The Write-Off Day – Healing Journey Day 23

Journal:
So, today was a planned write-off. Yes, I planned it as a write-off. Now that the day is over, am I regretting it? Yes, actually I am. I feel like I just started cleansing the little bit of cooked food out of my system thoroughly with my banana day and my juice day, and I’ve filled myself with stuff that may stuff-up my digestion all over again. And since today was a planned write-off day, I made a few mistakes that I will explain.

This morning, I had to get up at 6:00 am to get a shower and get ready to leave. I received four pears in my latest Organic Box that looked ready to go. So I figured they would be an easy breakfast to eat quickly. However, I don’t think they were ripe enough because the one pear that I did eat was not good. So I only managed to eat half before throwing it out. That did not work. I did manage to pack some red grapes and a plum for the drive, but between being tired and talking, I only managed to eat about a cup of grapes before arriving for our day-long meeting.

So why didn’t I just take juice with me on this day? Well, being that the meeting was in a church, I didn’t feel right taking a large bottle of juice in with me. That being said, I only have one small water bottle to take with me and that would not last me the day. Yes, I could have left juice in the car, but if it was hot, the juice could have gone bad. And not just that, I didn’t take my own car as I carpooled with someone else so I would have had to bother them for the keys each time I needed to refill my bottle. So that is why I allowed myself a write-off day. Again, if I could go back, I would have put in the extra effort to take the juice, but we live and learn… right? I’m making these mistakes for you so you can learn from me. That’s the whole purpose of sharing this journey with you.

So during the meeting, I started getting hungry. They had given us a new bottle of water, but I didn’t eat enough in the morning to concentrate for four hours until lunch. So I dug around in my bag and found a crunchy peanut Clif bar. Was it good? It was alright. It actually was probably just like I remembered them: good but with a zing that is not my completely favourite part. However, it held me over until lunch.

For lunch, they had a catering company come in. I actually have had the food from this company before during one of our conference-wide teacher’s meetings. I had bean sprout salad, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, rice-filled cabbage rolls, corn, steamed veggies, sautéed veggies (could have done without this one), a whole-grain bun and some vegan meatballs in a sweet and sour sauce. There were no vegan desserts, so I did not indulge in that. I mean, the food was an awesome break from the sweetness of juices. It was definitely a savoury meal. BUT I lost interest about halfway through the meal and wished I had my juice. Man, it’s so weird learning how my body has changed. It really is. I was not tempted whatsoever by the non-vegan items there (again, they don’t serve meat but a lot are vegetarian so dairy is an issue). And even though I’ve been wanting savoury things for such a long time, a little goes a long way.

Following lunch, we had another four and a half hours of meeting. Thankfully, I got a lot of work done while the meeting was going on as I had brought work with me. So really, it was not a total waste of a day. I at least was being productive! Naturally, I was not hungry whatsoever as this food was heavy in my stomach. I didn’t even finish the plate… I honestly couldn’t. I can’t eat what I used to!

When the meeting was finally over, we headed over to what used to be the ABC store. They recently changed the name of it and I honestly can’t remember what it is! But either way, they sell all kinds of vegan and vegetarian food items as well as books and all kinds of music and kid’s things. It’s one of my favourite stores. Since we didn’t have a lot of time and I was also catching up with a friend in the store, I grabbed a quick treat of vegan jerky for the trip home. Now this is something I shouldn’t have done. I didn’t really need it. This is when I discovered that old habits die hard! Even when I have a “write-off” day, I need to remember that just because I can have something doesn’t mean I have to. It’s better not to stuff yourself with junk that you will regret later. Really decide if it’s worth it instead of just doing it. Again, learn from me.

We didn’t get home until 7:00 pm. It truly was a late day. In my e-mail, a few days ago, I received a coupon for a free 6″ sub at Subway. So I decided that I would get supper from there. I had a 6″ veggie sub with almost all the veggies, a bit of mustard and some sweet onion sauce. I know it may sound weird, but it’s actually good. It was much lighter than lunch so it sat a little better in my stomach. Still, I’m looking forward to my juice day tomorrow. How weird is that?

The weird thing about coming home after Subway though was my spurt of energy. I just had so much energy that I went out to my stairs and did 2 sets of 10 step ups for each leg on them. Random energy bursts to exercise? I support this! And I wasn’t even done yet…

I went and sat down for a few minutes, but decided I still had some more energy to go. So I put on some good music and did a “Fight Club Workout”. It went something like this:
1. Warm-up: 5 minutes of a basic left and right punch
2. 12 Lunges with Front Kicks (each side)
3. 1 minute of the warm-up
4. 12 Turn, Block, and Punches (each arm)
5. 1 minute of the warm-up
6. 12 Head Crushers (each side)
7. 1 minute of the warm-up
8. 12 Push-Ups (on my knees)
9. 1 minute of the warm-up
Repeat circuit one more time.

Man, it was such a fun workout. I was a bit worried as I heard quite a bit of “snapping” as I threw punches (I’ve had absolutely no training in this area) but I don’t think I injured myself so it’s all good!

After the fun workout, I made a mango smoothie. Oh my goodness! I wasn’t going to take a picture today because I try not to encourage eating the food that shouldn’t be eating yet (aka I should be on juices and thus should only show juice pictures) but these mangoes were DELICIOUS! I bought these 14 mangoes about a week ago and they were hard as a rock. Only 4 of them have softened so I’m still waiting for the others. But these 4 were so good and made such a delicious drink. Now these I could eat all day. I’m really beginning to think that if I had properly ripened fruit in the right seasons, this journey would be going a lot better than it is. But we do the best with what we got! I mean, do you see the colour of this thing? So good…

After drinking my super satisfying smoothie, I got ready for bed. It has been a long but good day. I’m hoping this will be the start of a slightly easier work week!

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same.
-Digestion on hold… again…
-Heavier stomach feeling from eating so much.
-Thick saliva again.
-Hair is so-so greasy feeling today. Still a little better than normal.
-Energy was awesome today.
-Very productive.

Weight at the end of the day = 182.6 lbs (up 8 lbs from yesterday! Woah!)

Total Calories = approx. 2560 (56% carbs, 21% fat, 23% protein… I ate a lot today! I’m actually surprised the macro split isn’t worse than this!)

Water Fasting – Healing Journey Day 3

Journal:
Well, after being so tired yesterday, I expected to be as tired today. I didn’t go to sleep until after midnight, so I set four alarms to  make sure I got up this morning. Sadly to say, for whatever reason, I woke up wide awake at 4:00 a.m. Of all the things that could happen, I wake up at 4:00. I didn’t wake up starving nor dying of thirst, but completely was wide awake. It makes no sense to me.

So what did I do at 4:00 in the morning? I decided it was time to consume some water. Sadly, it didn’t come with the fireworks I was expecting. It was good, but I honestly think of could have done dry fasting for another day. However, since I work with students, I don’t want to take the risk of being completely active all day long and not have my body running on anything. So breaking into my water fast is the process I’ve begun.

So what did it actually feel like to drink water again? It puts me in a hesitant state. I’m not sure my body is fully accepting it to be honest. I feel like there is a possibility of running to the washroom at some point and also a possibility of vomiting the water back up. It’s unsettling for sure. My energy is not where I want it to be; it’s not as good as last night, but not as bad as yesterday morning so I began praying early to survive the day.

Thankfully, I did survive the day with only one person commenting on how tired I looked. I also was yawning a lot when she said it, so that was a clue.

I couldn’t drink very much in the morning. In fact, though I had imagined I would be guzzling water throughout the day, I really don’t think my body was ready for too much water. It almost “hurt” my stomach without actually being painful. But around midday, water began to go down easier (6 hours past the initial sip). The feeling in my stomach is gone for the most part though food does sound good. It was a test to go through two snack times and a lunch period sitting with my students while all of them are eating. The smells are what got to me the most. But somehow, I still found it fairly easy to bypass the food they were eating and the emergency stash I have by my desk.

Following school, I had a meeting with a parent. It was a positive meeting and the mother was so wonderful, she even brought me a bag of tomatoes from her garden. Oh, how I would LOVE to eat those tomatoes. But since it will be quite awhile until I will be eating tomatoes, I am looking at options of either buying a dehydrator to dehydrate them or perhaps finding a method of canning. I am sticking with this journey 100% and not willing to skip stages. I’m holding out well.

Once the meeting was over, I came home and took a nap. It felt so good to take a nap though I freaked out when I woke up thinking it was 7:30 in the morning and I was going to be late for work. It took a few minutes to sink in that it was only 7:30 at night and that everything was going to be ok.

It took awhile for me to get up because I was very cold. I am finding that my body is reacting more extremely to temperatures. For example, when my heater is on, even on the lowest setting, I am pretty warm, almost too warm for blankets. But when the heater is off and the basement gets the cool feeling again, I start freezing so much I cannot even fathom getting out from the blankets. I’m having a hard time finding a happy medium at the moment and I’m hoping this will sort itself out.

I did go to the gym today though I was heavily debating whether I should or not, especially after feeling so tired all day. However, I’ve been working out for years, so I figured that I cannot completely stop now. Aside from cardiovascular benefits, I considered the fact that exercise might actually help me feel warm again after feeling cold for awhile. It worked, and I actually was stronger than I though I would by cycling on a stationary bike. My pace was much slower than normal, but I wasn’t about to make this an all-out sweating session, but rather just a health activity.

So now it is the end of the day and I’m in bed, about to go to sleep. I am so looking forward to only two more days of water fasting and finally getting to drink fruit juice on Thursday. I’m hoping that the lemon slices I’ll be adding to my water on Wednesday will give my body a little energy kick with the most minimal of calories but still something compared to nothing.

Review of symptoms:
This morning, my face actually had a sign of improvement: there were no new pimples! Almost every morning I’ve had at least one new one if not several. Perhaps my body has had enough time cycling everything on the inside without having outside substances to deal with that it is able to concentrate on healing my acne. This is good news for me! My energy is lacking; not horribly like yesterday morning, but not as awesome as last night. I was also shaky again this morning and though it is certainly not as bad as yesterday, it is definitely noticeable. Though I wasn’t able to drink much in the morning, it picked up throughout the day. In total, I think I drank about 1.25-1.5L of water today. Much less than expected, but not bad for my body to adjust to. My body is reacting to temperatures in extreme ways and I’m really hoping this will sort itself out. Something I didn’t expect but totally noticed today was that my teeth are whiter! I haven’t done anything special. In fact, I’ve just been using my clay toothpaste. But the yellow tinge they had before starting my fasting is almost completely gone and they are looking pretty white. This is an exciting side effect!

Weight at the end of the day: 185.4 (down .2 lbs from yesterday, a total of 3.6 pounds lost in 48 hours)

Total Calories = 0

Dry Fasting – Healing Journey Day 2

Journal:
This morning was rough. I’m not gonna lie. After having such an energetic and fairly normal day yesterday, I seriously think I could have laid in bed and slept on and off all day. I did NOT want to get up this morning whatsoever. I was a little hungry, but even more so, I was extremely thirsty. Part of the reason may be the heater I’ve been turning off and on in my basement room; it seems to dry things out. But nonetheless, it was harder to concentrate and move. Interestingly enough, my hands were also incredibly shaky. I just wanted to lay around with zero energy.

I finally made myself get up and get moving around 2:00 in the afternoon. One of the local organic stores had a 15% off sale going on today so I wanted to see what juices they had to break my fast with. I am so thankful I had that motivation because I honestly had to drag myself out of bed to go take a shower. The shower was nice and refreshing, but even after I was done getting ready, I stumbled up the stairs. I was not enjoying the energy-less feelings.

Driving, I seemed to be ok. I purposefully wore capris today because I knew it was rainy and grey outside so the extra exposure to the elements would wake me up a little more.

I thoroughly enjoyed grocery shopping for juice. I’m not planning on starting juice fasting until Thursday, but I figured that if the deals were on today, might as well get prepared! I ended up going to 3 grocery stores and thankfully somehow ending up with the best prices of each type of juice I bought. I got quite a few, though was very tired again when I finally got back home.

When I got back home, the decision had to be made whether I was going to go to the gym or not. I actually decided to go, though it took a lot of time and mental convincing to get myself there. Once I got there, I actually found it decently easy to get through a small ab workout and then a 30 minute walk on the treadmill. Normally, I would do more than just abs and something a little more intense for cardio. But knowing the condition I had been in most of the day, I figured I better not push too hard since I’m not even consuming water to replenish what is lost.

Oddly enough, since the workout, I’ve felt a million times better. This is something I definitely did not expect. I figured I would be toast and done in for early for the night, but amazingly feel so much better. I came home and got laundry going right away, took in two loads from the car, and am able to concentrate on the few things I need to get done for tomorrow. It is so comforting to be feeling better because I was honestly getting worried about teaching tomorrow with the way I felt this morning. But feeling the way I do this afternoon, I know I can do it.

This is my last day of dry fasting as planned and I have a bottle of water beside my bed to drink first thing when I wake up tomorrow morning. I’m hoping/expecting that my body will celebrate the taste of water; I’m excited to find out. I’m not sure how my body will react as I continue with 3 more days without food as I move into a water fast, but I can only imagine the effect that simply adding water back in to my body will have.

Review of symptoms:
I haven’t noticed too much difference in my face. In fact, I noticed at the gym that my face got red much more easily when breathing in a more forceful way to help with the ab exercise repetitions. I have not had my face do this in forever, if ever. Of course, I’ve been going around with a noticeable feeling in my stomach; it’s not really painful but definitely noticeable. I’m not sure whether it is hunger, thirst, or something else. It’s definitely something I can live with; very mild. The shaking has gone away for the most part since my workout; it was really bad this morning. Being able to actually sit down and be able to work and focus on something rather than fighting my thoughts to sleep like I did this morning is really nice too. My hair is not as greasy as it normally would be at this point which tells me that the junk food and greasy food definitely affects how much oil is in your hair.

Weight at the end of day 2 = 185.4 lbs (down 3.4 lbs in 24 hours)

Total Calories = 0

Locker Control

At our school, students get their first lockers in grade 5. Which means, by grade 6, when they come to me, they should theoretically be well aware of the proper use of a locker, mainly knowing the proper use of a lock.

Our school rents locks to the students. If they return them at the end of the year, they get their money back. It’s honestly a wonderful system. However, many students seem to forget the fact that locks are supposed to be locked when you’re not at your locker. Locks that are simply hanging there are not protecting your personal belongings. Now, I don’t expect my students to have extremely valuable things in their lockers as I have a classroom safe to keep electronics and other items of high value, but just to ensure their stuff does not go missing, they should keep their locks locked.

It has been such a problem, and students do not let the reminders “sink in”, I have been personally forced to come up with a solution to this problem, and I’m thinking my solution is genius (of course only time will tell).

I am choosing to collect the locks each time I see one that is unlocked. Every locker contains the belongings of two of my students and thus I only have 11 lockers to check. I take the locker, write down the number of the locker, and when I have time while other students are working, these students must show me they can open their locks 30 times. I tell them when they can start, and assure them that if they do not hold up the lock for me to see that it is opened, and I do not write a tick, it did not count.

So far, this seems to be working very well. They seem to almost make a game of it at first, but as some become frustrated and slow down to concentrate, the point seems to be getting across. When one partner is done, the other locker mate must come do their 30 turns as well. It takes awhile, but they sit across from my desk and I make sure to have a piece of paper and a pencil handy and am able to watch my class working and record “tick marks” at the same time. I am also sure to say to the students afterwards that they have now proven to me that they are truly capable of locking and unlocking their locks. So far, I love it.

Only once have I had students leave it unlocked twice, and the result was to do the same thing 40 times. I asked afterwards if he would forget again. He told me no, and so far I have always seen it locked. I will keep you posted on how well this goes!