Detox Day Twenty-One

I did it. I even avoided going to Twin Peaks tonight to make sure I finished correctly. I made some vegetable soup, from scratch. Not too bad either.

It's been a wild ride. Tomorrow, I'm set up to get a Jamba Juice for breakfast and a buffalo chicken sandwich for lunch. Maybe pizza for dinner. And Tums all the way through.

I'll weigh 200 pounds in no time.

Detox Day Nineteen

This isn't a diet anymore...it's a personal challenge from the universe to myself. Can I go three weeks without anything but fish, chicken, turkey, and vegetables? And with two days and change left, I'm now very confident that I can. Just seven meals and less than 56 hours to go.

Because this isn't necessarily about being that much healthier, apparently. I had my health screening this morning, and my numbers aren't a whole lot better than they were in August. I realize it was only two and a half weeks, but any impact that I've had was simply fixing any damage I did in Delaware and over the holidays.

It isn't about a lifestyle change. I'm going to go back to eating, for the most part, the same diet I was eating before.

And it certainly isn't about helping my social life, as my friends have continually teased the fact that I can't eat anything...their reward for having to alter where they go when they eat with me.

It's just a challenge...can I do it? And if I ever think I need to do it again, will I have recorded evidence that I already did?

Because as annoying as this process started, it hasn't been terrible. It's been annoying to keep the kitchen stocked with fresh fish and vegetables (and expensive). It's been annoying to get up and force myself to drink a gross protein shake every morning. And it's been really annoying to see a bunch of delicious food that I can't eat. I imagine Sunday will be like the first meal after being sick for a while...way better than usual.

But I've also bought some Tums just in case my stomach disagrees.

I'm ready for it to be over. But I'm proud that I've been able to get through it. And I'm hopeful that I can alter certain things (soda consumption, beef consumption, sodium consumption, etc.) in favor of a healthier lifestyle.

Detox Day Fifteen

One week to go. This time next week, I'm going to be off the diet and enjoying whatever foods I want. I've already decided that, one week from this exact moment, I'm going to be enjoying a nice Jamba Juice. I haven't had fruit in a while, and I love me some Jamba Juice. It's a nice healthy on-ramp to my normal routine. After that, I want some Carmine's pizza, a Jimmy John's Vito, a Ginger Broccoli with beef from Pei Wei, and a Twisted Root cheeseburger.

In fact, I have a couple weeks worth of foods that I want to eat again. But....is that the point of this?

Tucker told me that one of the big things that can come out of this is getting off of soda. My response is...I like soda. And while I've kicked any "habit" for Coke that I might've had, I'm not going to stop drinking it. And only because, deep down, I really don't want to. It may be be like a smoker who says they don't want to quit because they like smoking. But I do...I just like the taste of soda and how it goes with different foods.

And there's a chance that I'll eat so poorly in March that my diet in February is irrelevant. And, in that case, what was the point? Am I just torturing myself for no reason?

I hope not. I hope that I'm doing some good. Two weeks without sugar, without (for the most part), processed foods. About 90% of what I've eaten in the last two weeks, I've prepared myself. I've eaten a couple salads from chain restaurants, a cup of vegetable soup, and a couple fish dinners, and a Genghis Grill bowl with a tomato-garlic sauce.

Either way, no beef. No soda. No bread. No dairy. No fruit. A lot of vegetables, a lot of fish, and a lot of water.

I hope that the predominant thing that this accomplishes is an alteration of what I normally eat. I'm still going to drink Coke, but I don't drink it at home anyways. When I drink it, it's usually out to eat...and I'm going to dial down what I have with lunch at work (which I'd started doing every day). I'm still going to eat cheeseburgers and pizza and chicken fried steak and Italian sandwiches....but I'm going to do my best to work in more fish and vegetables and water.

Because I wasn't "unhealthy" before. I've lost about five pounds so far...which is almost all water weight, I'd assume. I look and feel a little bit better, but it isn't a remarkable change. I had a health checkup at work in August, and my numbers were fine. I have another one on Thursday, and we'll see if 18 days of the diet will have any impact on those numbers.

If there's any noticeable changes, I might have a change in heart. I might try and have a variation on the Tucker diet (where he's vegan six days a week and allows himself one day to be "bad"). If not, I'll do some sort of hybrid.

And I think, at this point, that's good enough for me.

Detox Day Eleven

I reached the halfway point at noon today. And while the last few days have been okay, today was a real challenge on a couple different fronts.

First of all, I was studying for a test last night, and I went to bed really late (for me). Late to bed and early to rise were difficult, and I'm finding less and less motivation every day to wake up and drink my stupid shake every morning.

Secondly, one of my main concerns coming into the diet was how I could handle lunch at work. There are loads of restaurants near my work, but I can only think of a couple that even fit within the parameters. Like I said before, I eat a lot of sandwiches and pizza and Chinese food at work. And while there are healthy selections of each of those things, none of it works with my guidelines.

So I've been trying to bring my lunch as much as possible. An easy thing to bring has been salad, but the diet gives specific dressings...and I've tried (and disliked) three of them. And the problem with bringing lunch to work is that there is nothing that I can eat in the building. The building's store is full of junk food, and the vending machines are even worse. So I was forced to eat a "less than delicious" salad as my only source of food.

Lunchtime is now depressing.

And, thirdly, I had the aforementioned test today. And it was more difficult than I'd anticipated...and, thus, took longer than I anticipated. Getting out at 8pm, I was starving. And I thought about places that I'd stopped at on my way home from class in the past (Pei Wei, Jersey Mike's, Chipotle, etc) but none of those places really works. So I had to come home and cook something. By the time I settled down to eat, it was about 8:45.

And I'm getting tired of fish. And vegetables. And water.

Just ten full days to go. Just six more workdays to go (I have Monday off). But it feels like forever.

Detox Day Seven

One week done.

If you want a word to describe the process, it would be "struggle." It's definitely been hard, and I'm really glad that I'm already a third of the way out of the woods.

As I said before, I've eaten what I wanted for my entire life. If someone was eating a delicious pizza nearby, I'd get one. If people were ordering Italian food, I'd order with them. If someone wanted ice cream, I was happy to join them. It really never mattered.

And that was the point of this, in a lot of ways. I needed to ween myself off foods that were bad, and I'm definitely doing that. Seven days of salad, broccoli, asparagus, cucumbers, and peppers. And while I've had a lot of delicious fish, chicken, and turkey...it's still been very difficult to find any joy in eating. I told Ashley that lunch time at work had become depressing, and it's true.

But I feel like this is going somewhere good. I'll hopefully lean up a bit, feel healthier, and lose cravings for some of the bad things I still eat.

There's still a long way to go. And it isn't going to get any easier.

Detox Day Two

I don't think this will be a regular, daily diary into what I'm doing on this diet, but I wanted to say that I hit a "wall" today. I'd read that it's very common for people on this diet to feel sluggish in the first few days with a headache. Well, that happened to me today. At the very end of the work day, I felt really sluggish with a decent headache. It was to the point where I really thought about taking a nap in my car just 25 minutes before my class was supposed to start.

With negative symptoms, I did what I do - I looked it up on the Internet. I read about the "myths" of a detox diet. How a lot of scientists don't think it does any good. And how some people think it can do harm. So I looked that up too....and a woman actually had a stroke doing a similar diet.

Ugh...why do I do that to myself?

But as soon as I got into class, I felt a little better. So maybe it's just a bit of a headache from the detoxification process, a complete lack of sugar and caffeine (perhaps I'm a bit addicted?), and a lack of sleep.

So I'm pushing ahead. Had more coconut oil, more cod liver oil, more fish, and more vegetables. Tomorrow, I'm supposed to eat out twice - for lunch and dinner. That should be interesting.

Detox Day One

Notes about my first day on the detoxification diet.

1. I miss sugar. Ice cream would've been great tonight.

2. I'm supposed to have a tablespoon of "good" oil with every meal. The two that were suggested were coconut oil and sesame oil. It is really gross to drink oil by itself.

3. Lunch at work is going to be difficult. I will typically eat a sandwich at lunch, but I can't have meat or bread. That's going to suck.

4. I'm also going to have to wake up 30 minutes early to make my breakfast shake. I don't like that either.

But all in all, one day down. Twenty to go.