Friday, January 18, 2013

Ease Out Day...wait, what?

By now, my instructions are to "resume normal eating" but since my fiancee is a day behind me, I'm a little confused.

I figure since I'm eating "normal" again I can begin my walking and weight program at full force. So even though I shouted some 4-letter words when the alarm went off at 5:30am, I got up any way and hopped on the treadmill. It felt great to get moving!

Before I consumed anything, I took an ounce of aloe juice with 8oz of water. Then I visited a long time forgotten friend. Coffee. Oh my coffee! I missed you so! Your sweet smooth beans sitting on the shelf watching in jealousy while I pulverize the fruit of cleansation.

And because I forgot to soak my almonds last night, I made a bowl of oatmeal (peanut butter, raisin, cinnamon) instead of an almond milk based smoothie as I had planned. I couldn't finish my oats. Right after I finished my oatmeal, my body eliminated all the orange pulp I guess it had been holding onto during this process. Oy. I felt a lot better after that.

I was completely sated at work until about 9:45am but I didn't eat anything because I was busy. I felt so focused and awake at work. Maybe it was the coffee. Maybe it was the work out.

At noon I poured myself maybe 8oz of soup but couldn't finish it and I didn't even have any crackers.

Then I walked 20 mins at 3mph. Then I did 20 reps of 3 arm exercises (only one set. Ran out of time).

Then I felt TIRED. Drowsy. What the heck? How is this the second time I've had a good workout that hasn't left me energized? Then about an hour later, some gas pain sent me to the ladies room where I emptied out for a while and now I feel energetic again.

I'll tell you something. Most people say that they just can't imagine ever doing the Master Cleanse. That it'd be just too hard to go 10 days without eating!

This is the truth: What's hard is not going from eating solid food to a liquid diet. What IS hard is going
from a monodiet of  liquid back eating solids. That's something you haven't done since you were a baby. And you probably had a tough time with it back then, you just don't remember.

Ease Out Day 3

Day 3 went a little better than Day 2. I started the morning with about 4oz of orange juice with some aloe juice in it. Meh.

I think in Tom Woloshyn's book he offers mango juice as an alternative. I probably should have gone with that option but I had no acid reflux trouble last year so I figured  I'd be fine. I wasn't.

I got to work and sliced a green apple (not an organic one) and ate that for breakfast. It took me maybe 2 hours to finish it though because I'd have 2-3 slices and I was full for a half hour. Then around 11am I felt more growling and answered that with a Wasa 100% whole rye cracker. I discovered the Wasa's last year on the Ease-Out and they have become a regular staple in my pantry. Put a little natural peanut butter and some raw honey on top and you have yourself a delicious snack/dessert.

By noon I didn't feel very hungry because I was still full from the cracker but I sat down anyway with my soup. I had maybe 4oz and I was done. Then I went to walk on the treadmill. Wait no. I slept on it. Or was that yesterday? I can't recall but I walked one day and slept the other.

Toward the end of the afternoon I had a banana: TASTY! And then, since all the bananas were still green (boo) I made the mistake of eating an orange. I felt the burn!

When I got back to Garrison's, we had veggie soup with wasa crackers together (even though since it was day 3 for me, I could have had quinoa and a veggie or a salad) and I was full before my bowl was empty. Normally, I'd keep eating until the soup was gone but I stopped this time because I don't want to regain the 5lbs I lost during the cleanse nor do I want to continue exacerbating my acid reflux. But then, in almost hourly increments, I felt hungry again. First I had half a cracker with honey, then another small portion of soup, then some celery with peanut butter and raisins-- items not expressly on my Day 3 approved food list but I didn't have any adverse reactions *knock on wood.*

Garrison and I hit up the grocery store after the 3rd snack. Apparent was the fact that it had been 2 weeks since we've gone full not-just-citrus-fruit grocery shopping. We were wandering the store, missing certain sections. Then I got really mad because I got back on my rampage about the fact that I can't find any damn tortillas that contain 100% whole wheat and a short list of non-GMO ingredients. BAH! Chi-Chi's "whole wheat" tortillas have regained their spot in my fridge.

I feel another attempt at tortilla making coming on.

Ease Out Day 2

So in another post I said that I'd still be cleansing on Wednesday since I teach 3 hours of dance at the studio. Well obviously I didn't do that. I ended on Day 10 instead of Day 12.

Day 2 of easing out didn't go so well for me. I brewed the sample bag of peppermint tea and while I was drinking it I had no heartburn. But as I went along in my day I felt dizzy so I drank some OJ. Almost instantly, I'd have heartburn. Guh! Orange juice was supposed to be my breakfast and lunch with vegetable soup for dinner but I couldn't take it! I heated up some veggie soup (mostly broth) for lunch and ate about 4-6oz till I was full.

I was also dastardly tired so I went to the work out room to get on the treadmill...for a nap. See, I'm a receptionist so I'm not as privileged as those with offices with doors you can shut during lunch to get some shuteye.

I was scared because I'd been reading up on heartburn and it says that it's not good to lay down right after you've had a meal. Oops. I wanted sleep more than I didn't want heartburn so I stayed there anyway.

Toward the end of the day I started feeling dizzy again so I gulped down a little more OJ (to my esophagus' dismay) and heated up some soup around 4pm. This made me marginally better but I was getting nervous...what if I pass out in the middle of dance class? I just can't do that! It will scare the children and I'll never convince anyone to do the cleanse because I will then have to report to them the reason why I passed out: I've drank nothing but citrus juices and laxatives for the last 12 days! Bad context.

I texted the studio owner but she was at her other job. She told me not to worry, I'll be fine but to get some sugar in the form of hard candy or maple syrup??? My dance teacher telling me to eat candy!? I'll take it!! Those gummy bears I stashed away earlier became my supplementary dinner. Oy, the terrible ingredients in those. I did feel stable enough to get through my first 2 classes like nothing happened.

Then.

In the middle of tap I started losing my mind. Losing it! I didn't know what color was up! I didn't know my left foot from my cheekbone. However, I've been blessed with an assistant for my second two classes and she demonstrated what I told her to do or what I meant to tell her to do. Then I proceeded to sit on a stool trying to direct class, eating the remainder of my gummy bears and basically embarrassing myself.

THIS is why I wanted to still be cleansing on dance day but NOOOOOOOOOO, my impatient ass had to end earlier than planned.

Gosh I felt great on the cleanse! But easing out as, well, easy.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Ease Out Day 1

I'd say this Day 1 of this year's cleanse ease-out went a lot better than last year's! I felt fine for most of the day. There were a couple of moments where I felt a bit dizzy but I combated that by drinking more orange juice.

I went to a local health food store around the corner on my lunch because I knew a certain lady that had helped me before would be working. She is very knowledgeable in natural healing. I told her about how my Day 1 had gone, what with my throwing up and it not stopping until I took some Pepto. I told her I didn't want to take it but I had to in order to keep stuff down. She told me peppermint tea and aloe juice are good remedies for heartburn. She also said that I'm way too young to be on medication for acid reflux and that, instead of just neutralizing my stomach acid, that my esophagus needs time to heal and I should have the ongoing problem.She also gave me a couple jumping off points for natural asthma treatments.

I bought some aloe juice to put in my OJ and peppermint tea to drink later.  So far I think it's working.

I've done some research on acid reflux and how to cure acid reflux naturally. Based on what I read and different habits I've identified, I've come up with a few resolutions for myself once I get back on solid food in order to be heartburn free!

1) Make sure I chew thoroughly. After the last couple of bachelorette parties I've gone to (well more like morning after) I've discovered I really don't chew my food well enough.

2) Stop eating well before bedtime. Laying down right after eating can trigger acid reflux.

3) Eat smaller portions. I've let the habit of overeating creep into my life and it has done more damage than just weight gain. Overeating puts pressure on the digestive organs and pushes acid toward the esophageal sphincter. I can recall a few too many times I've done this. It's especially easy at The Ledges.

4) Lay off the spicy food for a while. I'm hopelessly addicted to Frank's Red Hot but I will just have to give my esophageal lining some time to heal. Especially after 10 days of cayenne pepper. My fiance will miss the chipotle chilli chicken fajitas but he'll just have to deal for a while.

5) Take aloe juice before meals and peppermint tea before bed.

Anyhow, back to my ease-out. I did have something other than orange juice. It was a homemade kale chip after fellowship. Lukas (the 13 year old prodigy) made it with just a little olive oil, salt and pepper. It tasted like heaven. Chewing again was foreign. I chomped and moved my tongue around to get every morsel to my teach. It was like having to re-learn chewing.

Then I stayed up super late making my veggie brother and soup for Day 2 which probably deserves it's own post. Word to the wise: if you make your own stock from scratch, start it before the cleanse.

I had a few sips of that sweet sweet broth and well as one small morsel of garlic as I was prepping.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Day 10 and my walking

So yesterday after my epiphany of how I'm going to get my exercise in hit, I hit the treadmill. But only for about 6 minutes this morning because I ran out of time. Then at lunch, since I had the whole hour, I walked 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3mph (which felt a lot more of an intense than I anticipated. I guess I don't walk as briskly as I thought I did) and did some arms stuff with the total gym for about 15.

Now. Something odd happened.

I usually feel like soooo kickass after I work out. In fact, Sunday morning at fellowship, Lukas said he was tired because he had worked out that morning, everyone was like HUH?

But at 1:00pm when I got back to my desk, I was feeling tiiiiiiiiiired. And dizzy! Worn out. Like it was nap time. I wanted a pillow, some animal crackers, and a juice box. Well those weren't in the regimen for day 10 so another glass of lemonade had to do. I felt marginally better. But then another hour passed and I needed another drink! I was getting so nervous because I usually only drink one every 2 hours. If I had kept on drinking every hour I would have been out by 5pm and I still had dance class and a meeting after it I had to get straight too. I also envisioned myself power walking through Driver's Village, pounding up and down the stairs and working up a serious sweat. That wasn't going to happen unless I had more lemonade.

Thankfully I'm not doing this alone. Garrison had some leftover concentrate at the end of the day and brought it to my rescue before class. I had a class around 5 o clock and I was doing good until halfway through the warm up when I felt faint and had to sit down to drink. After class before the meeting I did go for a small walk but it wasn't quite the calorie burning session I dreamed up.

Also toward the end of the evening I had several movements but I had lots of air in my system. So my eliminations became less like expelling water and more like blowing bubbles. I'm not kidding. This continued until about 10:30pm when I sat down with a cup of senna tea and told Garrison I was starting my Ease-Out tomorrow and he better just deal with it.

I felt like I was done! My tongue was pink again and not much was coming out...at least at that hour.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Master Cleanse Day 9 and a New Plan!

Day 9 was moderately uneventful physically. However, I've been experiencing a lot of emotions. Sadness and anger.

Of course we also went to fellowship and again there was a food offering. A freshly baked blueberry pie and a veggie tray. Rats! And Lukas of course described how he made a sandwich and roasted red peppers with garlic. He had a jar of the peppers in vinegar. Gave me a whiff. Done. That's it. I gotta go home.

I definitely looked at a little too much food porn for my own good. I browsed Pinterest and talked food with Garrison nonstop. Then I went to the gym for some hamster time and watch an hour of "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." Now I absolutely have to go to Minnesota to get a pizza with cream, cheese, some sort of  cheek bacon, leeks and an egg. Have to.

On the upside, I weighed in at 135 this morning. SCORE! How that happened in 3 days, I'm not sure but whatever. I'll take it.

It dawned on me that even though my circumstances aren't glamourous, I totally have a home gym and a work gym that I REALLY need to use. There's a treadmill in the basement of the house I live it as well as some 8lb dumbbells. There's a treadmill where I work and a "Total Gym" weight machine and I have an entire hour for lunch. The problem is that these spaces are totally unappealing. Well, despite the messiness or dinginess, I need to work out.

My New Plan:

20 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of weights every morning Monday - Friday.
20 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of weights 3 times per week on my lunch break at work.
Pilates and modern dance class Monday night.
Teaching my classes Wednesday night.
2 hours of something rigorous on the weekend--could be some gym time before my membership runs out or it could be something fun and social yet active like skiing or skating now that it's winter. Or biking, hiking, running outdoors once it warms up. Maybe some bowling but that usually involved junk food.

According to a calorie calculator, all these activities should burn about 3500 calories. Maintaining a healthy diet, this should set me up for a 1 pound weight loss per week. Of course the more weight I lose, the more I'll have to work to continue so I'm going to do my best to squeeze in some bonus burns whenever I can. For instance today after dance class I have a meeting with my boss but there's an hour in between so I plan to walk around the mall, up and down the stairs.

In the meantime I have to hope Val will stay out back today because he smells like a garlic peppered pork chop.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Master Cleanse Day 8

After talking it over with Garrison, we've decided that our cleanse will go through Wednesday, which makes my cleanse 12 days and his 11 since he started the day after me. The reason is because I didn't do so well on Day 1 of my ease-out when we did this last year. On Wednesday nights I teach dance so if we went together to the end of his 10 days, I'd have my ease out day 1 on Wednesday. No good. We both want to do the minimum of 10 cleansing days and we want to be on the same schedule with returning to "normal" food. Another plus was that day 1 for me was not really cleansing so much as barfing and sleeping so an extra 2 won't hurt.

Won't hurt my flesh, that is.

Because it kind of hurts to keep resisting the temptations of food all around.


Even before we had made contact with society on Saturday, I was dreaming up all the wonderful things I could be eating today but cannnot.

I thought of how amazing buffalo chicken dip is. I thought of Tostito's scoops. I thought of spooning wing dip into their pockets, topping them with bleu cheese and baking them for a delicious Wing Dip Bite; all the goodness of eating chicken wing dip in one bite. This concept is kind of like the French Onion Soup Bites we had at this very amazing restaurant a few times. It's a big crouton soaked in soup, topped with cheese and baked on a spoon. All the goodness of French Onion Soup in one fleeting bite.

Anyhow.

We went to the (s)mall. We needed to go to Sears to buy Garrison a tool cabinet for his garage. The mall bathrooms were all in the Food Court. This is torture. The salad bar could be seen from the Ruby Tuesday's window. The  Chinese food in the display case. The pizza on their stands. Hell, even Arby's sounded good. Subway. I could taste the food in the air. I never walked through the fiery hallways of hell to get to the toilet before. Now I have.

Later as I laid with my dear one on the floor I randomly said "buffalo chicken bites."

"Are you whispering sweet nothings in my ear?"

That was it. We keep whispering an entire week's worth of food back and forth moaning and longing for one delicious tasty morsel.

Do we notice a pattern here? While on this cleanse I keep craving processed food because craptastic unhealthy food sounds amazing when you've only ingested 3 different liquids in the past week.

In other news, my tongue is still white but it's getting pinker. Eliminations aren't much clearer though. As  type this it is the morning of day 9 and I just drank my SWF. Waiting for it to do its thing.

Master Cleanse Day 7

Last year, I experienced Day 7 euphoria. This time around, not so much. I didn't feel crappy or sick. I just wanted food.

I walked into the office at the beginning of the day on Friday and glanced over at the kitchen and saw some gold shiny packages on one of the tables. I thought maybe it was a bag of coffee. Coffee belongs in the cabinet, idiots, what is it doing on the table? I went closer-- my first mistake--it was 2 bags of Haribo Gummy Bears!!! I love gummy bears!!!!! I walked out and in a few times to see if anyone had taken them. No one had. So I picked up the bag. I wanted to rip it open and shove a handful into my mouth and chop on their fruity, gummy goodness. I didn't. But I squirreled it away in a desk drawer for later.

It gets worse.

Someone decided our office needed an entire spread of goods from Geddes Bakery that morning so spread they did! I think there were 4 or 5 boxes of donuts, danishes, pastries, muffins, etc. in our office kitchen. I better not look at them. Aw shit, I looked!!!

Mind you, this was not just some Friday treat. Okay, it was a treat on Friday. But 3 other days this week, SOMEONE brought a dozen donuts to work. One day, an employee AND vendor brought over a box of donuts. That's 2 rounds in one day. NO ONE needs this crap or deserves to indulge that many days in the week! No one!

Well good for me because I was cleansing so I didn't have to help clear up. I just had to throw the box away when it was empty...or had two left in it. Whatever. Donuts are garbage so that's where they went.

Anyhow I thought it was over once the baked goods collection was whittled down to one box. Nope.

Gino & Joe's called mid-morning to ask our Italian mother accounting clerk (who does all the food ordering) about a credit card order she had placed. Okay, this is fair warning here. Someone ordered pizza. Since no one told me about this, I figured it was a few people going in on a lunch delivery together, not pizza for the whole company.

Well.

I found out it was pizza for the production employees when the delivery guy showed up through the front door with 5 boxes and plopped them down RIGHT ON MY FUCKING DESK!!!!! How dare you?!?!!?!?! I don't get any doubly because it's not for me and because I'm cleansing. This is the worst!!

I did my best not to make eye contact with the boxes and focus on my work as Ms. Mozzarella was signing the receipt and the quality manager whisked the pizzas away to go feed the vultures out back. I thought I'd be relieved but the scent of fresh baked dough, garlic and oregano still lingered in the air and forced itself into my nostrils. At this point, I was just angry. I was also angry because the copier was being a pain but that's another story.

I escaped for my "lunch" hour to buy some more organic lemons. When I came back, leftover pizza was ON THE BREAK TABLE, sitting there, just smelling delicious.

I'm not kidding you. Like a K9 I could sniff every single scent incorporated in that bitch-ass pie. I stood about 20 feet from it but it was as if it were right under my nose about to be inserted into my mouth for a cheesy saucy explosion all over my tastebuds.

By 3:30pm, no one had eaten the last slice. I wrapped it delicately in the parchment lining at the bottom of the box and ceremoniously threw it in the garbage. The last of the danishes and muffins went there too.

Went home to do my SWF in some temptation-free relief but I couldn't stop thinking about food.