L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Day 3: Eau de Cranberry

September 30, 2009 on 8:00 am | Join the conversation. You know you want to. | In Food, General Musing

Day 3 of the two-week liver cleanse I weigh in: SN! I’ve hit my scream number! On the nose!

Three pounds in three days? I enjoy a moment of pure gloat before the doubts begin to creep in. Wait. I cut out salt. It’s just water. But even that can’t completely drain my elation and I announce the stupendous news to the wildly cheering crowd sipping his tea in the kitchen. “That’s great, honey.”

One of the mainstays of this plan is mass quantities of something cheerlessly called “cranberry water.” Where are the marketing geniuses who dreamed up “Crangrape Cocktail” and “Craisins”? Sitting on their asses, I bet. (Crasses? Cranasses?)

Cranberry water is simply 1 cup of unsweetened cranberry juice to 3 cups of filtered water. The diet calls for at least 8 glasses of the stuff a day and I was not looking forward to it. Juice is empty calories to begin with and cranberries aren’t exactly at the top of my guilty pleasures list. But it turns out that cranberry water is really, really good. It’s light, not too intense, refreshing. I’ve been slugging it down like a champ – even mixing it with seltzer in a wine glass at dinner. I’ve considered never going back to water. Until…

I made the tactical error of reading the label. One cup of unsweetened cranberry juice is 140 calories. Even diluted, I’m probably drinking 2-3 cups of the stuff a day easy. It’s not a big deal when the rest of my daily caloric intake adds up to about 12, but what about after? Then it starts to count. Will I really want to spend a quarter of my daily calories on juice? I should have known it was too good to be true. The siren song of Diet Coke is heard in the land once again.

In other developments, food is tolerable. A grilled pork chop, tossed green salad and grilled zucchini with lemon and dill make a perfectly fine dinner. I almost don’t feel completely whiny and deprived. But the weekend is looming and it promises to be a challenge, with four… FOUR… food-encrusted events on the calendar. There are dark forces at work to lure me from the light, the right, the cranberry-lined staircase to shining victory. “Oh, come on, honey, what’s the big deal if you have one plate?”

If it was only a weight-loss diet, I’d tend to agree. Just tack on another day or two. But here’s the thing. This is a cleanse. I’m flushing toxins out of my system and giving the old liver a well-earned rest and resnorgling all the phrangellators. Will a plate of rice undo this mystical process? Would I have to start over? I have no idea. I’m supposed to see some actual result beyond a lower number on the scale. If I cheat and the cleanse doesn’t work for me, I’ll never know if it would have… if only I hadn’t…

Plus smugness is a great seasoning.