Everything You Need To Know About A 3 Day Cleanse – Part 3

Welcome to the final segment of our complete guide to a 3‭ ‬day cleanse. In the previous article, we learned how our fast should progress (possibly even as long as 7 days, if you went that far), and not only what the rules of the 3 day cleanse are, but what the actual sensations are that your mind and body will go through as well.

Here’s a funny sentence: So now that we have finished our 3 day cleanse, how do we actually finish our 3 day cleanse?! Confused? You won’t be.

How to end your 3 day cleanse….because you can’t just “stop“!

For a simple 3 day cleanse, or even a 7 day, water-only fast, the rules for coming out of a fast are almost more important than the rules for being on one. When we are on one, the rules are: just water. That’s easy enough. But when you are coming out of one, here are some things to remember.

Take as many days to come off the fast (aka re-feeding yourself) as you did being on the fast. This applies up to 7 days as well. Longer fasts have a different re-feeding schedule that I do not cover here. Here is what this means.

On day one of being done with your 3 day cleanse (AKA: first thing in the morning of the day you want to start eating again) you may consume only one food item. Either a fruit or a vegetable. Nothing else.

NOTE: some people go absolutely crazy here about what should be your first food. I am going to skip this argument altogether. I have had a banana and it was awesome. I have had a sweet potato and it was awesome. People have had half an avocado, other people have . . . Well, you get the idea. All of those choices: great!

Whatever it is that you have, it’s the ONLY THING you have. The thing we want to avoid is food combinations. Do not do that.

Have a small part of your fruit or vegetable item (just one piece, of one item: AKA half a banana) and leave it at that.
Don’t have a banana and a melon.
Don’t have peas with your apples (which is just weird anyway).
Pick your one thing (and then only a tiny bit—half would be okay), and stop there.

The portion should be small (since your stomach has now shrunk in size).

Eat it slowly and enjoy it. Take a moment to smell it and savor it before you bite into it. When you have it in your mouth, really pause and think about where the food came from and how wonderful it is to have it there, nourishing you right now. How different it was from the fasting time, that was only just yesterday.

If this was more than a 3 day cleanse (for example a 5-day or a 7-day) then on your day 2 you only have a vegetable.

Note: you would have a fruit today if yesterday you had a veggie. Just pick whichever is the new reintroduction. The idea with any fast (3 day cleanse and up) is a gradual reintroduction. So your day 2 is a gradual addition above and beyond whatever you had yesterday, which was your first day back.

Next, on day 3 you can have grain—for example, pasta. Then on day 4 you can add meat or fish (if you decide to continue to eat those things). Then finally on day 5 (if you fasted for 5), you can start combining your new foods into one day, or even into one meal. Until this day, however, YOU DO NOT COMBINE FOODS. There are actually entire schools of thought on food combinations that are beyond the scope of this article, but one thing is certain: after a 3 day cleanse or any fast at any time, you do not combine foods during your reintroduction phase. You eat, whole, real foods. And you have one thing at one time.

Mother Nature makes the best recipe you can have. Period. (Tweet this)

Can you see the trend here? When coming off a 5-day water fast, we want to take 5 days. When coming off a 3 day cleanse, we take 3. If it’s 4, we take 4.

We take as long to come off, as we spent while on. After 7, however, we reach the more serious levels and the food reintroduction is different. Ask a professional and do not go beyond 7 at home unless you are either experienced or supervised.

Also: avoid dairy. Just because the food pyramid recommends dairy, doesn’t mean you need to. Especially after a 3 day cleanse or a fast of a longer duration. Skip it. You’re welcome.

Yay! I can eat like a normal person! Now, what do I eat?

If you have already completed your 3 day cleanse (or longer fast) and have already completed the re-feeding phase, congratulations! You have just changed your life.

So what will you start eating now that you can eat whatever you want? My hope for you is that you are now on a healthy diet that does NOT include all the garbage that most of us eat every day. Telling you what to eat is outside the scope of this article, but I can at least point you in the right direction.

Most of what you eat should be vegetables.‭ ‬Period.‭ ‬Full-stop.‭
Have water all day, every day. (Especially now that you are not fasting your body has more work to do. Your body works harder after you eat than it normally does.) Squeeze some drops of lemon in it or some cucumber if it gets to be too boring. Water is your friend.
As a special treat, have fruit. It’s sugar, but it’s okay if you eat the whole fruit and not just the juice (because the fiber is designed to slow the sugar absorption into the body). Remember, fruit should not be an all-the-time thing. It’s a bonus, not a staple. Vegetables are your buddy.
Nuts and seeds are great! Remember tip 1, though. Veggies are your go-to food most often.
Whole grains can be used sparingly. Processed flour, never, as in: not at all. It’s SO BAD.
The darker the rice, the better. White rice turns to sugar in the body. Which brings us to point #7: Mister harsh, but true.
Processed sugar is metabolic poison. This is one of the most important things on this list.
Hey, wait! You skipped meat on your list of what we should eat. Oh. Did I? Hmm. That’s odd. For those of you that do want to keep meat on the menu, however, think of it more like a once-a-week thing. Use it as you would a condiment; which is to say, sparingly—if at all. But it is not needed, even for athletes. Vegan fitness? Yes. That’s a real thing. Google it.
Oh, and number 9 on the list? It is something amazing that has been known for thousands of years. Eat less. Please. Why?

There is a saying I would like to leave you with. Legend has it that it was found on the tomb of 3000-year-old Egyptian pyramid. It says something like this: