(You know you love that title song. Britney, your abs inspire me.)

It’s so easy to only see the short-term when you’re looking forward. But what about when you’re looking back?

I have been so tired lately. Physically tired, mostly – sometimes I just lay in my bed with my brain on, on on… writing the novel or a school assignment or a blog post in my head but so exhausted that Iwon’t even get up to sit at my computer and put words on a screen.

So this week, I blamed it on the post-vacation slump.

Then I thought about it and realized I’ve felt this way for a long time.

Last week I just thought I was relaxing.

The week before I blamed the pre-vacation madness of getting everything done before leaving.

Before that it was post-holiday blues.

Before that it was pre-holiday blues.

Before that it was NaNoWriMo exhaustion.

And of course I can blame that bipolar monster of mine any time I can’t think of a better reason.

Wishcake had a post up the other day that touched on cleansing and detoxification. In the comment section, several people recommended various programs to try or avoid. It all piqued my interest, so I went to work on The Google.

On one website, I checked “yes” in about 75% of the boxes for toxicity risk factors. That’s everything from having silver fillings (like I can help THAT?) to working in a place with wall-to-wall-carpeting (again, not my fault) to being around smokers a lot (I don’t myself, but my friends have vices) and especially my diet (that one’s my fault). Almost everything I eat is processed, carbonated, pre-packaged, preservative-packed, sodium-happy, and low in actual nutrients.

Oh, and I drink. Sometimes rather a lot.

So, according to several websites, this could be the reason why…

• I am physically but not mentally tired so often
• I have a lot of tummy upsets, upper and lower GI
• I have a visible belly pooch post-eating
• I get a lot of headaches
• Water weight, water weight, water weight. (Beats me how I have this since I hardly drink water, but it’s there.)

I eat crap food and I know it. Too much junk, not nearly enough fruit and veg, and I am horrible water drinker. Apparently, these things could not only be contributing to my weight gain, but also to the buildup of a whole lot of nasty stuff in my digestive system, my liver, my kidneys, and my blood. I’ll spare you the details some of these websites go into, but trust me: EWW. I know that my diet is entirely my fault.

Because I absolutely cannot fathom the idea of giving up my beloved Diet Dr. Pepper forever, I’ve been looking into short-term cleansing systems that require a few weeks of massive (for me) diet changes, plus a shit-ton of vitamins and other herbal things. Not the scary plans where you only drink maple syrup and lemonade (WTF?), but just the sort of plan where I’d cut out junk food, fast food, alcohol (o noes!), carbonation, some meats, white carbs, and a few other things – then add in super lots of water, veggies, fruit, and certain fiberous things. You know, the stuff I should be eating ANYWAY. And, of course, whatever horse-pills of detox herbals go along with said plan.

I tell myself I can do it short-term. Supposedly I will feel so lovely and fresh and clean that I will stop craving such crappy food and will instead want the sort of healthy things that got me feeling so much better in the first place. And starting a short-term program doesn’t seem quite so intimidating as “I will never eat McNuggets again.”

There are always risks to these programs. One is that if it doesn’t work, I’ll crave not healthy things, but more and more tacos and peanut butter cups. And of course, what about all that stuff in the pills? Will I have nasty side effects like some people claim? Will the herbs clear out the good as well as the bad bacteria, making me vulnerable to infections? Will they interact with the medicine I already have to take every day?

Good patient that I am, I am starting this with a trip to the doctor who prescribes my meds, just to see what she has to say about interactions, etc. I have that appointment scheduled for next week. And of course I’m reading a ton of reviews, good and bad, about a lot of these various cleansing and detox systems.

This might be a good first step. What do you think?