Advocare 24 Day Challenge Cleanse Phase: The Supplements

On Sunday I started the Cleanse Phase of the Advocare 24 Day Challenge. If you will remember, my last attempt was a fail.

Part of my motivation for doing this cleanse was that I feel like I have been steadily gaining weight over the past year, and recently I stepped on the scale and saw a pretty scary number looking back at me. However, when I weighed myself on Day 1 of the challenge I was down to a much lower weight – about five lbs lower. Weird, but a pleasant surprise. My weight fluctuates a lot, so it will be interesting to see what the scale does during this challenge.

The cleanse phase consists of 3 products: the fiber drink, herbal supplements, and probiotic pills. Here is my experience with the supplements so far.

1. Fiber Drink: If you do any googling at all about the 24 Day Challenge you will find that the fiber drink is the bane of a good cleanser’s existence. It tastes yucky. There’s no getting around it. It comes in two flavors: chalky-watery-peach, and wood-pulp-citrus. Most people recommend the peach for its more tolerable consistency and flavor. The citrus is supposed to be slightly more “scrubbing” to the system. It doesn’t matter all that much, because you are going to have to choke it down regardless.

Some people recommend adding a little with-pulp orange juice. There are so many natural juice options available now, I don’t see any problem with adding a little juice to the water/fiber drink mixture. I bought a cold-pressed mango/apple juice that I’ve been adding to make the fiber drink go down, and even adding just a couple of tablespoons of the juice helps mask the flavor so that all I’m dealing with is the unpleasant consistency. The fiber drink is only taken on days 1-3 and 8-10.

2. The herbal supplements are three tablets that, according to the website, “help rid your body of the impurities that may be obstacles to achieving better health.” They are to be taken right before bed, and are taken on days 1-7.

For some reason I think these tablets are making me wake up in the middle of the night. I can normally sleep through the night, but since taking these I have been waking up in the middle of the night and lying awake for a couple of hours. I’ve googled to find out if this has happened to others, and haven’t found anything to explain the issue I am having.

3. The probiotic pills are tiny white pills taken for breakfast on days 4-10. All I know about probiotics comes from the old Activia commercials, but I am currently listening to a podcast about what they are and what they do that is very interesting.

Along with the supplements you are encouraged to eat “clean” – that is, no alcohol, fried foods, or processed foods, and very limited dairy, starches, oils, and fats. There are also Omega 3 pills that are to be taken 2-4 times a day.