Back when I suggested writing this story to my editor, I was in week three of a sex cleanse. I’ve never been a fan of cleanses because, even though they’re allegedly good for me, they always leave me feeling a little unsatisfied. Honestly, what inspired my sex cleanse is the gorgeous guy I’m seeing, who can be… difficult. Let’s just say he’s definitely given me a few reasons to walk away, but honestly, in my optimistic mind where the KY bottle is always half full, his pros outweigh his cons, which is why I always ended up back in bed with him. The problem? After the sex, like right after, I would be on cloud f*cking nine, but then the next day/week/month would come and we’d speak about as much as two neighbors on the subway do. In other words, we would not speak at all. It felt like I was back in seventh grade when my crush would ignore me…except now it felt a little worse because we aren’t 13 years old, and getting ignored by someone who was just inside you feels pretty sh*tty.

And why feel sh*tty when I could feel like Princess Margaret in the White House? If you don’t get that reference, watch The Crown, like, yesterday, but the important thing to know is that Princess Margaret lived her best life without the lure of multiple orgasms dragging her down, and I decided that’s what I needed to do. So per my sex cleanse, I would stay in and binge The Sopranos instead of venturing out into dangerous territory (aka the Upper East Side), where Monsieur Best-I’ve-Ever-Had lives. I also swore off other sources of both toxic and non-toxic d*ck.

Because I am a loyal member of Domino’s Piece of the Pie Rewards program, cleanses are obviously not really part of my lifestyle, so I was a little fuzzy on the rules, but two things I knew I needed were an expiration date and a goal. For the length of time my cleanse would last, I gave it a month, because I’m a #strongindependentwoman. And as for the goal, I wanted to prove to myself that I’m not as hooked on sex as my tall drink of water would have me believe. And to explain the science behind what I was doing, I asked author of Don’t Sleep with Him Yet clinical psychologist Dr. Nancy F. Lee, PhD to help me out.

I learned a lot from my cleanse and want to share those lessons. First and foremost, practicing willpower and just an ounce of self-control feels really good! Secondly, not doing something that feels really good for a second and really horrible for much longer (like, I don’t know, drugs?) is always a good thing. I mean, sex is cool, but have you ever made a bold decision and it ended up paying off? 

“If you find yourself regretting and/or resenting sexual encounters, which both reflect confusion and can be considered detrimental to your emotional wellbeing, by all means, do an all-out sex cleanse,” Lee says. It’s my personal opinion that unless you’re Samantha Jones, it’s impossible to not get even slightly emotionally invested in someone you’re sleeping with—especially if it happens almost on the regular. I’m not saying all women f*ck a dude a once and spend the next day writing their wedding vows, but I have never slept with the same person a few times and not started liking him at least a little bit. That’s where I’m at: I’m sleeping with this person who is annoyingly amazing in bed and I like him. As Shakespeare would say, I’m in a pickle.

In my opinion, the benefits of a sex cleanse are many, but first, you feel at least slightly more in charge of yourself. For me, that’s really important since I usually feel very much at the whim of whoever I’m dating at the time—mostly because I hardly ever click with someone who’s into me, so when I do find myself finally crushing on someone, I can’t help but hold on a little. (By the way, I’m using the term “dating” generously here.) Even though my bed felt a little lonely over the last few weeks, it was nice knowing that I was actually happy about getting a good night’s sleep in lieu of pretending that I’m REM cycling through my bedroom door slamming shut and my entire bed shifting in place when he comes back from the bathroom at 4am. Lee says, “It’s worth doing an all-out sex cleanse until you develop insight and clarity regarding what it is you truly want.” 

Most importantly, even if you’re really casual about sex and don’t limit yourself to only sleeping with people who call you their girlfriend (hi, hello), deciding you’re taking a break from something that stresses you out is never a bad thing. Even if you’re just along for the (literal) ride, sex isn’t like playing tennis in that once you’re done, you just carry on with your day and don’t think about it again. So taking a little timeout is perfectly fine and may even be good for you! Lee adds, “If, for whatever reason you and an partner simply want to take a ‘break’ from sleeping together for a while, there’s an exciting way to enjoy a whole new form of ‘sensually focused sex’ that is guaranteed to heat things up!” Like with my favorite vibrator.

Look, no cleanse is meant to last forever, so I ended mine when most people end theirs: when you need to put something of substance back in your body after a long enough time without it. Gross? Sorry, but it’s been a few weeks and all of these puns are just falling into my lap. In all seriousness, the point of a cleanse is to rid yourself (mind and/or body) of anything toxic that came its way, so when you feel like you’re back in a sound place, that’s the right time to end the cleanse. Everyone will go on different cleanses (except juice cleanses because those are a bunch of lies) for different reasons, but all of them will teach you some valuable lessons and that is the damn truth. 

Sadly, before this article went to press, yours truly was in serious need of some Vitamin D and broke the cleanse with, you guessed it, the same guy who inspired me to embark on said cleanse in the first place! Ya hate to see it. Generally, when you break your word to yourself, you don’t feel great. If you can’t even rely on yourself to keep it together, who can you rely on? But honestly, I feel better than I did before I went on the cleanse because I am going into this clear-headed as opposed to d*ckmatized. 

Even though I am clearly a weak bitch, I did learn a lot from my cleanse and would definitely recommend it to those stronger than myself. 

Images: Giphy (2); Unsplash

I would love to sit down and tell you all how the rest of my Whole30 experience went, but first I think that we, as a group, have some shit to clear up.

Monday, March 19^th, 2018 is a day that will live in infamy for two reasons.

1. I accidentally started a war with the Whole30 community, a sentence that I hope ends up on my tombstone one day.
2. Against all odds and only serving as further proof that irony is the realest force of nature, it was the day that my Whole30 experience turned around. I’m serious. The day that the rabid Whole30 community came crashing down on me was the day I woke up with the energy and overall healthy feeling I’d been promised all along. God is a messy bitch and She lives for drama.

When part one of my Whole30 diary went up two weeks ago, I didn’t expect much. By now, regular readers of Betches know that any of my fad diet diaries (don’t call Whole30 a diet though. It’s NOT a diet, it’s a PROGRAM) are about 40% background and methodology and 60% me talking about how much I wanted to die during the duration of it. That’s kind of the whole point—I’m not a nutritionist or diet expert, just a person who enjoys subjecting myself to various fad diets and programs and is extremely honest.

So, you could say I was more than a little shocked when I checked out my article midday Monday and found that a full-scale battle had erupted in the comments section. I now know this was due largely in part to Melissa Hartwig, who posted a swipe-up link to the article (thanks for that, loved the traffic) as well as a series of stories in which she discussed why I am just the worst. (In her defense, I am the worst—but this single, initially unsuccessful, venture into her program isn’t the reason why.) However, I would like to state for the record that this short series of stories is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and it will be playing at every one of my major life events until I die.

My husband and I will take our first dance as a married couple to the dulcet tones of this woman talking about my shitty attitude. My children will breathe their first breaths of air as The Great Ivy Whole30 Rant of 2018 plays in the background. If I ever win any kind of major award, I’ll be waltzing up to the stage as “YOUR ATTITUDE BLOWS, IVY” blasts through whatever auditorium is misfortunate enough to be hosting me. The Whole30 program could not have given me a greater gift than this.

Now, I know that ignoring the comments section is one of the cardinal rules of writing on the internet, but some of the things that came up were too good not to address. Please bear with me while I take a minute to offer up a few thoughts.

To the people who left supportive advice or general words of encouragement: you’re all sweeties. Your comments were actually very helpful and I like to think that you’re the best of this otherwise ravenous community of nut pod enthusiasts.

To those who questioned the integrity of my degenerate friends and their rampant alcohol consumption: you’re not wrong and also they loved the shout-out.

To the people who called me a lazy, whiny, junk-food-eating monster, and guessed that I look shitty in Rag & Bone jeans (possibly the strangest deep cut of all time): holy shit. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the single most entertaining Monday of my entire life.

To the one person who said that drinking black coffee isn’t as bad as having both of your parents die from cancer: I mean…yeah. You got me there. Seemed like a really unnecessary argument to make, but I don’t disagree with you.

To Dallas Hartwig: I am sincerely sorry for getting your name wrong. I can’t imagine anything more deprecating than being mislabeled a Doug, and I take full responsibility for that mistake. This is the only apology I will be offering throughout the course of this article.

To the people whose lives have been changed by Whole30: I am truly happy for you. It’s great that you found a program that makes you feel good about yourself. However, your experience does not have to be my experience, and vice-versa.

The fact that I didn’t feel great for my first two weeks should not and does not negate whatever life-changing results you’ve accomplished. In fact, if I were you, succeeding where some snarky stranger on the internet is failing would actually fill me with a perverse kind of satisfaction. But, hey, maybe you’re just a better person than I am.

All jokes aside, there is something I’d like to clear up here. I understand people questioning my motives, my incessant complaining, and my general alcohol consumption, but what became clear to me after the publishing of part one is that my dedication to the program was now under fire. In light of that, I’d like to stress that I did, in fact, take this process seriously.

I read blogs. I pored over forums. I made meticulous grocery lists. I sat on the floor of more grocery stores than I’d like to admit, Googling the ingredients of every single item I bought. I spent an obscene amount of money on those groceries. I spent hours upon hours meal prepping. I said pretentious things like, “would you happen to have any Whole30 compliant sugar-free bacon?” to real life waiters. I tried. I tried really hard.

I also did a lot of things that I probably shouldn’t have—like get a little heavy-handed with the almond butter in the beginning there—but I grew from those mistakes and adapted. There’s a learning curve to cutting out half your diet, and I was admittedly slow to adjust to it. Nothing made this more apparent to me than St. Patrick’s Day, potentially one of the lowest points of my entire experience.

Take a moment to picture this, if you will: me, sitting in a raucous bar on March 17th, blandly sipping a sparkling water and wondering if I’ve ever been as drunkenly confident as the people standing in the middle of the room screaming the words to “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

If I learned anything these last 30 days, it was an understanding of drunk people as an entity. Suddenly I understood why people who don’t drink don’t like going out with their friends that do: not because it’s impossible to have fun sober, but because it’s nearly impossible for drunk people to let you.

Explaining to my friends why I was abstaining from the festivities was one thing. Correcting every bartender who had assumed I’d ordered a vodka soda was expected. But the only time I witnessed any disappointment that even came close to mirroring my own was when I had to fend off a group of drunk girls who had selflessly bought out the bar’s stock of jello shots and insistently handed them to every person they encountered. Some people are truly to good for this world, too pure.

I went home that night tired and annoyed, my only comfort the roasted potatoes I had made in an attempt to restore some kind of festivity to the day. The knowledge that I still had 15 more days of this routine was weighing on me as I fell asleep, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dreading it. But then I woke up a mere two days later, invincible.

As mentioned earlier on, March 19^th was the turning point. I felt great throughout all of week three, better than I could have imagined during the darkness that was the first 15 days. I had finally got the hang of meal prepping, was waking up naturally and less groggy than I had in quite some time, and even found the energy to start exercising before work.

That entire week flew by. Work was busier than ever but I was, for once, preternaturally equipped to deal with it. There were no mid-afternoon crashes, no multi-alarm snoozes. I woke up ready for the day and went to bed ready for the next.  I was on top of the world—and then week four hit.

Me halfway through week three: My body is a TEMPLE and I am its GODDESS I am one with NATURE.

Me the first day of week four:

Without any major changes in my routine, any glaring cheats, or any other perceptible differences, I was back to being tired and moody during week four. It was like reliving week two with a new element of irrational anger that I think stemmed from the fact that any and all novelty had completely worn off.

I don’t know what happened here, and I honestly wasn’t pressed enough to find out. This was the last stretch of a marathon, and I was that dog that saw people running and just joined in without knowing what it was getting itself into. My last three days of Whole30 were my lowest, due in large part to the fact that I stopped caring.

So was it all worth it in the end? For me, personally, no. But before the angry mobs arrives outside my apartment, let me explain.

I understand that part of the deal here is to forgo eating out for 30 days. Fine. I didn’t eat out. But I wasn’t ready, or all that willing if we’re being honest, to abandon my social life completely. It sounds trivial to complain about not being able to eat and drink with your friends, but I’m going to complain about it anyway because it’s a very real thing. I’m in my twenties. A large portion of my social life consists of going to dinner, going to happy hour, going out at night, and in general consuming things that I didn’t have to meticulously prepare myself. Whole30 didn’t stop me from joining those events, but it did stop me from really enjoying them. More than an inconvenience, it’s just plain awkward to be the only person at a table not eating, drinking, or having fun.

As for changing my relationship with food, I’ll say this: I liked where that relationship was to start with. It’s taken me 26 years and a lot of trial and error to get there, and I don’t see any reason to alter it.

Is 30 days that long in the grand scheme of things? Of course not. But it’s how long it took me to realize that food should be experienced, not just consumed to ensure that our bodies continue functioning.

Maybe if I were someone who suffered from dietary issues to start, I would be telling you a different story right now. I’m lucky enough to have a digestive system that can process grains and an unholy amount of dairy without causing me any grief, so for the past month I was effectively cutting something out that I enjoyed and that hadn’t ever truly wronged me. I understand why someone with a lurking gluten or lactose intolerance would sing the praises of a program that revealed it to them, but I went in knowing that I didn’t have to worry about any of those kinds of things, and thus couldn’t help second-guessing why I wasn’t allowing myself to have them.

In the end, I lost eight pounds, which is less than I expected but still no small feat. Admittedly, I feel fine now and am generally psyched about the possibility of there being a bone structure hiding beneath my typically rounder face, but it’s not enough to make me consider adapting this program on a long-term or repeated basis. Because on the other side, I’ve felt alone and isolated more times in the past four weeks than I have since the dark days of middle school and I can’t, in good faith, participate in a program that causes that. But, hey, maybe I’m just not cut out for Whole30 after all.

Images: Giphy (4)

I think we can all agree that January is bullshit, and it’s time we stop pretending otherwise. Between the insufferable “I’m coming for you 2018” Instas and my boss’s vague insistence that I should be “refreshed” from my time off (if refreshed means hungover, then sure), I’m honestly just confused with how people are meant to spend the holidays. Personally, I’ve spent the past two weeks playing “can I eat more than I did yesterday,” which means my general January sadness is compounded by the fact that sweatpants are actually all that fits me right now. Since I’ve crash-dieted enough to know certain eating plans will do nothing but leave me fatter and crankier than when I started, I’ve compiled a list of the worst diets you could start right now.

(And by right now, I obviously mean Monday.)

1. Apple Cider Vinegar Diet

This diet, while disgusting, has the benefit of requiring very little real effort, so it’s tempting to give it a shot. The basic principle here is that you drink three glasses of an apple cider vinegar mixture daily (one before each meal), in the hopes of improving your metabolism and suppressing your appetite. Apple cider vinegar does have certain good uses—like helping with liver function or clearing your skin—but these uses are achieved by incorporating a tiny bit into your diet, not by full-on drinking watered-down vinegar three times a day. While you’re welcome to find this out on your own, I can assure you that all you’ll achieve from this diet is feeling nauseous, gassy, and maybe even damaging your stomach lining. You might lose a few pounds from legitimately feeling too sick to eat, but at that point you might as well just pick up some gas station sushi and try for the “food poisoning diet.”

2. Intermittent Fasting

Overall, I think this diet has the potential to be effective and work for some people—I just also think, if you’re anything like me, this diet is not what you want to try right now. With various options for how to portion out your fasting (you can choose certain days of the week, or 12-18 hours every day), the restrictions on when you can eat are meant to lower your overall calorie consumption (makes sense). And while I’m told that the hunger cravings do eventually die down during those fasting periods, I’ve never quite made it to the other side of that tunnel. Instead, I end up fasting for maybe 8 hours, ruining half my friendships from hanger, and sucking down an entire pizza at night (so basically, what my diet is anyway). The bad thing about trying and failing at this diet is that you get into a fasting/bingeing cycle, which is terrible for your metabolism, will likely cause stomach pain, and overall instills bad food habits. If you know yourself and you know you won’t stick to the fast, cut your losses and don’t try this.

3. Low-Fat Diets

I find it alarming that people still do this, but there’s a lot of confusing nutrition data out there (I still can’t figure out if salmon is supposed to give you cancer or cure it), so I guess I get it. But you know what’s a low-fat food? Twizzlers. Twizzlers actively advertise themselves as a “low-fat snack,” which should give you a good sense of how healthy most food that advertises itself similarly actually is. A “low-fat” label is basically announcing that a lack of fat is the most nutritional value that food can offer—so it’ll be filled with sodium, sugar, artificial ingredients, and almost nothing that actually keeps you full/healthy/etc. I’m not telling you to dive headfirst into bacon mac n’ cheese, because fat is the best and makes you so skinny (though tbh how good does that sound), but don’t kid yourself that you’re making healthy choices if the only thing you’re looking at is fat content, and don’t expect to see any change beyond some sodium bloat and new cravings—flavor created without fat is weird and not to be trusted.

4. Not Eating Solid Food

If you’re like Lala Kent and you’re gearing up to join your “man” on his jet in two days, then sure, juice it out—but for any time window longer than that, you already know that any variation of a food-free cleanse will end in pain. What’s even more annoying than the speed with which you gain back the three pounds it took half your life force to lose is the overall self-hatred that this kind of diet instills in you. Whether you cheat halfway through, or are just eating your first regularly scheduled real meal post-cleanse, something now feels dirty and bad about the food you once loved, and no one deserves that. And with liquid diets like the Beyoncé master cleanse, you get the added bonus of essentially announcing to the world that you’ll be shitting out your holiday weight in the communal bathroom over the next five days. Everybody knows what cleanse means, and it isn’t cute. Also, you somehow end up spending even more money on weird-ass ingredients or juices than you would on food anyway (and that’s saying a lot), so there’s literally no win to be had here.

If you’re truly desperate about your holiday belly situation, the best general advice I can offer is drinking a ton of water, moving as much as you can, and practicing portion control. At the end of the day, just try to cut down how much candy you eat after 10pm on your worst eating habits, and make restrictions that don’t ruin your will to live—they’ll last longer, I promise, and you still have four months before you have to think about wearing shorts again.

Images: Charles Etoroma / Unsplash; Giphy (2)

The week between Christmas and New Years is literally the dead time: no one knows what day it is, restaurants can’t figure out if they should be open, and rich white people go skiing. So what’s a girl with no plans and a desire to look hot on New Years to do? Go on a cleanse, obviously.

I am definitely not a proponent of fad diets or even diets in general. In fact, I’m perfectly happy with my healthy-ish eating habits that mostly focus around the question, “Did I work out enough to eat this bagel?” and usually end with me eating a bagel. But my boyfriend is into intermittent fasting (I think Yom Kippur was his favorite holiday as a kid), I needed an activity, and if we did it together I could turn it into a competition. 

The Cleanse

We went for a three day smoothie/juice combo package where we were given a six-drink variety pack made fresh each day. All together our daily intake came out to around 800-1,000 calories of vegetables, fruits, and some nut protein—so we weren’t completely starving ourselves. And we drank coffee in the morning, because we still had to live with each other. P.S. This shit was expensive and anything with kale in it, no matter what other ingredients you add, tastes like fucking kale.

So what happened? I hope you’re interested in a play-by-play, because not eating leaves you with a lot of fucking free time. And I took notes.

Day One

1:00pm: This isn’t so bad. Or maybe I’m just still full from Jewish-Christmas Chinese food?

4:00pm: I don’t think I actually believe in the philosophy of a cleanse. I’m just in it for the competition, and fuck it’s seriously hard to justify the self-torture when I don’t believe in the purpose. It’s like I’m a mercenary—and I could never be a mercenary. 

7:00pm: Throwing up in the bathroom while a guy from Taskrabbit builds our new couch. A new low, I think. 

9:00pm: Boyfriend and I argue over whose reaction is more like that of a heroin addict going through withdrawal. His, definitely his.

Day Two

9:30am: Slept 10 hours last night—glad this is “no one gives a shit if you work” week. Extra glad the office was empty yesterday so I could have the bathroom to myself for “cleansing” purposes.

3:00pm: Shopping was a good distraction and I really think everything is fitting better than usual. Great, I’m already skinny—I can stop cleansing. 

5:00pm:

Boyfriend: What should we do tonight?

Me: Go to a movie?

Boyfriend: But what will we DO in the movie if we can’t eat Sour Patch Kids?

Me: Fine, let’s just sit on the couch and talk about how our tummies hurt.

7:00pm: Ohhh, this one is a nice pink color! Maybe it will taste like a Jamba Juice Razzmatazz smoothie. Nope, fucking beets. 

8:15pm: Is it too early to go to sleep?

Day Three

11:00am: This is my life now; I think I have forgotten how to chew. Also, my teeth are very angry with me. It’s like they’re screaming for something to do.

4:00pm: Oh, looks like we do have enough energy for sex. 

6:30pm: I think I’ll pour #5 and #6 down the drain and end on a fast. Really excited for my bagel tomorrow morning. 

9:00pm: My face hurts. I don’t want to be touched. I just kicked my boyfriend out of the living room so I could watch Peaky Blinders alone. Has hanger taken on a new form or am I just a bitch now?

11:00pm – 12:00am: An in-depth discussion around where we should eat dinner the following night. Suggestions included: tapas, sushi, and an all-you-can-eat steakhouse. We landed on steakhouse.

Conclusion

At the end of three days, I lost four pounds, proved to myself (and my boyfriend) that I am stronger than my hunger, and digested a month’s worth of vegetables. I also wanted a salad as my first real meal, so that probably means something. But overall it felt like I was punishing my body for a crime it didn’t commit, and I did not appreciate the hermit-like lifestyle it imposed upon me. Like actually, what to do you do with friends if you aren’t eating food or drinking alcohol? 

Anyway, I don’t feel particularly “cleansed.” Next time I want to pull a Regina George and lose three pounds, I’ll just eat less and SoulCycle more. Now, excuse me while I feed myself.

Images: The Office / Netflix; Giphy (5)

Working out might be one way to get fit, but you can improve your fitness and health without even sweating at Soulcycle. That’s because the buzzy beauty brand HUM Nutrition knows betches like things that come in cute packages and they’ve designed all-natural supplements for every beauty need a betch might have. How convenient, because summer means it’s getting too hot to run outside but also it’s time to show off your beach bod. Naturally we’re obsessed with HUM, because we can chill and do less work while still getting hotter. 

Speaking of less work, HUM Nutrition takes all the time and guesswork out of finding the perfect vitamin match. Take their 3-minute online evaluation for a foolproof plan that will give you personalized recommendations of exactly what you need. Your personalized plan, courtesy of one of HUM’s registered nutritionists, will deliver real results and protect against future concerns, because we all know betches aren’t pros at thinking long-term. Their pills are GMO-free, gluten-free, and drama-free. They’re basically like the boosts you can get at Jamba Juice, but without the extra calories and without having to like, go to a Jamba Juice because you’re not 16. Here’s the betchiest ones, in our HUMble opinion. (Sorry, had to.)

1. Here Comes The Sun – Vitamin D3

A hot betch like you shouldn’t be in an office all day, because the world deserves to see you under the sun and glowing like the bronze goddess you are. Unfortunately sometimes you gotta work to afford your lifestyle, so that’s where these Vitamin D3 pills come in. Get your daily dose of sunshine from these pills until you’re on a beach resort again. You’ll feel so sunny and bright, your co-workers will wonder if there’s some secret rooftop garden they don’t know about in your building.

2. Skinny Bird – Weight Loss Support

So you partied all spring and before you realized it, it’s already summer. Whoops, somewhere between hangovers and drunk hookups you forgot to work out. This supplement is for you, because it’ll keep you skinny without ruining your vibe. It’s a daily all-natural fully vegan weight loss support supplement that works by boosting metabolism, curbing your appetite, and reducing stress eating. You’re used to taking pills and not having an appetite for days, but this time it’s actually good for you. Enjoy the summer body, betch.

3. Red Carpet – Glow Supplement

This plant-based omega supplement is perfect for when you have a hot date and want to look sexy without putting on too much makeup. Red Carpet hydrates cells, making your hair look fuller and skin glowy, like you just won prom queen all over again. Except this time you won’t have to slow dance with a sweaty Sean McGinnis while wondering if your double-sided tape will hold up your dress. 

4. Turn Back Time – Anti-Aging Supplement

You’re always at your peak, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a better peak. As in, we know you only post TBT photos because you like how skinny you look in them. This supplement will help reverse and protect against aging without botox or therapy. You know how you can’t drink without a 2-day hangover anymore? We can’t help you with that, but at least you’ll look like you went to bed at 10pm and didn’t do 10 shots the night before. This can’t turn back time for any regrets, but it will bring back your recruitment body when you looked hot and full of hope. 

5. Uber Energy – Consistent Energy

You’re tired all the time, because you’re small and doing things wears you out, but don’t worry because this supplement will give you the energy you need to stay out until last call. To be honest you’re probably just bored most of the time, because working in a cubicle under fluorescent lights is not exactly Miami during spring break, but take Uber Energy to make it feel like you just got to Coachella and you haven’t lost your phone and best friend yet. This supplement will naturally boost and balance your energy and give you good vibes throughout the day.

6. Daily Cleanse – Skin & Body Detox

Daily Cleanse herbal formula is basically a juice cleanse for your skin and gut but without the pretentious juice bottle you have to carry around. So you’ll just have to find another way to secretly let everyone know you’re better than them.

Bonus: Betches get 20% off their first purchase with code HUMBETCHES at checkout! Get shopping!

Finally a beauty treatment that celebrates our strengths, like drinking flavored water and barely doing any work. Ladies, you can now drink yourself pretty (a motto I’ve always lived by) via Dirty Lemon, a new beauty treatment from a Brooklyn-based juice company that specializes in raw detox drinks. You’re welcome.

10 Foods To Help You Debloat

Dirty Lemon has been on the rise for a while in super-secret millennial circles. The detox drink is meant to reset the body after too much pizza and rosé because there is a God and She is paying attention to my Instagram story.

Made with cold-pressed lemon juice, dandelion extract, ginger root extract, activated charcoal, and filtered water, this shit tastes like a fucking dream—unlike that cayenne pepper and maple syrup mixture you’ve been forcing down your throat. Dirty Lemon Skin + Hair adds to the original recipe a fuck ton of Beyoncé’s tears pharmaceutical-grade marine collagen, and other shit that’s great for your hair and skin. In fact, it promises to give you better hair, skin, and nails in as little as two weeks. But so does Susi, my German hair stylist, every time she cons me into buying a $60 product on top of my haircut.

How Dirty Lemon Works

Drink one bottle a day on a full stomach, repeat. No lie, that’s legit the only instructions. In fact—and this is verbatim—they suggest you ingest the drink “with a side of pancakes.” Blessings.

Basically, instead of taking daily vitamins or supplements to stimulate the production of collagen you can now just take a bottle of it to the face. Not so different from what you’d be doing after work anyway but this is, like, good for you.

How To Buy It

You won’t find this sleek as hell bottle of eternal youth Dirty Lemon in any stores. You can only order it in $65 quantities via text message because our world is going to shit. But feel blessed because all orders are shipped overnight and free of delivery charges (are you listening to this, Amazon??).

Final Verdict

So let me get this straight: This is a beauty treatment that lets me do nothing live my life, counteracts all the ways I fuck up my skin and body when I’m drunk, and encourages me to eat pancakes for, like, my health’s sake? And it comes in a conveniently chic bottle that will look good AF on Instagram? So, like, does anyone know the founder of Dirty Lemon’s number or? Asking for a friend…

What’s It Like To Do The Master Cleanse?

When we look back over the sad, failed history of dieting, one thing came to mind: “wtf.” Diets alone are really fucking stupid, given the fact that most, if not all, are unsustainable. If you cut out a whole food group, eventually you’re either going to slip up and eat from said forbidden food group OR crave it so much you go crawling back sans self-control or dignity. Same for any diet that considers soup your now only source of food. Do yourself a favor and eat HEALTHFULLY without restricting yourself to crazy, weird shit. By “crazy, weird shit” we mean any of the below aka the 10 worst diets of all time. Think of it like Nike, only the complete opposite i.e., just don’t do it.

1. The Tapeworm Diet

In today’s batshit crazy news, we learned that there literally used to be a tapeworm diet. Back in Victorian times, when a woman’s biggest issue was fitting into a corset and pretending to not be interested in banging her husband, some medical professionals decided that swallowing a goddamn tapeworm was the answer to pesky chubbiness. We shouldn’t have to explain why this is a terrible idea, but yeah, it is. To add to that, people are still buying janky capsules with tapeworm eggs inside/drinking the tap water in Mexico on purpoe. Earth to Matilda: This is really fucking dumb. Why doesn’t it work? Because the damn tapeworm lives in your fucking intestines, eats all your food, can result in malnutrition, AND yes, you can die. 

2. The Cabbage Soup Diet

Any diet that literally has you eating one food for an extended period of time is a terrible goddamn idea. Can you imagine how insanely crazy you’re going to feel on Day 7 of eating cabbage soup? It doesn’t even SOUND appetizing. Yes, vegetables are good for you, but eating just cabbage soup will make you drop a ton of weight and then instantly gain it back when you stop dieting. Next.

3. The Grapefruit Diet

As is the case with No. 2 on the list, eating just grapefruit for an extended period of time is an awful, awful idea. Can you even IMAGINE your new aversion to citrus after a few days of this shit? Yes, you should be working things like grapefruit into your diet—shit, have one every morning for all we care. But if you go on replacing every meal with this sour af fruit, you’re going to fail in the long run. You’ll crave steak, fruit snacks, and all the carbs. Also if you’re on the pill it could fuck up your medication and you could end up pregnant. JUST SAY NO.

4. The Cookie Diet

This sounds like my kind of fucking diet, since my spirit animal is and always has been cookie monster. However, upon further investigation, we can’t believe this was ever—or even still is—a thing. Dr. Siegal, whose medical degree we question, came up with a diet that entails eating one to two cookies every few hours along with a 500-calorie meal of the dieter’s choice. The catch? The cookies are made of some bullshit ingredient (probably from Sweden and isn’t legal in the U.S., like phentermine) that is apparently going to make you lose weight. So, not only will the cookies taste like shit, but you’ll start hating cookies. Additionally, this won’t make you adjust your shitty eating habits AT ALL. Since, ya know, you’re training your brain into thinking cookies are the answer. Which, in this case, they are not.

5. Cigarette Diet

This sounds like a theme from Mad Men. Apparently, back in the 1920s, tobacco companies started pushing their cancer sticks as a means of controlling appetite. Nicotine does, in fact, suppress your urge to eat, but at the cost of having disgustingly smelling clothes, hair, and hands. Is the cancer worth dropping a few pounds? Gonna go with no on this one.

6. The Apple Cider Vinegar Diet

Ok so yes we were all obsessed with the Master Cleanse a few years ago because we were really fucking stupid. How fast did you gain back all that weight? I’ll hold while you crunch the numbers. Drinking a combination of apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, maple syrup, and other bullshit may have you drop a few pounds at first, but, like OF COURSE YOU WILL, YOU’RE NOT EATING ANYTHING. I could drink Blue Gatorade and Ensure and drop weight, too. To add to that, enjoy your gastrointestinal discomfort brought on by the whole drinking vinegar thing. Not to mention the terrible, terrible gas. Sexy.

We tried the Master Cleanse (and lived). Read Memoirs Of A Master Cleanse here!

7.  Detox Diets

Hey! You know how you have a liver and kidneys? The job of those apparently ignorable organs is to DETOXIFY YOUR BODY. So, these fucking diets touting extreme regimens like liver flushes, body cleanses, colonics, etc. are literally (and I mean literally) full of shit. Your body detoxifies itself all the goddamn time. Sure, if you want to add a few veggie juices and whole foods to your diet after a week of bingeing on pizza, it’ll “detox” you in a mild way. But having shit literally sucked out your butt and calling it necessary is the shittiest shit we’ve ever heard.

8. The Air Diet

I can’t even believe I have to address this, but, it’s a thing. Probably started by Gwyneth Paltrow and her ungodly shitty GOOP blog (Hey, Gwyneth—are you going to go ahead and rescind that jade vagina egg post? No? Cool). How’s it work? Dieters literally sit with an empty plate, fork, and pretend to fucking eat. Um, can’t think of a faster way to a) starve and b) develop a high-key eating disorder. Man and betch do not live on air and sunlight alone. There need to be nachos and chocolate. On second thought, anyone who does this probably has a great future in miming.

9. The Clay Diet

Something else probably piloted by Diet and Lifestyle Professional, Gwyneth Paltrow, is the clay diet. Apparently, you stir clay—yes, literally clay—into water and drink it. Why? Because it’ll totally detoxify your organs, of course! Wow, I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how thrilled mothers of toddlers everywhere will be when they find out that, yes, their children can continue eating mud for health benefits. Seriously, whoever came up with this one: Go fuck yourself.

10. “Miracle” Diets

Any diet that starts with “miracle” or “what doctors don’t want you to know” is probably going to be really fucking stupid. Additionally, any diet that tells you to drink green tea or chug acai juice or roll in memberberries to prevent eating more than 500 calories per day is going to make you gain double the weight back in the long run. Your metabolism will actually slow down, so when you do start eating like a human being again, you’ll get fat. Congratulations, idiot.

May all of your diets fail and may you eat like a normal human being. Amen. 

Make these 2 detox dinners for your shitty winter body