Day 17 and I'm suddenly 4% closer

I'm going to come out and admit to something now so that I can't be accused of trying to hide it later: I'm ditching this cleanse 36 hours early.

It turns out my mother in law is coming into town the Wednesday immediately following the end of the cleanse. The hubs and I decided that before she gets here for her week long stay, we deserve a nice night out to strengthen the bonds of our marriage. Ten glorious days from now, we'll be hiring a sitter and hitting the town for whatever sort of food and beverage strikes our fancy.

And. The. Best. Part. Sunday morning we shall awaken and drink french press coffee. With cream and sugar. That's really all I care about. I could probably stick to the cleanse for dinner, so long as I have the promise of that tarted up coffee the next morning. But I doubt I will.

It's funny, you'd think that I would know exactly what sort of indulgence (beyond said coffee) I want to partake of once this is over. But it's really not like that at all. To me, going hog wild on some sort of anti-cleanse smorgasbord defeats the whole purpose. Why torture myself all this time if I'm just going to re-toxify myself as quickly as possible?

There's a lot of this lifestyle I plan to take forward.  I want to continue eating salads for lunch as often as I can stand it. I think that I will keep making smoothies for breakfast, unless I find that I cut out fruit and my skin turns to pure porcelain and my body fat dips to 3%. As far as dinners go, the vegan meals we've had are really delicious and will probably remain in the rotation. I don't plan on cutting meat or dairy completely out of my diet any time soon, but these last few weeks have really proven that we don't need them to make a meal delicious. And I love that we've felt that way while eating real food - as opposed to chick'n or cheez or what have you.

Look at me, talking a big game like it's over already! But I am over the hump, at least. Really, once that first week was over it all got a lot easier, and now it hardly feels like work at all.