Cycles, for me at least, have been these irritating, random, untraceable things. I remember when I realized, at nineteen years old, that some people actually knew when their next cycle would be. My jaw about dropped to the floor.
They were kidding, right?
Turns out they weren’t. For some women, perhaps even most women, cycles are as regular as clockwork.
For the rest of us, they’re a guessing game that we often end up losing.
The real problem, for me, is that I skip months; which, of course, takes a lot of the “predictable” right out of the equation.
When I first went to the doctor, after skipping almost six months, they told me the best thing to do was to take birth control. (Just FYI, this is not the best thing.) I had a predictable cycle, yes, but that was the only thing in my life that went according to plan. My moods were off the wall and my body rebelled completely. I flushed the next months supply down the toilet and went to my mom with my complaints. She told me to cut sugar out of my diet and see what happened.
Enter my first cleanse.
Oh, I didn’t call it that, but looking back I can see that I was “cleansing” my body of the refined sugars that were causing havoc in my hormones. For three months I ate no sugar at all, and almost immediately, I was perfectly regular. I continued limiting my refined-sugar intake and my body evened out for the next four years.
During that time period, I lived overseas and got engaged. In the months leading up to my wedding, I wasn’t as careful with my eating and that combined with the stress of wedding planning, caused my body to crash. My cycles disappeared, I was bloated, and I gained weight just by looking at food.
For a year, I struggled. I went back to the doctor and they put me on a weight-loss diet that did absolutely nothing for me. I took prescribed medication to bring on my cycles but they left me depressed, overwhelmed, and barely hanging on.
The next year my husband and I moved overseas. I had been praying about the condition of my body and my ongoing struggle with depression, and felt like the Lord told me to do something drastic.
It was my second cleanse.
I didn’t just cut out sugar this time, instead I fasted. For four days, I ate nothing. Instead, I drank potassium broth. The recipe for this was found in an old, old cookbook at the mission house in Haiti. It was potato peelings, carrots peelings, onion, garlic, salt, and pepper cooked in water and simmered for about 2 hours. The vegetables were scooped out and I drank the broth.
By the second day, after skipping over four months, my cycle returned. At the end of the first week, I started adding in whole milk, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and finally, the traditional Haitian rice & beans. It was like my body righted itself. The depression lifted and I began to lose weight again.
Since then, I have seen a distinct correlation between cleansing my body and regulating my cycles. Now, if I skip more than a month, I immediately choose a cleanse to implement.
I have used many different types of cleanses, depending on the season of my life. Besides the two I mentioned, I have juiced, done a raw milk cure, and eaten only raw vegetables for a week. All five types have worked the same. Within two days my cycle returns and my body seems to take a deep sigh of relief.
I figure anything is better than downing birth control pills, and the cleanses give my body a much-needed boost forward.
For more information on doing a sugar-cleanse, check out the Sugar-Detox Challenge, available on Amazon.
For more information on cleansing, grab a copy of Donielle’s new book Cleansing for Conception.
What about you? Have you ever done a cleanse? Does it help regulate your cycles? What type of cleanse have you done?
Natasha
Real Food Kitchen Overhaul : A small steps approach to making the switch to a real food way of life