Getting Back to "Normal"

As you could say. Normal is relative. Normal isn't always good and it isn't always bad. Normal is just...what you're used to. And since I took 10 to ingest nothing but liquids, there really isn't a normal for me right now.

I'm not going back to eating the way I used to, that's for dang sure. I think I've done a pretty good job at proving so the last couple of days. Yesterday at work, the managers had a meeting at Noon so since they couldn't go out to lunch, they had it brought in. Guess what it was? PIZZA!

Oh, and salad. Gotta have something remotely healthy right? Not so much. Yes this salad is tasty-- the antipasto salad from Paladinos. It has all the bells and whistles; olives, salami, pepperonicinis, a delectable Italian dressing all over... ... ... iceberg lettuce. BARF! If it makes you feel virtuous to nosh on tasteless, nutritionless leaves covered with fatty toppings, be my guest. I'll admit, that is one circumstance in which I will eat iceberg lettuce-- what can I say? I'm a wanna be Italian!

Pizza wouldn't be so terrible if it was baked on a whole wheat crust and made with cheese that was a little more pungent so you could us less and topped with vegetables to take the glycemic index down. But alas, even though some of these pies had veggies on them, the cheese was probably dripping with oil and the crust, I betcha, white as a paper towel.

They put the leftovers in the fridge in the kitchen. When my 2pm snack attack hit me, I had such a hard time!! When I went in the fridge to get something I got a whiff freshly baked dough and garlic! How much more fragrance does one need to survive? I wanted a piece. I wanted one so bad!

I had plans to have friends over for drinks and dessert that night. I had my heart set on making Key Lime Pie from our left over limes from the cleanse. There was no way I could have pizza today and still feel good about myself that night while I noshed on pie, chips and dip whilst the wine and drinks kept flowing. I restrained. I was SO PROUD of myself!

Then this morning I went to a benefit event for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. There was coffee, donuts, popcorn, cotton candy and food galore! I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat anything. Well isn't that principle number one? If I was hungry, there were some apples and little things of yogurt. I find that healthy options are usually available but just in smaller quantities. And you have to look real close.

So all of the little dancers are helping themselves to donuts and cotton candy and collecting free ice cream coupons from Burger King and I say...well...good for them. They're young. Their metabolisms are racing. They should enjoy. I just had no desire for sugar whatsoever. It was free but who wants free fat and disease? Not I. Not anymore. It's a lot easier to resist eating free junk food when I just got off of 10 days of eating nothing!

During the cleanse I thought "I can't have that  food or I will not get the benefits I'm looking forward to." The benefits of the cleanse were immediate. Nothing has changed since I went off the cleanse--I can't have that junk food or I will not get the benefits I'm looking forward to! The only difference is that these benefits are long term.

Last night, yes, I indulged a little. Ok, a little more than a little. Two margaritas, a glass of wine, a slice of pie, a chocolate chip cookie and countless dippings of chips in salsa or the bacon ranch yumminess Deb brought over (AND THEN LEFT HERE, THE SNEAK!).

But I know today is my day to compensate. I'm going to the gym later on and then having taco salad for dinner with Amber. I'll bring my pie so it can be disposed of.

Oh but I had honey nut cheerios with whole milk for breakfast :/ When options are limited, you do what you have to. At least they're whole grain.

Ease Out Day 3

According the THE BOOK, Day 3 is the last day for a guided food plan. I was supposed to have had fresh OJ for breakfast. Veggie soup for lunch and quinoa, salad and steamed veggies for dinner. Whatever.
I woke up starving so instead of toughing out the time it would take me cook some eggs (I was out of oranges) I took the last few sips of my protein drink from yesterday. Then about 15 minutes later I had one slice of 100% whole wheat toast with Schmucker's natural peanut butter on top.
I got to work and I was TIRED. I'm unsure whether I should credit this to my short night of sleep (at least 6 hours I think) or the lack of nutrition. Or perhaps my body is mad at me because I still had more toxins to flush out and I needed to stay on the cleanse longer. I'm not going back into it. I'm sorry but I like cooking. I like eating. I love to have fellowship over food and drinks with friends. I'll do it again just not now.
How I felt was similar to how I feel when I wait too long in the morning before drinking coffee. I was tempted to have a cup all morning. I figure why should I do that to myself when I've gotten this far? Plus if what I have is caffeine withdrawal how come it's kicking in now after 12 days of not having any? I resisted.
At 11am I was going a little dizzy so I had a rye cracker. Delicious but so loud! That held me over till noon when I heated up last night vegetable soup and had that with 2 rye crackers onto which I spread a thin layer of plain cream cheese. Yes, dairy is not in the plan for today but I'm DYING I need sustenance. I'm sure I'll be fine. I haven't thrown up yet.
It's 3:42 and I'm starting to get a "need to eat" headache. I think I'm justified in having a nibble.

Okay, so that didn't go as well as planned! Yikes! All of a sudden I had this gassy pain and I ended up in the bathroom for about 10 minutes, uh, eliminating quite a lot of what looked like orange pulp. It just kept coming out! I couldn't believe my body would hold onto so much!

It didn't end there either. I went to Garrison's and felt a little more pain that sent me to the toilet for another 10 minutes. Ok I know most people go to the bathroom for this amount of time to, well, do their business. But I don't. I'm quick. In and out, no sitting or waiting, reading or pushing for me. It's the least appealing thing I could do. I would much rather wait until I absolutely HAVE to go and then make my way to the throne. But anyhow, I felt sick. I was in there for a while and what I smelled was very similar to what I smelled during the cleanse: lemon and cayenne pepper. Could my body have held onto that for this long? I'm so confused!

Since ending the cleanse and returning to food, I have been so much more tired. Especially after eating a meal, even a light one. We had a salad with chicken, olives, blue cheese and lots of vegetables on top. I elected to use red wine vinegar as my dressing instead of Greek as Garrison used. Usually after eating such a salad, I feel sated and no longer hungry. But after finishing the salad last night, I felt FULL. Crawled into bed and stayed there until the alarm went off.

Ease Out Day 2

Yeah...I'm definitely not following these guidelines to a T.
I started the morning off with about 12oz of orange juice and brought my veggie broth to work with me. At about 10am I was feeling out of sorts so I had half a grapefruit with maple syrup drizzled over top. OH YUM. I'd notice every now and again I start doing something and my mind or body wasn't sharp so I'd have another snack.
Before I went off to lunch, I ate an orange as fast as I could because I had to go to the store to pick some stuff up. After about 40mins, that wore off. I thought about what my friend told me. She said that the dizziness is a lack of iron. BINGO! Of course, I just came off my period so I'm low on iron. I'm a woman. That's why Garrison isn't dizzy and I am.
I got a protein shake. Ok, that was, like, the most deliberation I've ever done over a drink ever. I picked up the vanilla chai one because it's DELICIOUS! But I'm looking at the ingredients and I see "cane sugar" no go. I put it back. I pick up a few others that don't have sugar but I can't stop thinking about that chai. I WANT IT! I look again to see if it specifies that it's unprocessed cane sugar that hasn't been bleached and all that horrible stuff. No specifications. Well, what if it's lower on the ingredient list? Nope. It's second, right after soy milk. I look at other drinks again to see if I can find one with a remarkable iron content.
The Mango smoothie has 25% iron. I don't waaaaaaaaant mmmmmmmmanngoooo mooom! I want CHAI!
I'm giving up sugar. I'm giving up sugar. I'm giving up sugar.
What do I do? Do I go for it anyway and say "Eff it, I'm gonna answer my taste buds when they're calling out for chai." Nope. I picked up the mango. I wasn't disappointed either because it was tasty. I also procured some baby greens (iron), broccoli (more iron), and rye crackers as per suggestion of Mr. Book Writer. By the time I'm in front of the crackers deciding what I want, I feel my brain just kinda slipping off to the unknown. Time to pick one and GO.
I've never had a rye wafer before. They don't look tasty at all. But let me tell you, when you haven't anything crunchy in over a week, they are HEAVEN. Especially alongside home made vegetable broth. What makes the broth taste better is that it was practically free to make.
I get back to my desk at work and I've already had like 3 of these rye crackers. I left them out on my desk because I didn't want them in the fridge or the drawer because I'd forget to bring them home. So what did I do? I nibbled. That's a bad work habit!!! That's how I ended up with excess pounds! This is not good....what do I do? At 3pm, time for a cracker. At 345pm, time for a cracker with banana spread on top. Oh my gosh, bananas taste amazing! This one was sweet and almost had notes of honey! I was pleased.
I'm thinking, this can't be good. I was supposed to have done this cleanse to break old habits and recognize when my hunger is legit and when it's bogus. But I get so damn bored at work!
Later on for dinner (when it was supposed to have been our first time back on solid food (oops) we had veggie soup, rye crackers and.... ... ... ... MEATBALLS. Yes. Veal, pork and beef meatballs for dinner on day 2 off the cleanse. You're not supposed to have meat for a good long while but I wanted to see if my body could handle it and see if we could be ready for the Beer dinner Thursday night. Well I just took tiny bites and between the two of us, we only ate 5, dipping them in a bit of apple bbq sauce. SOO TASTY. I didn't have anything weird for my stomach but my appetite was, of course, smaller than usual and I knew I wouldn't be ready for a 6 course dinner AND beer anytime soon.
So we called it. As I was watching the food commercials in between the bachelor, I got a little grumbly but I resisted because another unspoken vow of mine was to NEVER eat after dinner. Not even occasionally as I had. So I went to bed on an empty stomach and my body thanked me for it :)

Ease Out Day 1

Yesterday was the first day off the cleanse. I celebrated my 5 pound weight loss by wearing a pair of pants that I haven't been able to squeeze in for a few months.
Tom Woloshyn's book instructed me to drink nothing but fresh squeezed orange juice the first and second day off the cleanse and then vegetable soup the second evening.
So I grabbed an 8lb bag of Florida organges from Wegmans in preparation thinking "This will get us through two days of juicing." HAH!
Guess how many oranges it takes to get a standard glass of orange juice. Just guess. TWO AND A HALF!
After I made my breakfast drink and squeezed another 24 ounces to take with me to work in a water bottle, there were 5 oranges left. Enough for Garrison to have 28oz for the entire day! I picked up another 8lb bag (it's a good thing Wegmans put a $4.99 price freeze on these!) and brought it back thinking it could get us through the rest of the day and into Day 2. Not so. We were out by 7:30 this morning.
So while I was at Wegmans I bought, like, THE BEST bottled orange juice you'll ever find because they squeeze it right in the store with this crazy powerfull juice press that annihaltes the entire orange, not peeled or sliced, and makes it into the most delicious drops of heaven you'll ever drink. This OJ was our saving grace through Way Disciple. We couldn't drink alcoholic beverages for the 6 months while we were on the program but when we discovered this orange juice we found that it brought on a surge of euphoria that far surpassed any buzz you could get from a vodka tonic.
As I arrived back at the office, I felt a little dizzy so I just drank more orange juice and I felt better. Then at about 3:30, I felt dizzy and weak. Hmmm, strange. I never felt dizzy, weak, malnourished or anything while on the cleanse so I was confused. I drank more orange juice--the whole pint I had just bought. Still felt dizzy.
I'm thinking what should I do? Should I try and eat something? I just ran out of orange juice so I'm at a loss for what to do. At work there are fruit bowls on the kitchen tables. Maybe I should have an orange. So I start peeling the sucker and it's  SO HARD! It's as if I've never peeled a citrus fruit before. I'm peeling and peeling and the pith is stayin on the orange. Ugh. All I want is to pop a piece of this thing in my mouth!
When I finally break the sections loose, immediately, without thinking about it, without taking a ceremonious moment to think TAH DAH! My first morsel of solid food since Friday February 17th at 9:30pm, I place it onto my tongue and start chewing.
Chewing? I haven't done this in so long! It feels foreign. I have to move my tongue within my mouth to get the food pieces to my teeth so they can do the orange juicing for me. How strange. Well I'm starting to feel a touch better and I get in the car to drive. Thank goodness I was with it enough to get to Garrison's apartment to juice some more oranges. This time I added a drizzle of maple syrup to see if it'd give me some sustenance. It did. But my body told me to feed it some more.
As per Dee's suggesting I fixed up some of my vegetable broth from my BROTH BAG!!! I'll have to write a separate post about my broth bag since I didn't take photos this time. But it's cool. Let me tell you.
After sipping on that a bit, I felt fine for a few hours. I went to bed hungry but I feel like that's a good habit for me to get into. Now I'm looking forward to introducing more solid (ish) foods on  Day 2!!!

Master Cleanse Day 10!!

I made it!!! Well almost. As I'm beginning to write this it's 9pm.
Today at work I did fine. Energetic, upbeat, getting my tasks done. I made my way through the kitchen resisting the urge to grab something off the tables. It was so much more easy knowing I only have one more day of this.
I just finished the final eliminations from my SWF which was...uh...a little more dramatic this time? I didn't feel sick like I did yesterday but I definitely camped out in the bathroom a lot longer than I had in previous days. The results were...how do I say this and still maintain my air of mystery? Let's just say the eliminations were sudden and forceful but by the end came out basically clear and lighter in color than the rest of the week.
Moving along...
I definitely recommend this process to anyone who is willing to learn the details in depth and invest this time, energy, willpower and, sadly, money into discovering better health. I certainly couldn't coach anyone through it. But I could definitely cheer you on!! I think we all make unhealthy choices and the cleanse is a nice way of reversing those, taking them out of the body. Erasing the slate so you can start anew. And then you can return to your old habits if you want but who wants to go back to a mud puddle right after taking a shower?
This is a whole lot different than I had expected. Good different. I've gained much more than I thought I would.
The end for now.

Master Cleanse Day 9

I started out the day doing really well, smiling, talking to people, feeling energetic, moving (light) furniture. I was a little unfocused during the class session because I didn't time my drinks very well.
During theses 2 class sessions, the teacher uses a lot of examples revolving around food. I'm like UGH! But once I had my lemonade I felt better. Garrison thought we should make our drink concentrate and mix it up during the break. I told him I didn't think that was a good idea because I just didn't want people asking about the cleanse and getting distracted from the material being taught at the class. So instead we brought bottles of pre-made lemonades. You're really NOT supposed to do that but we had to be practical. The funny part is that all since we were cleansing and just having the bottles with us, people were asking us questions about it. 'DOH! That's people getting distracted and not focusing on the word being taught...
Oh well. We've found that it's something that people can do to get healing and deliverance so it was good that we shared with them what we were doing and how it could benefit THEIR life. There's one guy who has had some health issues. He was in and out of the hospital but no one could figure out what was wrong with him. If he did this cleanse, imagine how much better he would feel!
After I got back, I was feeling a little lightheaded and tired. I took my herbal tea at about 1:30pm and it kicked in about 5pm. I felt like crap. All I wanted to do was lay down. I must have run to the bathroom 12 times. But not much came out. Sometimes nothing. I'm thinking "Am I done? Is this it?" but I still felt awful so maybe I should keep going. At some point I finally got up and felt better. There's no way I'm dealing with that at work so I didn't drink the tea at night.
Now it's the morning of day 10 and I couldn't be more excited!! I'm not taking ANY laxative until I get out of work. Well maybe I could drink some tea around 4pm. Then will probably do my SWF when I come back for one last flush of the colon before easing my way out of the cleanse and back into normal eating.
Ah yes. This morning's weigh-in was 5 pounds less than Day 1. Good news?? As long as I can keep it off.

Master Cleanse Day 8

I don't know, I guess you could call this a "problem" day.
I didn't get much sleep so I was sort of off. I woke up around 6 to start laundry and get ready for the day. Garrison figured on past timings that if I took my herbal laxative (which he calls poop tea) at 8am I wouldn't find myself sitting on the porcelain throne till about 2pm. Cool. So that's what I did and I made it through the class just fine. I had to pee a bunch but nothing else.
But when we arrived at Garrison's apartment about 12:30pm, I headed straight to the head and was indisposed TILL about 2pm. Boo.
After that we went to Wegmans for more lemons. I had a headache and severe fatigue so I followed that with an hour and a half nap! I'm currently just coming to, drinking my SWF and gonna head over to Karen's in a few to watch a movie. Hopefully get to cuddle with some felines too.
I don't know if today was a healing crisis or if I was just tired from going to bed late and waking up early the last few days. Either way, I'm SO looking forward to being done. I miss food so bad.
My friend JoAnna was describing how she broiled her fish to me today. I was dying.