Multi-Day Mono-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 6

Journal:
Guys/Gals, I made it! I honestly can’t believe I made it through 5 days without any type of food. Oh my goodness. I was so scared of doing this journey, not sure how I would be able to bypass situations where food would be all around me, or with my students even opening their food for them. But I did it and never even once even picked up a piece of food. I am so proud of how far I’ve made it on this journey.

Now last night, I did manage to sleep pretty much through the night, only waking up once instead of multiple times like the night before. And once again, I woke up feeling like a normal human being. The stomach pain was gone and I was able to get out of bed with no problems this morning! I went straight upstairs and got my first apple juice. 🙂 Yes, for 3 days I will be drinking apple juice. I have always found apple juice easy on my stomach so I figured this would be a great beginning juice for my body.

I, of course, was still a little worried about how my body would react to the apple juice. Though after the first few sips and only a very minor uncomfortable feeling from my stomach, I knew it was going to do down well. Oh how happy I was! The taste of apple juice was so amazing, although I noticed there was a slight off-taste. Come to find out, my tongue was covered in white. I had heard about this happening from dry and water fasters but had not noticed it until today. Yuck. Thankfully, it does come off with either scraping or rigorous tongue brushing. I have a cleaning at the dentist tomorrow and I can only imagine what they would have said to me with a tongue like that!

A question I have been asked is what is the difference between juice “fasting” and “juice feasting.” Juice fasting is where you are on a specified amount of juices (specific calories). Juice feasting is where you are still limited to only juice, but you do not have to stick with a certain caloric guideline. Now of course, you do not want to turn it into juice binging where you are over consuming more than your body wants, but if you know your body well, you should be able to tell when you are really hungry or not. I am choosing to juice feast because I do not believe in limiting calories. Yes, I just spent 5 days eliminating calories from my diet, but that was to fast. If you make a decision to fast, then you are usually doing it for a specific reason outside of weight loss such as for religious reasons or body healing. Since I am spanning the healing spectrum, mine was to experience the healing aspects though I was also intrigued through my walk in Christianity to partake in such a journey because God calls us to take care of our bodies and this journey is hopefully going to help me see how to get my body to be the best that it can be. Plus, as I mentioned in my introduction to this journey, it was also an experiment to see if we can erase the hold that food has on us. Yes, in the long run we depend on food to live; we have to. But instead of not being able to pass by food that is not good for us and simply having intense cravings or even those that can’t help but binge on food because they can’t seem to stop, that is another part of my journey. And so far, I am beating all of those typical situations and for that reason, this journey has been good.

So I managed to actually have a pretty good day at school. Though I seemed to have to talk to my class a little more than normal, one of my toughest students actually had one of his best days today so that alone was phenomenal. And how did the juice treat me? So good. I didn’t feel like falling asleep all the time; I actually did not plan my walks. I didn’t feel like sitting down all the time; I felt confident when I walked. I just felt so much better.

Do I still feel like eating food? You know, my thoughts towards food have decreased a lot. Sure, the nice croissant (I have a student that has been bringing croissants to school everyday) does sound nice, but just having some sweet, delicious, pure apple juice to sip on all day is absolutely amazing. My body can definitely tell that the energy is coming back.

Is my apple juice fresh pressed? Unfortunately no. In fact, the apple juice I have for today and tomorrow are not even organic. I did my best to find juices that were organic, but the price difference is astronomical. So you will see that most of my juices are organic, but today’s and tomorrow’s are not. The one qualification for my juices were that they had to only include one ingredient: the ingredient being whichever fruit whose juice I was drinking that day.

So, I’m going to hand out a TMI WARNING again because this next part is not so pretty. I will keep it to one paragraph. I don’t really enjoy sharing these parts because they can be considered “gross”, but incase someone does decide to embark on this journey or one similar, I want you to be prepared for things that can happen. If you read my day 5 entry, you will notice that I couldn’t “eliminate”. Well, to my horror/surprise, I don’t even have to try today. Lo’ and behold, it’s essentially a watery liquid. Yes, I know it’s graphic. It did go back to normal by the end of the day, but the first half of the day was the adjustment period. My stomach “gurgled” more than I think it has ever gurgled before with the adjustment of an “energy source” coming back into its system. It made today a little trickier since I’m obviously working but I managed to take a tiny break away from the classroom whenever I needed it so it worked out alright.

So after I came home, I actually did not feel tired at all! However, I did lay down to watch some YouTube again, and noticed the beginning of that awful acid reflux/heartburn feeling again. Thankfully, it didn’t really turn into anything.

I did get up and go to the gym, although I kind of wondered afterwards if I should have done the cardio or not. I did 30 minutes of easy stationary cycling. The reason being, remember that clenching of muscles feeling I described previously? I had that feeling bad tonight. The best way I can think to describe it is to imagine doing a crunch with all of your ab muscles straining, then someone punching you. But instead of being repetitious, it was a continuous state. Now that is a feeling for the books but one that I hope goes away soon. Yes, I did try bending backwards to stretch my abs and to see if my stomach muscles would pull, but they didn’t meaning they weren’t actually always engaged. For some reason that was just the feeling I was having.

For the first time all week, I actually felt tired. I tried to stay up past 11, but my eyes were fighting me. As much as I still wanted to do things, this actually made me happy because instead of me having to decide when I go to bed because I’m not “that tired”, my body actually was acting normal and demanded sleep. This I can appreciate.

Review of Symptoms:
Acne is worse and yet the same. The pimples are still more pale than before, but I have tiny bumps all over my face. I’m not appreciating it. But I have also heard of this happening as a detox byproduct. There is a reason why the saying goes: It will get worse before it gets better. My tongue was COVERED in a white substance. Again, this is something I’ve heard is associated with detox so tongue scraping is now something I have to do. I haven’t reported this in awhile, but my skin still stays red more easily than before. My hair is still less greasy than it normally would be by this point. Had more energy, feeling stronger. Internal “movement” was much easier today. Heartburn/acid reflux was only the most minimal while laying down this evening. I had a constant feeling of ab muscle clenching while a dull ache of a punch to the stomach at the same time that lasted throughout the evening. My body actually demanded sleep around 11:00 pm which is awesome!

Weight at the end of the day = 180.8 lbs (0 lbs down in 24 hours, total of 8 lbs down in 5 days)

Total Calories = 1811.2 (99% carbs, 1% protein, 0% fat)

When It All Takes An Interesting Turn…

I wrote last night about all the appointments I’ve been to lately and all the things I’m finding out. But I don’t think I was quite ready for this morning’s appointment. It took an interesting turn.

This morning was my first non-accident related physiotherapy appointment. I simply was going for assistance in my flexibility in the single direction of bending to touch my toes or sitting at a proper 90 degree angle. I can’t do it. I’ve been working on stretching and rolling for the last year or more and have seen no progress. In fact sometimes, I’ve regressed. So I’m doing what I can to get help.

The physiotherapist was very nice. She was actually a stand-in for whom will be my permanent therapist. What she found out is that I pivot around one certain spot on my lower back, that my hamstrings are incredibly tight which is unusual for someone of my age, that my right side is way worse than my left side, that my pelvis was a little twisted, as well as confirmed some of the same things that my chiropractor had already said. But the worse was something I had a problem dealing with, and it was this: Scoliosis.

When you hear just that word, it hits hard. Never in my life would I have ever thought I had a condition such as scoliosis. But what I really had to let sink in was that she said it was a SLIGHT scoliosis that may be fixable. Her assumption is that I have developed it and have not always had it, thus making it much less serious and much easier to fix.

The Physio did a lot of manual work, twist, popping, pressing, etc… It wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’ve ever had done, in fact it was quite painful at times. But it was then followed up with heat and shock therapy and I left with an exercise to practice to try and balance out my left and right side. I also have a request for x-rays of my entire back for her to examine.

Of course, by the time I went to my chiropractor appointment later on, my neck was a mess, my jaw area was a mess from the dental work the day before, but my lower back looked awesome; physio worked hard!

Sometimes we pass off little things as NOTHING. For my entire life, my mother and grandmother have been telling me to fix my posture, and I always hated gym class or much physical activity. I never started looking into health and fitness until university and only serious into fitness since my final year of university. That means I have years of bad posture and avoiding doctors and any problems I thought I may have and let them build on themselves to the point I am now.

Guys, get everything checked out. I mean, you can tell the difference between something that’s actually not right and something that probably isn’t that bad, but seriously, watch your body and judge appropriately. If something doesn’t seem right, go get it looked at. You never know what your ignorance may cause. My hope right now is that I really don’t have scoliosis or that if I do have it, that it can be reversed and maybe someday I’ll have the privilege to at least bend over and touch my toes or sit at a 90 degree angle. Yes, it’s something simple, but it’s something I’ve watched all of my family and so many other people do easily. I just want my body to move freely and I want to see progress. It’s so frustrating to go through so much discomfort, pushing yourself to just reach a little further and somedays being able to reach far less than you could the day before. It’s time to be fixed, and whether it’s scoliosis or not, I refuse to let that determine my reflection of myself. I’m determined to beat this, whatever it may be and I’m determined to do it the best I can with the help I need. No more avoiding doctors, no more avoiding things because of fear or pain. I’m going to get it done before it gets worse.

Do what you can people! Keep your body in the best shape you can because you only get one body, and you’re going to need it your entire life! And if you’ve got some time, send a little prayer that the doctors and I will figure out what’s really going on and be able to fix it.

Thanks guys. Hope you have a great weekend!