CONGRATULATIONS!!!  For everyone that is completing the 5 Day Clean Eating Cleanse, congrats!  I am sure your bodies and energy levels are thanking you for giving them a time to relax and recover.  Since you have been on a lower calorie amount these past 5 days, as well as liming and/or eliminating certain food groups, it is important to ease your body back into your ‘normal’ way of eating.

Here are some tips:

1. Much of the point of this 5 Day Cleanse is to allow your appetite to shift, your metabolism to speed up and your mind/body to realize it does not need all the junk. Please don’t plan to go out and eat horribly again, it will throw your body off and cause you to regain any water weight lost from the overload on sodium.
2. If you are looking to keep loosing weight, you may find that you want to keep your calorie intake where it is at.  If you did a 500 calorie deficit for the Cleanse, that is exactly what you should keep to continue losing weight.  However, make sure your minimum caloric intake a day is 1200! If you are intensely working out, it may need to go to closer to 1500; you need to gauge this on your energy level and how you feel.
3. If you are looking to maintain your weight, you will want to slowly bring your caloric intake back up to where you need it.  A good and easy tool you can use to find the amount of calories you should have to maintain your weight is here. I would suggest adding between 250-500 calories back a day until you hit your normal intake.
4. Don’t go out a drink a ton of alcohol or caffeine on Day 0; you will want your body to get used to in-taking those additional calories again.
5. For sugar, wheat, and salt, be mindful of the amount you are eating and don’t eat huge portions at once or it will cause bloating.  You should be keeping an eye on the intake of these processed items anyways so just consider this good practice for your new way of clean eating
6. Continue to drink tons of water.  Especailly as you start incorporating foods back into your diets, the water will help continue to flush them out.
7. Overall, just listen to your body.  If you are feeling super full, ease off.  If you are starving, eat so your body doesn’t think it needs to go into starvation mode.  Just be smart about the things you eat and keep in mind you worked this hard for a week to eat amazing, you don’t want to ruin it.  At least enjoy the higher energy and flat tummy for a while!

Congratulations again!