Fruit w/Salad Supper Day 7 – Healing Journey Day 44

Journal:
Well, today has been an interesting day. It started off with some wonderful glasses of fresh-pressed orange juice mixed with blueberry juice. I honestly could drink variations of fresh orange juice every single day. I could NEVER grow sick of it.

I did the dishes after I finished drinking my juice, and started getting ready. Our first soccer game was at 5:45 pm and I had stuff to get done before then. Since tomorrow is a fully green juice day, I had to go get the green juices I ordered. This involved two stops: One at Splash Juicery and one at Glow Juicery. I picked up my 6 juices and hopefully will have enough for tomorrow. If not, I will be arriving back at Splash.

Following the juices, I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things in preparation of the three green smoothie days I will have following my green juice day.

I finally came home and had just enough time to make some food and get ready for the soccer game. This is what I made, as simple as it was:

Vegetables are really so pretty! Anyways, my dip tonight contained one avocado, one stalk of celery, one Roma tomato, two stalks of green onion, the juice of half a lemon, and three florets of cauliflower. I later added some fresh dill to it to boost the flavour, but I probably could have used some extra lemon as well.

I was not able to finish all of this before the soccer game, so I finished it after. There was a mix-up, so I was unable to play the game anyways. But following the game, I did have a Fuji apple to eat on the way home.

Now, I believe I have mentioned Spud on this blog before, but I am bringing them up again because they are such an awesome company. In anticipation of the smoothie days coming up, I ordered a case of bananas from Spud. Spud is a local organic delivery service. You go on their website, select what you would like to buy, pay online, and voila: It shows up on your doorstep on delivery day. It’s wonderful. But not only is this company good with their selection and service, they also do extra things for their customers, such as writing hand-written thank you notes, or throwing in a free gift with your order. With my last order, they threw in a bag of sweet potatoes. Now, I won’t be eating sweet potatoes for quite a long time, so I took my sweet potatoes upstairs to my housemates and offered them to them. I then seized the opportunity to share where they came from and what an awesome company Spud is. So if you want to check out their services, click on www.spud.ca.

So that pretty much sums up my night. I’m actually looking forward to my green juice day tomorrow and I’m interested to see how my tastebuds have changed in regards to the less sweet flavours of so many greens.

Review of Symptoms:
-Energy is good, though slightly tired today. Haven’t been going to sleep before midnight, so that may have something to do with it.
-Acne is good and not good at the same time.
-Cauliflower FILLS MY STOMACH UP!
-Hair is still good on day 7.
-Need to drink more water.
-Skin needs exfoliated badly.

Weight at the end of the day = 168 lbs (up 0.8 lbs from yesterday)

Total Calories = 1333 (73% carbs, 17% fat, 10% protein… a little low in calories, a little high in fat)

Fruit w/Salad Supper Day 6 – Healing Journey Day 43

Journal:
Today was another exciting morning. I am honestly LOVING the electric orange juicer that my husband bought me. Today I made some more orange juice and I enjoyed every last drop.

Now, today I was travelling with my housemates to go to church. It was a special history weekend at our church, plus we were having a ceremony to say good-bye to our beloved members and school staff who will be leaving the country to follow God’s leading. It was a sad day, yet also a day of rejoicing. But because I didn’t know if my housemates were going to be staying for the potluck or not, I packed a bag with an apple and bananas just incase. Turns out we didn’t stay for the food, but I was prepared regardless.

After we got home, I munched on three bananas as a snack or mini-lunch. It is so much easier to drink bananas in a smoothie than it is to eat them as a fruit. They are so much more filling.

Around supper time, I went out to make a guacamole-inspired dip again and chopped up some mushrooms and a red pepper to use as dipping tools. In the “guac”, I used one avocado, the juice of half a lemon, one stalk of green onion, a Roma tomato, and one stalk of celery.

Now, believe it or not, I actually ate all those veggies with the dip and still had dip leftover! I’m really not sure how that happened… so I had to get creative and think of what I would do with the rest of the dip. After awhile, it hit me: I have a Veggetti type device and I have English cucumbers. I made coodles and used the rest of the dip as the sauce! Brilliant! First time I’ve made them and I will definitely be making them again!

Then, because I have been eating a lot of salad ingredients but haven’t actually had my Romaine heart for the day, I made myself a little salad that had the Romaine heart chopped up, a Roma tomato chopped up, and some more spiralized cucumber. The dressing was made from a Keitt mango, some fresh basil, two Roma tomatoes, and a Valencia orange. It wasn’t my favourite dressing, but it wasn’t bad.

And that pretty much sums up my day. It was another day of good eating and I went to bed feeling full.

Review of Symptoms:
-Hair still is fluffy at 6 days of no washing. Boom! Body is regulating oil levels much better.
-Acne actually looked a tiny bit better today!
-Energy is good.
-Food truly is my fuel and not so much my craving. I’m loving the mental transition.
-Digestion is great.

Weight at the end of the day = 167.2 lbs (same as yesterday)

Total Calories = 1872 (77% carbs, 13% fat, 10% protein)

Fruit w/Salad Supper Day 5- Healing Journey Day 42

Journal:
I have been looking forward to this morning all week. I bought tons of Navel oranges just to make a juice in the morning with my new juicer. And today, I finally had time to make it!

So I did the same thing as last time except this time I juiced 8 Navel oranges and added about a cup of organic, blueberry juice. Mmmm… it is such a good combination!

My digestion hasn’t been the greatest the past few days for some reason, and let me just say, I stand by the juicing when you’re having digestion issues. It works very well!

For the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon, I did work on the computer. I had a few stressful things to deal with and it took a lot more time than I thought. I did go to the kitchen and slice up 5 golden kiwis that I ate quickly. Eventually I took a shower and did some running around, including getting enough supplies to last me through the rest of the weekend.

Monday will begin a day of green juices all day. So I ordered some green juices from a local juice place that I will be picking up on Sunday. From Tuesday-Thursday, I will be consuming green smoothies. It’s coming! I’m pretty far down the healing spectrum.

When I got home, I was preparing to make my salad. BUT my husband wanted to Skype. So I diverged and sliced up a bunch of mushrooms and made up a quick guacamole type thing to dip it in while talking to him. In the guac, I put an avocado, a Roma tomato, a stalk of green onion, and some lemon juice. It would have been better blended, but I mashed it to save time from getting out the blender.

Well, let’s just say I was on track to getting in a large amount of calories, closer to where I should be. BUT my housemates went to sleep before I could go out to make my salad. And since they are asleep… I couldn’t use my blender, meaning I couldn’t make a dressing which also means I couldn’t have a salad. So… I started thinking hard. I restocked my pile of lettuce while shopping today, and so I wanted to be sure to get in my head of lettuce for today. It took awhile but it hit me… banana and lettuce!

I’ve seen so many people do this, and yet it didn’t come to me right away. So many people take bananas, put them in lettuce, roll the leaf up, and just eat it that way. That was how I was going to make a “salad” of sorts and get my greens in! So that’s what I did.

     

It was so simple, yet actually pretty good. And yes, I know… my bananas were ripening funny. When I received these bananas in my Organic Box, they were the greenest bananas I had ever seen. But, they were ready, so I used them! Tomorrow I should be back on to a “normal” salad.

Review of Symptoms:
-Hair looks good! No grease after 5 days of no washing.
-SKIN IS DRY!!!!!!!! My face is flaking. Need to do some serious moisturizing and consider using coconut oil. Need to start exfoliating as well.
-Digestion is back on track today.
-Noticed a bump on my ring finger… not sure what is up with that.
-Energy is good.
-Face still full of acne… and not normal acne either… deep things that deeper than anything I’ve ever had before… sometimes with a mix of little bumps too.
-Dehydrated. Need to drink more water!!

Weight at the end of the day = 167.2 lbs (down 1.2 lbs since 3 days ago)

Total Calories = 1886 (80% carbs, 12% fat, 8% protein… so much better!)

A Flying Smoothie Day – Healing Journey Day 28

Journal:
I gotta be honest guys, I didn’t sleep more than 30 minutes throughout the night. You know how you hit that point of tired where you aren’t really concentrating very well resulting in things taking twice as long to do? That was me, resulting in a delayed time even getting to bed. Oh well. I definitely made it to the airport on time.

So I didn’t get a chance to make a mango smoothie before I left, so in order to save the fruit that I still had at home, I had some work to do. For the mangoes, I simply put them in the fridge to slow down the ripening process hoping that they will make it until I get back. For the bananas, I peeled them, chunked them up, and put the in the freezer. Perhaps there shall be some banana nice cream in my future! But of course, since I didn’t have time to make a smoothie, that meant I had to find breakfast at the airport.

Now, I’ve traveled on the national side of the airport often, but I have not traveled on the international side more than once, and that one time was only flying back from the states so I didn’t even get to see what stores and restaurants were on the international side. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Well, let me just start off by saying that travelling on a smoothie day is not the easiest thing to do. Of the 5 places that serve food on the international side, none made smoothies out of just fruit. But, good ol’ Starbucks had the Odwalla smoothies so I decided to take a look at them. Thankfully, the Mango Tango flavour only has fruit in it. No, Odwalla is not organic and yes it does have additives to help it last longer, but it seriously was the best option I had in this situation. It was either that, or the choice of water fasting today and I’m not feeling a water fast at the moment.

How much did a 450 mL bottle of Odwalla Mango Tango smoothie cost? Well, I bought two and it was over $10. I don’t typically spend this much on a meal, but I’m trying to be dedicated guys! So I did what I had to do. And to be honest, this smoothie actually tasted sweeter than I remembered so tastebud sensitivity is still there. I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I pretty much slept through my first flight. I guess my 20-30 minutes of sleep during the night wasn’t enough… (insert crying/laughing face here)! I had around 2 hours to sit at the second airport and actually found a place that makes all fruit smoothies! However, I have limited US funds on me, and I will be arriving at my final destination at lunch time, so I held off to get something with my husband.

Once I finally landed, I joined my husband and we both went to a juice/smoothie place. I got a what was called a Marathon smoothie which was made from orange juice, frozen bananas and frozen strawberries. It was ok. It actually was missing some flavour because the lady put ice cubes in with it, but I ate it regardless because it was the only smoothie place in town.

Now, later in the night, we wanted to eat again. My husband did not want another smoothie, but instead wanted real food. By the time he would have gotten food and gotten his dessert from the place he wanted, there would have been no time to drive over to the other side of the city to get another smoothie from the same place. And sadly, it was the only smoothie place in this city. So I was left with a decision: I could either continue on with my smoothie thing by drinking the “fake” smoothies  like I had in the morning (fake as in hardly any fibre and seeming more like a thick juice than a full smoothie), or postpone my smoothie days by another day and eat a cooked meal with my husband. Since I am not trying to do fake smoothie days, and didn’t really feel like I was totally completing a smoothie day while using pre-made smoothie drinks with additives in them as a primary source of food, I decided that after a month and a half of not seeing my husband, we could eat together.

My husband listed a bunch of places to go, so we compromised with the healthiest option: Genghis Grill. At Genghis Grill, you get to choose the size of stir fry you want as well as you get to choose what goes in your stir fry. Because I was thinking about how awful my stomach felt after the cooked food last night, I almost backed out of eating there as we went in. But I decided to give it a go and ordered the smallest size I could. I put in mostly veggies and fruit (spinach, bean sprouts, broccoli, pineapple, clementines, baby corn) as well as a tiny bit of tofu. I had it served with some steamed rice and a bit of sweet and sour sauce on top. It tasted pretty good, though I must say, it was way sweeter than I had every remembered it being. The tastebuds are still in full effect.

After supper, we decided to go shopping for some fruit so I can make smoothies the rest of the weekend when we go home. While shopping in Sprouts, I found something I had never seen yet! I saw Let Thy Food’s Chile Con Queso! It’s a vegan chile con queso or Mexican cheese dip. I was actually going to save it and take it back home with me to wait for the day that I can eat stuff like that again, but instead of waiting, my husband and I decided to eat it tonight as a snack. To be honest, it’s been nice to have a date night with my husband and to do things with him again.

If you’re eating junk foods, I highly recommend this cheese sauce. It is so good with a kick. But of course, more than anything, this means I’m back 100% for the next 3 days. I don’t have a scale, but I can guarantee I went up a few pounds again especially considering I had chips with the dip. So here goes the clean-eating again tomorrow.

Review of Symptoms:
-Energy is good
-Tired from not sleeping
-Really not feeling the cooked and junk vegan foods
-Throat actually feels dry from too much salt… needing to drink lots of water.
-Face is not good. Junk food is definitely an acne trigger!

Weight = Don’t have a scale in the hotel so cannot report on the weight until we go back to my mother-in-law’s tomorrow.

Total Calories = approx. 2766 (72% carbs, 20% fat, 8% protein… that was a lot of food!)

Mono-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 10

Journal:
I did not want to get out of bed this morning. I think I’m getting lazy. I felt good as always, but the nice, warm blankets on a cool day were a little too inviting. Either way, it was a work day, so I had to get up.

I noticed today that I wasn’t really “craving” juice. I’m actually beginning to really like the thought of vegetables. Yes, vegetables. Even lettuce sounds good right now. However, it’s going to be a bit longer until I get some veggies, so I have to keep my mind in the fruit game for now.

The juice of choice today was organic pear juice. Now, I’ve had pear nectars in the past and they weren’t overly sweet. But this juice? Honest to goodness, it tasted like liquid honey. I don’t even eat honey anymore. But the richness of this drink blew me out of the water. If you are ever missing honey after going vegan, grab a bottle of this and the honey cravings will be gone.

Now, this juice was so good that I actually had to run to the bathroom to double check my tongue. Remember how I said my tongue always tasted terrible when coated with the white, detox stuff? Well, my tongue was not perfectly clean, but it was SIGNIFICANTLY less coated than normal. I was shocked. Perhaps this means my body is almost done detoxing? I have no idea and at the same time I doubt it. My face still has a lot to clear before I will begin to think I have little toxins left. But still, the tongue is progress!

So today was a good day. It was pretty chill with the students, leading up to an afternoon that we spent at the community park. It was a great day to soak up some Vitamin D and allow the students to get some energy out. Overall, it was a great day.

After coming home, I laid down to rest for a bit. I think this is coming back to my laziness because it’s not that I was really tired, I just have been forming a habit of coming home, watching YouTube and taking a nap. I think this is something I’m going to have to work on and fix.

After finally waking up and convincing myself to get out of bed (temperature dropped so the warm, cozy blankets were begging me to stay), I went to the gym and got a little more aggressive in my workout. Instead of a simple bike ride or walking on the treadmill, I went at a decent pace on the elliptical for 30 minutes. It felt so good. I think, from here on out, I am going to get more aggressive with my workouts, little by little.

What surprises me the most is that I’m only consuming around 2L of juice per day lately. My body does not want more than that. I don’t feel a dip in energy at all. But what my body is asking for is more water. Not that I’m dehydrated, but it’s just what my body wants. Remember that I said I was going to listen to my body? Well, that’s what I’m doing. So once again, I only drank about 2L of pear juice, and upped the amount of water I was drinking. I only have 3 more days of juice left to go, so it will be interesting to see what happens by the end.

Review of Symptoms:
-Tongue not as white today. Less scraping to do.
-Stomach sounds like the rolling thunder at times (internal cleaning?).
-Energy is good.
-Acne has little bumps again.

Weight at the end of the day = 179 lbs (down 9.8 lbs from the beginning)

Total Calories = 1030 (100% carbs, 0% fat, 0% protein)

 

Tastebud Change: Part II

So as I said in my previous tastebud post, when you drop all dairy and most processed things, your tastebuds change. The example I used in my other post was the coconut rice that I had never been able to taste the coconut in before. Now it hits me like a coconut bomb. I love it.

Well, the other night, I had a moment of weakness. My husband and I went to a restaurant we normally don’t go to. And we ordered our favourite dish from there, which is cactus cut potatoes. There is no dairy on the actual potatoes, but there is in the dip that I used to love that comes with them.

I avoided it at first, but we had waited way too long to eat, and I had a moment of weakness. I dipped a potato in. Sometimes it sucks to be honest, but I do want to be transparent here. But here’s the funny part. It tasted awful. It tasted nothing like what I remembered. And it was’t just the batch. My husband said it was the same as always. I never thought the day would come where I didn’t like dairy… Oh my!

It’s amazing what your body can and will do. I won’t be craving that dip again anytime soon.

Day 10

This morning, I woke up at 5:30 sharp. What time was my alarm set for? 7:00. I have so much energy I can’t even finish sleeping in the morning! Seems a little strange…

So the first thing I did was drink a cup of water. Time to start getting the body hydrated!

For breakfast, I had an organic mini seedless watermelon. Almost halfway through the melon, I started wondering how I was even going to finish the thing. It was a beautiful red flesh, sweet flavour, and very little white flesh melon. So delicious. Somehow, I just kept eating and ate the whole thing!

I got ready, went to my chiropractor and acupuncture appointments, and then starting thinking those food thoughts again… I wanted so bad to stop and get sushi. Oh my goodness, it took the whole drive home for me to talk myself out of going. Not that it’s not vegan (cucumber rolls, avocado rolls, etc…), but it’s definitely not rawtill4 and I really don’t need to spend the extra money.

Somehow, I did it again! I beat my mind, came home, made a sandwich with Silver Hills Squirrely bread, an avocado, some lemon juice, cucumber, this raw ranch dip, and some salsa. I then had another fifth of my fresh mango cake with some vanilla coconut yogurt on top. Not the best raw meals, but it did stop me from spending extra money and it will tide me over for now.

For supper tonight, I’ve asked my husband to go to our stir fry place where I can get different fruits and veggies that I want, served with rice and noodles. I can’t believe I’m craving rice! I used to dread eating it. I have such a craving for it today!

After my husband came home, we got ready and went to our stir fry place. Oh, it was so good! I made a mix of carrots, bean sprouts, cauliflower, chick peas, tofu, mini corn-on-the-cob, pineapple, dried cranberries, peanuts, kale, noodles, and coconut rice. I use sweet and sour sauce and coconut milk as a topping. Oh it was so delicious. I even indulged and had a green onion cake. It was just so good and so filling! I couldn’t eat it all.

After we came home and let the food digest a little, we got ready and went to the gym. I did 30 minutes of treadmill cardio, followed by some variations of lunges, walking high kicks, stretches and the chiropractor exercises. It was a good energizing workout.

When I got home, I finished that fantastic stir fry. In fact, I wished I had more. Maybe next time I’ll make my stir fry bigger! 🙂

That was basically it for the day. I’m feeling good!

Day 8

Today was a different day. Today was a busy morning, getting my husband’s clothes ready for his new job that he’s currently stressed about (in school this week, doesn’t have a chance to start making money until next week), as well as making sure I had everything and was ready for my students’ PAT today.

I did not eat breakfast, and pretty much snacked on bananas, apples, Bolthouse Vanilla Chai (which is vegan!), apple juice, and other school-approved snacks that I had bought. I snacked pretty much for the first 5 hours of the day. Oh boy… not the best food, but not necessarily the worst.

Because my students missed their gym time and morning recess, I gave them a 45-minute recess after lunch. They were such troopers, and I was proud of them. After all, they were writing for 2-3 hours straight. It gave me an opportunity to not only get some fresh air, but also to soak up some good vitamin D!

When I came home, I was so happy to find my new Organic Box! It’s like opening a present every time to find these beautiful organic fruits and vegetables. This time, I also ordered some organic seaweed chips for my husband and I to try. They were DELISH! We ate the whole bag (my husband ate more than I did, but I still had a fair share!).

Before heading to the gym, I had two pieces of Silver Hills Squirrely bread with peanut butter and peach jam made with xylitol. I also had some rainbow carrots with a vegan ranch dip I also ordered in my Organic Box. The dip was ok, but I have to be honest when I say the rainbow carrots are not particularly my favourite. Maybe I’ve become so out-of-touch with the taste of real carrots again. We’ll see.

At the gym, I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes, then did some lunges, walking high kicks, some stretches, and my chiropractor exercises. I felt so good and energized the whole time.

When I came home, I took a look at those mangos I still have done nothing with (should have done something with them yesterday. They are really going to go bad soon!) So tonight, I took out the blender, cut all of the good flesh off of them, and pureed it with a little vanilla and macadamia oil. I then took out a bowl and mixed some flour with baking soda, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. I then mixed the two together, put it in a shallow baking dish, and waited for my fresh mango cake to cook.

While I was waiting, for tonight’s supper (really need to fix my whole eating raw until 4, cooked after 4), I blended 4 bananas (also need to be used asap) with some unsweetened vanilla almond milk and 5 medjool dates.Talk about filling!