Day 10: You Burger, You Brought 'er.

Learning from my smoothie fail from yesterday, I had a super simple breakfast smoothie of

1 cup almond milk
1 and a bit cups of strawberries
1 banana
1 chunk of ginger.

I love spinach in my morning smoothie but we ran out. Tomorrow morning's mission is a huge restocking of some essentials. (I may take a photo to demonstrate the ridiculous amount of fruit we've been going through).

My mid morning snack was the by-now usual of a banana and some dried fruit (yes, apricots...apparently I am a glutton for delicious punishment!) and some coconut water, and I had another banana about an hour later with some amazing fresh figs. I love figs.

I cheated at lunch and bought a Subway salad. I wasn't nutritionally hungry, I just wanted some filler for my tummy as I had to do some emergency counselling for someone and doing that with low blood sugar is a terrible idea. I also had some more coconut water. I have a total weakness for coconut water-it's zero fat, tastes like a treat, has more potassium than bananas (watch out, bananas!) and is naturally very hydrating. Potassium is good for relieving muscle cramping, so I chug it like it's going extinct around That Time Of The Month but I enjoy it pretty much constantly. You have to be careful to get the stuff that has no sugar added, though, or else it's more-or-less just fancy soda pop. I drink this stuff.

I had a couple more apricots and coconut water for an afternoon snack. I was eating light because of what was to come for dinner!

Dinner was some amazing dehydrated mushroom burgers, served on a lettuce bun with home made guacamole, home made salsa, home made mustard and chopped peppers and cucumbers (not home made). As with all fancier raw foods, these guys were preparation heavy but well worth it. They had a great texture and density although even though with putting in half the amount of oil as they called for they are still quite high in fat (walnuts). Even with eating light I managed to eat waaaayyy too much fat for my carb balance today. If I'm hungry later, I'll have to eat some more fruit to try to balance myself off a bit. Right now I can't *imagine* being hungry, but I've noticed on this raw diet that things move out of my tummy very quickly and I have to eat something about ever 70-90 minutes.

I really feel like I'm getting into the swing of what I can/can't eat to balance my 80/10/10 more or less properly. I know I ate too much fat for dinner this evening, but I wanted a Friday night treat and a burger and pie was too good to pass up. But, honestly, if my idea of cheat food is a home made dehydrated vegan mushroom burger with from-scratch trimmings-well. I have very few problems, then.

The Dehydrated Mushroom Burger in it's Natural Habitat. 

I felt quite good all day, even though that counselling session totally aborted my plans for some salon time for myself and I forgot my phone at work so I won't have it for the weekend. I had a slight energy dip in the early afternoon, around 1, where I usually would have some caffeine but it wasn't as bad as previous days. Compared to most Fridays, when I'm a rage beast who can't wait to clock out, today was a cinch.

Here's what I ate today: pie in the sky!
as you can see, I should not have had pie AND burger...but it was the last piece of pie, and I am a weak weak woman when presented with appley-cinnamon-y goodness.

I Lost Six Pounds On This Diet-How?

But, seriously. how? I ate until I was stuffed yesterday and this morning I was 169.2

I ate almonds, avocado AND pie yesterday as well as waaaaay more than my recommended daily intake of dried fruit and I feel great! Having an unbroken nights sleep for the first time in weeks probably helped. 6 whole glorious hours!

As a side note, you should see my abs after all those crunches yesterday. Talk about instant results!

Off to work for another amazing day of stuffing my face with fruit. Today is definitely a great day. Maybe because it's Friday, maybe because I know I'm treating myself to a mani-pedi after work, but I feel really, really good. After 10 days, I can definitely say that this is a great way to do a full body reset. Let's hope the caffeine headaches are gone for good.

Happy Friday everyone!

Day 09: Going Ape for Snacks.

Today started poorly with an odd smoothie Incident, right out of the gate.

Breakfast started innocently enough, with a clean blender and a fridge full of fruit.

1 banana
1 cup of watermelon
1 orange
1 cup of blueberries
and...

a pear.

I love pears, but this guy was bad news- really fibrous.  My first glass of smoothie was ok; I mean, drinkable but sort of stringy, and chunky where it wasn't stringy and not delicious. The blueberry skins were all flakey and pulpy and it was just terrible.

When I went back for the rest to top my glass up, it had totally gelatinized in the bottom of the blender into accidental pudding. I had to eat it with a spoon. I guess it was the cool temperatures in my kitchen with the pear pulp...so strange. Not at ALL what I wanted for breakfast!

Well, you win some and you lose some.

Knowing that there would be dessert at dinner, I was abstemious with my fats today and only had 10 almonds for a mid morning snack...well, that and two bananas. How could I forget about the bananas?

Lunch was a coconut water, a pear, an apple and some of the best organic dried apricots I have ever eaten.

If you think you know dried apricots, those leathery orange chewy beasts that come in trail mix, you don't. Trust me. Splurge, treat yourself to some organic ones. (If you like apricots, that is.)

The first thing you notice is that they are a totally different colour. Instead of a uniform orange, they are a dark, rich mottled brown. They are all different shapes and sizes...just as if they came from real fruit! Imagine! And the *smell*, oh my goodness. Like rich fruitcake and apricot brandy all rolled up into one. Heady! And instead of being tough and chewy, the skins puncture pleasingly with the first bite, releasing the sweet, succulent rich interior onto your palette. It tastes like sunshine and melts like warm fruity butter.

So heady, in fact, that I may have eaten at least 15 of them during the course of the day. I might have a problem.  Do they make a 12 step programme for dried fruit? I might need one. Ever had a dried strawberry? My point exactly. Om nom.

As a result of all this dried fruit, my carbs for the day were sufficiently jacked (along with my calories) that I could wrestle dinner AND a piece of pie and come in at 80/15/5 for my percentages. Waaay low in protein still, especially since I worked out today.

OH, the strangest thing happened when I was working out! As a lark, I thought I'd see how many crunches I could do before my abs started to cramp. Normally I do sets of 50 at a time, and my abs start to get a little crampy around 35-40. But, not this time. I hit 50 without even trying, so I thought I'd just keep going until my abs cramped up.

I hit 120 before I got bored counting and just stopped- but I felt like I could go on forever. My muscles just didn't get oxygen starved. Crazy. I just poked them now and they're not sore at all. It's like I never did it. I'll try again tomorrow and report back.

Speaking of cramping muscles, I am getting some intestinal cramps from all those apricots. Learn from my weakness! Don't overdue the dried apricots.

Dinner was a spontaneous delight of Boston lettuce Mexi-wraps with guacamole, pico de gallo (home made!) yellow pepper, cilantro and cucumber. I had two. Also more DESSERT, holy jumpin' that apple cinnamon pie thinger is good.

Our random pico de gallo was:

1 onion
1 pint cherry tomatoes
pinch salt
pinch pepper
splash lime juice
1/2 cup cilantro
1 teeny hot red pepper
1 habanero
1/4 cup pickled jalapenos with jar sauce

pulsed in the food processor until tiny chunks.
WARNING: PRETTY SPICY!! It was so good I was eating it with a spoon. I miss spicy food.

I was a little sluggish getting up first thing, but once I'd showered and smoothied and walked the dog and puttered around I was on line enough to get a good workout in. I'm still feeling the effects of no caffeine, I'm guessing. I'm getting tired pretty easily in the evening. No headaches or anything today though, although my back is still a little stiff. I weighed myself this morning and I was still 170.2.



But, seriously, try the apricots.