75 hours < 30 days

As you may have noticed (or not), I'm back to eating solid foods. It was a very difficult week for lots of reasons, but I'm still pretty pleased with the outcome.

I like the cleanse and understand the concept and benefits of fasting, but it really wasn't working for my current situation. Perhaps if I was single or away from my family for a while this would have been a lot easier. I was strongest when I could focus on myself and what I needed, but that wasn't feasible for much of the time I was on the master cleanse.

I made it through that third day by sheer willpower (which was nice to confirm I had). Upon some friends' suggestions, I tried a laxative tea that night and saved the salt water flush for the next morning. I started early so that I could be "normal" by the time the kids woke up, but I was still knocked down at 10 am. In fact, I only climbed out of bed when the din of the kid's foraging their own breakfast became too loud to rest comfortably.

And that's where my biggest concern lied. I didn't like the person I became on the cleanse. Since I was stressed with having to be in the kitchen near food, preparing food but not being able to eat food, I started taking it out on the kids. I knew I needed to keep my distance, I wanted to keep my distance, but I wasn't able to in our current lifestyle situation.

And I didn't like how the kids were faring. If I was doing this to be healthier and teach good food values to my children, it was running counterproductive to them eating more food out of a box or having nothing but four slices of toast for breakfast because I wasn't there to help them.

Then there was my preteen daughter, who became interested in what I was doing and was blown away by the idea that I wasn't going to eat again until Mother's Day. I would rather she formed solid, healthy habits when it comes to food instead of getting the idea that she can eat garbage and "make it all better" by eating a selective diet for a week or two. Again, this may be easier if I didn't have so many young, impressionable eyes watching me.

So, I feel good about the three days I was able to accomplish. I know I cleaned out some gunk and the lemonade is still yummy enough to have a cleanse day once a month or something. I'm still trying to release all the water I'm retaining from the two days the salt water flush didn't work.

The kids, hubby, and I are happier and more contented now that we're all on the same program and we don't have to make different things for different family members. We're now on the program of healthy, organic foods (which was my intention all along) so it really looks like everyone wins. The kids have even become focused enough about it that they've written down recipes from cooking shows that they want to try.

I'd call that a success.

Day 3 - Stuck in the Muck

Today was HARD. As in diamond hard.

Hubby had the day off, so luckily I could step away from the breakfast waffles without looking back. But then . . . oh, then . . . my daughter and I visited our local farmers' market because, well, we've never gone to this one before. I was just fine until I accepted an offered sample of chocolate banana bread and actually put it in my mouth before I realized what I was doing. I spit it out immediately to the utter horror of the saleslady and tried to explain it had nothing to do with the bread in question. The day just went downhill from there.

My daughter had a little birthday get-together which involved making and frosting chocolate cupcakes, serving veggie/chicken burgers with chips and carrots, making pastena (a family pasta recipe that is super easy and super yummy), and making spaghetti with a glorious garlic meat sauce. This all while I'm trying to stay out of the kitchen since my willpower is scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl (so to speak) and my food cravings - especially yummy, warm, gooey food - are off the charts.

My oh-so-helpful husband keeps offering me more water (ain't he wonderful?!), but then turns around and ruins my sons dinner which requires me to step in the fix more food. I called my mother twice to talk me down from the ledge of ending this crazy experiment right now, but I'm not sure how helpful she was.

She was useful in pointing out that my recent obsession with Food and Health was not serving me well right at this moment and that maybe I should spend the day away from food, physically and mentally, by knitting or reading or something else. She was right, of course. I'm reading two books with a food theme, I have a number of camping cookbooks for next week's adventure, and I have oodles of regular cookbooks I've been perusing to get reacquainted with cooking good meals from scratch. Being on this health kick was one of the main reasons I wanted to detox. Today, however, that wasn't enough. I wanted to just fast forward to the end of all this when I would be able to eat healthy food again. This self-deprivation sucks.

My problem (well, one of my problems) is that I know I could, technically, stop any time. No one is holding a gun to my head to force me to only drink lemonade. I think part of the problem is that I haven't been able to get the hang of this yet.

Last night, since I was so late finishing my lemonade, my tummy wasn't fully empty when I did the salt water flush. So even though I raised the amount of salt, it had a hard time getting past a stomach full of lemonade. Two hours later, after feeling sick the entire time, I eventually got some results, but nothing like I was expecting. And then I immediately vomited all the salt water left in my stomach.

Okay, another lesson of what not to do. So today I made sure I finished all my lemonade by 6 pm. I'm finishing tonight off with a laxative tea (as directed) and I'm going to try a salt water flush in the morning to guarantee an empty stomach. I'll just have to get up early so that I'm done with everything before the kids get up.

That's the plan. Either that, or I eat a couple dozen chocolate easter bunnies.

Day 2 - Improvement

Well, from one extreme to the other. Today I was so successful at not drinking all my lemonade in the morning, that I'm now still drinking the last quarter of my daily allotment. I have got to improve on that tomorrow.

I kept on plan today despite many temptations - friends offering to share their goodies, grocery store samples, even hallucinatory scents while out hiking with friends. That was the weird one since I was smelling the garlic vinegar chips (fries) that come with Spud's fish and chips. Anyone in West Seattle willing to ship me some??

I persevered, however, mainly by ignoring my household duties and reading on my bed. I find that it's still difficult for me to be in the kitchen (or elsewhere in the house) doing "normal" things, because then my mind wants to do other "normal" things that I would do simultaneously like E-A-T.

The salt water flush yesterday was a no-go, so I'm going to up the salt from a 1/2 Tablespoon to 2 Tablespoons. We'll see if that makes any difference.