. I was proud of myself for not cheating on the program, and while I was a little light-headed, I wasn’t insanely hungry.
\nI lost five pounds in two days.<\/p>\n

But then came Phase Two…<\/p>\n

(To be continued…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stilllosing weight! The Somae Health<\/a> program is kicking my butt, but it's working better than I expected it would.So with Phase One complete, it was time to move into Phase Two, which is a lot like Phase One, except with fewer calories. But prior to fewer calories, it was time for essentially, well, no calories. ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5102,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions\/5102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}