Day 11: Awwww, Puddin'.

 My poor body is finally getting used to no caffeine (although I did just subconsciously type 'upset' instead of 'used'. It is to laugh) and I woke up and got kicking this morning without noticeable grogginess. I even got to sleep in this morning, thanks to a midnight walk with the dog (about 5k) that just tuckered her right out!

this is my dog for reference, since I talk about her a lot.

altogether now...awwwwww.

Anyway. I decided to mix it up a little bit and have just a juice, instead of a smoothie for breakfast-
for future reference, this makes exactly a pint. If you like your juice in pints, you're in luck!

1 cup watermelon
1 tangelo
1 cup of whole medium sized strawberries (about 5)
1 cup blueberries.

and I ate the banana seperately. The juice was incredibly invigorating and I could feel it doing me good right away. Thanks, fruit sugars!

For some reason I've been hungry all damned day. Again. I am guessing it's just par for the course with this cleanse- which is so odd for me. In the past, I've associated my cleanses with also abstaining from eating a lot, fasting and such. Being able to shovel fruit and vegetables into my face is pretty much the best.  The juice didn't have any almond milk in it , and I suspect that's why I got hungry again so soon. That and walking the dog.

Regardless, I needed a mid morning snack, which looked like 3 figs, a small handful of raisins and a handful of baby carrots.
...
which held me for about an hour, and then I decided to have a smoothie for lunch, since we'd recently re-stocked on spinach. Mmmm. Spinach smoothie.

You know, if you'd told me that I'd be craving spinach smoothies a month ago, I would have looked at you funny. But they're REALLY good!!!

1 cup almond milk
2 bananas
2 cups spinach.

blended well, with some more baby carrots on the side.

I can always tell when my body wants something badly, I'll just touch the glass to my lips and I blink and then I've inhaled the whole damned thing. Thanks, body! Keep up the good work.

a note on almond milk: if you're buying pre-made almond milk, not all brands are created equal. They vary *substantially* in caloric and fat contents, so always read the labels! You can get almond milk as low as 30 calories a cup and as high as 150+. Caveat Emptor.

I had a busy afternoon cleaning the house so I was in the mood for something substantial for an early dinner/afternoon 'snack'. I opted to have another of the mushroom burgers that we had last night for dinner. They are even better the next day; residual over-moisture is gone and you're just left with a nutty, mushroomy taste with spices. Delightful! They're pretty fatty though which was good since I'd had an active morning that continued into the afternoon- more cleaning, a decent walk to replenish our fruit supplies and playing with the dog (and the boyfriend).

I was still holding strong with that mushroom burger when it was dinner time, so I just had some crudite  with some dip I made. Most dip recipes are super delicious because they're sneakily high in fat. Nuts, nut butters, oil etc. I'm just looking for something to jazz up my cauliflower florets, and not add a lot of extra anything except flavour.

So, I headed to the fridge for Food Science (!) and ended up with this:

1 zucchini
2 cups diced eggplant
1 cup of dill
2 T garlic
1 T dehyd onion
dash lime juice
pepper
salt
red pepper flakes

Its not bad- It would be richer if, of course, it had some cashews or tahini blended into it. But it has a tangy fresh green taste, is zero fat and zings up the raw veggies so, mission accomplished.  The eggplant imparts quite a creamy texture to the dip which is nice!

But after looking at my stats for the day, I realised that I was way too low on carbs so I had to eat some more as a little after dinner snack. WOE IS ME. I whipped up this little number, mint chocolate pudding.

2 bananas
3/4 cup almond milk
1 T raw cocoa powder
2-3 sprigs of fresh mint as desired or mint essence, 1 tsp.

blend and pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes and devour like rabid wolverines. OM NOM NOM.

my energy has been really good all day and my mood has been great. I feel like I got a lot done today, and that always makes me feel super. However, doing this all day has made me hungry all day and I feel a bit like I've spent the whole day eating. Which I suppose is the opposite of a problem, since I do love food.  I can imagine that, for others, it could get old pretty fast though.

Here's what I ate today: I thought I saw a pudding cup! I weighed myself this morning and was 168.8lbs.

Let's Get Physical!

This raw cleanse is really working well for my physical fitness!

The morning after I decided to see how many crunches I could do before my abs started cramping (and stopped at 120 because I got tired of counting, not because I got cramped) my abs started to really pop, which shouldn't be surprising.

The surprising this was that I had no muscle ache, either in my abs or my arms, which I had also worked out that day. I had obviously exerted the muscles and toned and gotten new muscle (I build muscle very easily, which is really funny for a long-time vegan. Take that, whey protein!) but I didn't feel like I had done *anything* the day before.

I walk a *lot* during my days at work, and I am constantly up and down the stairs, often carrying heavy boxes. I've noticed in this past week that it seems that I can feel every individual muscle in my legs and glutes as I go up and down the stairs. I'm much more conscious of the movement of the individual muscles and how the are working to move me. It's pretty neat. Also I find myself getting less out of breath during a hike than I used to. I feel internally as if my lower intestines are a little bloated, but when I look in the mirror I'm waaaay flatter through the tummy than I feel. Body dysmorphia is weird.

I'm going to work out again in a few minutes, and we'll see what my body does, this time!

I love experimenting on my body with different diets, cleanses and fasts. It's a great way to learn how your body works, what you as an individual respond best to in terms of exercises and nutrition. Our bodies are an awe-inspiring flesh machine that we have to tinker with. Really, it's the only thing we can completely call our own!

Be fearless in your pursuit of self-knowledge. It's a lot of fun.

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.

Body Talking.

I just want to document separately some of the changes that have been going on during this detox, for future reference.

WARNING: There may be poop talk. No pictures though, seriously. Who do you think I am.

onwards!

a) breakouts. My skin is usually really good, but I've been breaking out in the past week, more than I have in a decade. I'm told that this is often a side effect of detoxing, but I hate it and it can stop. It's been four or five around my temples, and I thought it might be where my hair was touching my skin but I'm not sure. It's unusual, that's for sure. I also had one on my neck, and one on my back. Gross. It also might be due to the increased amount of sugar in all the fruit, but I'd hate to think so. Guess I'll go buy some teatree oil.

b) muscle aches. My middle back, below my shoulder blades but just above my waist is a very unusual place for me to have back pain- I always carry any back pain directly on top of my shoulders, as anyone who has ever tried to give me a massage knows. I've also experienced muscle ache in my very lower back, down into my glutes and upper thighs. Again, very unusual and I've not done any extra or different exercise to account for this. It could be aching from a lack of protein, I'm not sure. I don't seem to have lost any muscle tone so far. I think this is definitely a detoxing from caffeine, especially the two days when the middle back ache travelled up my neck and squeezed my brain into an almost-migraine headache. That was Not Fun.

c) energy levels so far, hard to tell since I've had such broken sleeps. However, on days when I've had a fairly normal sleep, I've felt great and had constant energy all day. I do have to keep eating more often though to maintain this. If I go too long between meals my energy does drop right off, which is to be expected.

d) weight loss. Partly due to lack of alcohol (that most delicious of empty caloric energy!) and partly due to the fact that my stomach has been full so I *feel* full, but it's been full of raw fruit and vegetables- so I've been consuming less calories overall. I lost 5 pounds last week, without trying to. Surely some of that is the fabled 'water weight' that happens when one starts a diet, but weight loss isn't the main goal of this experiment, just a fun side effect. We will see what happens for the rest of the month.

e) sensory increase. My sense of smell and taste have gotten way better. I was woken from a dead sleep by the smell of an orange the other day. On the down side, wow, people smell bad. Garbage smells *really* bad, even frozen outdoor garbage. I can smell it a block away. Cigarettes? Don't get me started. On the extremely plus side my libido has been way up, since it is so attached to smell.
Mmmm. Skin.

f) elimination. I have to be the only person on the planet who can switch a raw fruit and vegetable diet and experience mild constipation. Come to think of it, this also might account for my skin breaking out Seriously. I think I have to drink more water, Gods know I cannot eat more fibre!! HAH. The second day into this my urine became almost clear, and has stayed that way. Now, a week into this adventure- I have two words for you. Green Poop.

That is all. Happy Thursday!

Day 08: Pesto, Chango!

Another day, another very broken nights sleep! Don't tell me about missing caffeine, not after getting a broken 4 hours of sleep last night. You see, we once again made the mistake of lying down and snuggling...and waking up almost 3 hours later. It's pretty much impossible to get a solid night's sleep, after waking up from a huge nap at 10:30!! Weighed myself this morning, down another smidgeon despite best applied bananas. (170.2lbs.)

I was wide awake and bopping until 2, and had to get up at 7 as usual. Blech. Especially since a *certain dog* woke me up at 5:45 and I couldn't get back to sleep for quite a while.  I found that my back-my whole back, right from my shoulders down to my lowerest back is quite sore. A super lady I don't see enough came to see me at work today (yay!!) and she is no stranger to cleanses. She said that whenever she's doing a caffeine-elimination cleanse her back gets sore too, especially her lower back almost into her glutes/sciatic area. I was experiencing quite a bit of stiffness and soreness through there a few days ago, it's good to get that kind of feedback! Dammit caffeine, why do you have to hurt so bad. I thought we were friends.

So, today was a complete caffeine craving day, let me tell you. But I didn't cave! Not even a little bit, so I am a teensy bit proud of myself. Good on ya, self.
(why thank you!)

As to not repeat the mistakes of yesterday, I had a big fat smoothie this morning for breakfast:

1 cup almond milk
1 cup blueberries (so juicy!)
2 cups spinach
1 cup parsley
1 banana
1 cup strawberries.
1 ping pong ball of ginger.

and whirrrrrrrrrrr. So good. I'm adding ginger a lot more to give the ol' immune system a boost- seems like everyone is super sick nowadays, and I have *no* interest in getting sick in a month that I can't have tea. No sir, no way.

But my body, in pure defiance of this, was hungry again shortly after I got to work so I had an early mid-morning snack #1 of a banana and some prunes. Don't laugh, prunes are tasty.

Which held me for about 90 minutes, and then I needed mid-morning snack #2 so I had...another banana-and an apple! So good. Apples are good value for the money, I always feel. That much chewing makes me feel like I got my snack on, unlike bananas, which I seem to be tossing back like a hungry monkey.

Lunch, probably because I'd had a snack about an hour previously, was another banana and some coconut water. I love that stuff. Also, I ate a light lunch because I knew I was going to be eating Johnny's Super Secret Surprise Dessert this evening, and I didn't want to mess with my percentage numbers.

My mid-afternoon snack was a couple tablespoons of guacamole, shamelessly straight from the bowl. I needed the energy on the go to make-

DILL PICKLE KALE CHIPS!

They are processing in the dehydrator as we speak and I don't want to speak too soon but it smells preeeettttty pickle-y in here. Since I was on a role, I also made some shredded zucchini pasta (which is currently marinating) and some low fat raw vegan pesto for a late dinner, washed down with another smoothie. I can't get enough of those things.

Zucchini Pasta:
This is pretty flexible; basically you need some acids to break down the zucchini a little bit and soften it. Many recipes have quite a bit of olive oil as well, which to my mind defeats the purpose. Today I did:

1 large zucchini, peeled and then stripped with a peeler into, peeled strips. You know what I mean!
1 T water
1 T soy sauce/braggs/etc.
1.5 T apple cider vinegar
a few grinds of fresh pepper
1T minced garlic
a few shakes of onion salt
a teeny pinch of fancy pink salt.
1 tsp lemon juice.

marinate for at least an hour. Some websites say overnight, but wow. Nope. I am not that organised.

The same goes with the pesto- most recipes are *swimming* with olive oil. No thanks!

1.5 cups fresh basil
1 heaped T pine nuts
2.5 T nutritional yeast
1 T minced garlic
1tsp olive oil, or to taste.
pinch of salt

This has a lighter, fresher and greener taste than most pestos, as it is so light in oil. The nutritional yeast replaces the parmesan cheese with pure deliciousness!

Here's what I ate today: pure deliciousness! and I did OK on my percentages as well- final tally, 79/14/8. I still need more protein. My mood was much better today- I felt a few minor dips, but they were quickly corrected with application of banana. I do often get a deterioration of mood when my blood sugar drops, so I'm no stranger to what's going on there.

Having more Super Secret Dessert for breakfast will probably help with the protein, and also with happy-makings.