Shakeology Cleanse

Here’s a little inside information for the Straight Dope faithful. It’s a three day cleanse (I’m doing this week) that’s becoming a standard part of our diet guides. It came from Mike Karpenko (Beachbody coach who once worked for me in the office and still runs our test groups with me) as an evolution of a cleanse I’d done using Shakeology as a substitute for our current fasting formula. Mike spruced it up a bit, we turned it loose on our test groups, and voila!

I’ve just returned from a weekend in Moab for Romney’s birthday (and birthday challenge, report coming soon). Along with a fair amount of exercise we did a fair amount of reveling. I mean, it’s the off-season and pints are two bucks around town and what else are you going to do on a birthday weekend? Therefore, even though I spent four to six hours each day running around I feel like pig that’s been fattened for slaughter, making this a perfect time to flush my system and bring everything back into homeostasis.

This is a performance-oriented system designed to support hard training. It’s not the Master Cleanse. The goal is to promote flushing junk from your system and regulating hydration levels. It’s calorically restricted to be sure. But in its 1500 or so calories will be more nutrients than most people get by eating well over twice that amount. The key is caloric efficiency; getting the most nutrients possible out of the fewest number of calories.

It’s too fat restrictive for a lifestyle plan. I’m on a low cal cycle of the ABCDE diet so it’s the kick start to that. After three days I’ll roll this into a 1600 calorie a day plan with additional calories added for sports performance only—this means targeted calories consumed during and immediately after workouts don’t count in the daily total.
The plan consists of three Shakeology shakes* a day with a salad in the evening. If the shakes are plain (Shakeology and water only) I can add three pieces of fruit. The salad is unrestricted as far as veggies go, with 4 ounces of a protein source (if it’s meat or fish and slightly more if it’s a veggie source like legumes), and two tablespoons of an olive oil/vinegar dressing. For fatty acids, each salad will also contain a tablespoon of chia seeds (or flaxseed or hempseed). Plenty of water washes it all down. Coffee, tea, and herb teas are fine as long as they are sans additives, as all are performance enhancing. In three days I plan feel recovered from the weekend and ready to roll into my final prep phase for the Copper Canyons.

* Any meal replacement or protein shake could be substituted but I’d recommend adding at least a greens formulation to this to try and equate Shakeology’s 70 ingredients.

pics: romney's run looking less than the promised "red hot" conditions, rare postholing conditions on castleton, celebrating romney's "never say never" birthday challenge.