What in the World is Going On? – Healing Journey Day 20

Journal:
Today was actually a pretty good day. Now, when I say it was a pretty good day, I’m reflecting and realizing that my “good” days have taken on a whole new meaning themselves. A “good” day now would have been a “crazy” day to me before. But I firmly believe in celebrating what is good overall, so I will continue to say that today was a pretty good day.

I managed to eat 2 bananas in the morning. This was a feat. I can’t remember the last time I actually managed to eat before the afternoon. The bananas were ripe and sweet and I was thankful. I was not craving any cooked food whatsoever.

At lunch time, we ran into the first big issue: hot lunch was not ready. I, in no way, blame the person in charge. He was doing the best he could with none of his help showing up. In fact, I felt bad. Being the teacher I am, I decided to move our lunch time to after lunch recess so that there wouldn’t be a huge rush and extra time could be provided. After explaining this to my students, they completely understood.

Before my students came back in from recess, I decided to go see if any help was needed. Instead of giving assistance, they told me to call out my orders according to my list and simply gather what was needed for my class. So that is what I did. I had 8 orders for my class and I worked on transporting everything and having everything prepared for my hungry students to eat when they came in. However, because it was such a rush, I didn’t realize that I had also taken the lunch of a student who had been sent home in the morning. Because it had been handled, the hot lunch could not be returned. So I ended up splitting the lunch with another student whose father had not yet shown up with her lunch. This wasn’t even because I really wanted the lunch to be completely honest. But it was because I have a problem with wasting food. The cheese slice they added to the veggie burger? It definitely came off. Since being vegan, I cannot look at cheese the same way. And for anyone who has not read my other posts, I work in a school that does not serve meat whatsoever, so on any hot lunch day, meat is never an option. Everything is either vegetarian (like pizza days) or vegan, often with the option of either.

So, I didn’t end up with a super heavy feeling which I credit to not eating the whole lunch myself. However, I did not feel as “fresh” either. I’m not enjoying cooked food as much as I thought I would. There really is something to eating raw. I think my biggest struggle right now is that I’m limited to a single fruit per day and I just really want some veggies in there too to give me a break from the sweetness. But that day is coming soon. I just have to keep this up a little longer (especially since the past 3 days haven’t been 100%). Tomorrow, I have to clean up and do a full banana island day.

After lunch, my next big event happened during gym class for my students. The student whose parents still had not shown up with anything for her to eat was keeling over in gym. At this point, I asked if I could go into the canteen and pick a couple more things out for her. I sat with her while she ate the two things we selected. After she returned to gym, I looked at the clock and realized I had only about 5 minutes left until it was time to pick my kids up from gym. So I decided to head back into the kitchen to see if any help was needed in the clean up from hot lunch (again, one person doing everything). As I went in to help, the announcement went for what should have been a lockdown drill. However, a small and yet huge mistake was made. In a rush to fit our drills into the day, the script from the emergency paper was read and instead of using the appropriate words to say that it was just a drill, the script that meant it wasn’t just a drill was used. I can’t even begin to explain the stress and panic that occurred following the use of the wrong script. Thankfully, it ended up being just a drill with the wrong words being read. But as soon as everyone was given the all clear, many teachers ran to find out what happened and I think it is safe to say that this mistake will not happen again.

The rest of the day went fairly well, aside from an earthquake drill we had to practice later in the day. It was not the most productive day at work. But I came away from the day proud of my students and how they handled each situation. I am just happy we were all safe.

Though I did have a meeting of sorts again after school, I was actually home by 6:00 pm. It is a record for the past few weeks. It felt so good to just leave my classroom a mess, not worry about prepping for the next day, and not worrying about having to get up early the next morning to do it all again. I was home, I was safe, and for one evening, work could wait.

I would like to say the rest of the evening went well, but it didn’t. Around 7:00, I started wondering why my husband had not messaged me since lunch. He almost always messages me when he gets home around 6:00. And then I found out what happened.

A year or so ago, my mother-in-law was involved in a massive court case as her assistant had embezzled a bunch of money from the company. As she is second under the owner, she was just as much if not more involved with taking this lady to court than he was. While this was going on, my mother-in-law’s house was broken into: the door was kicked down, things were stolen, etc. Police were involved, the door was taken for fingerprinting, and the house was searched. Nothing ever came from this case, though suspicions were strong. She then installed some cameras along the driveway and put an electric gate at the end of the driveway as well. Nothing seemed to happen after that.

Well, yesterday, someone had come along and not only disconnected everything from her electric gate, but had also unbolted and stolen all of the electric gate equipment. To me, that took someone who had premeditated this as the person would have had to have all the right equipment to do it while also trying to be fast so as not to be caught when someone drove by. Though there is still a slight possibility it was someone looking to make some cash, it doesn’t seem likely.

Not only was that bad enough, the reason my husband had not contacted me was because someone had actually broken into the house again. But instead of just kicking in the door and stealing some things, they had turned on her gas burners and left them running. No, they were not ignited; they were simply turned on so the gas would continue to fill the house. Honestly, this is so much like a tv show. These are things you don’t think will ever happen to you. But this is real life and this is scary beyond belief. The worst part of it all is I had two of my dogs upstairs in a kennel. If they had blown up the house or burned the house down, my dogs would not be alive today. I freaked out. The worst part is, they called the cops, they came and took a look but of course could do nothing. The best advice they gave her was to set up cameras, fix the gate, and attach a sign at the beginning of her property saying that it was under surveillance. Even for myself, I find no comfort in this whatsoever. I think I’m still in shock now, even as I write this. This is one of my “homes”. This is my husband, my mother-in-law, and my dogs. If anything happens to them… I just can’t even fathom right now.

So needless to say, I didn’t leave the house. The gym was the furthest thing from my mind. And though I did manage to eat a total of 5 bananas today, only 2 of those were after I got home. My appetite was far from here. I’m on edge. I just can’t even imagine…

Review of Symptoms:
-Tired
-Stressed
-Not so hungry due to stress
-Cooked food is causing me to feel not as great.
-Acne is the same.
-Haven’t “eliminated” in several days…

Weight at the end of the day = 174.6 lbs (still no weight change)

Total Calories = approx. 1237 (78% carbs, 15% fat, 7% protein… much better ratios today)

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)

Week 5 Day 5: The Revelation

Sorry guys. I realized I had made a mistake and quickly changed it! Yesterday was not the revelation day, today was and somehow I mixed up the names! Sorry about that. It’s now fixed 🙂

So every Thursday at work, instead of a normal worship, we have “Thankful Thursdays” where we go around saying the appreciations we’ve had. It’s a great thing to do, and one of the things I reflected on was my class this year. Not that they are perfect, not that they are always easy, but that I’ve seen maturity in them, even in the way they accept their consequences. I am so proud of them and look forward to helping them the rest of this year.

Following worship, we went about the usual day but I was so happy to welcome them into my classroom this morning. And when they went to gym, I sat and reflected on something that completely dawned on me: I’ve been happy, truly happy. I don’t know why, I don’t really know anything about it other than I felt completely and totally happy. Can I just say WOW? What a feeling! To be honestly happy. It’s amazing. I know my food and workouts have been going great, I’ve been taking care of all the medical issues, there have been major improvements, my husband is working and hopefully we’ll get his FBI check soon so he can have residency soon, I’m still in debt, but I’m happy. And that says something!

The day went well. We were planning a surprise wedding shower for our principal and it went amazing! We had a million laughs, and come to find out, this was their only shower, and she had never been successfully surprised before! We did awesome!

Now of course you’re probably wondering about my food choices while at this shower. So here is what I did. I ate half of one of my meals before I went. I then allowed myself a small selection on a small plate. I normally would have tried some of everything, but I limited myself. I was hungry for seconds, but I only allowed myself a plate of veggies. I did very well! Though in hind sight, I would have been alright white a lot of those things. They didn’t even seem worth it. Way too much sugar after being without refined sugars. I will know better next time.

We also had a staff meeting afterwards which of course meant that it was a late work night. But I still made it to the gym and had an awesome workout! Tonight was a circuit of shoulders, arms, chest and abs followed by 12 minutes of HIIT.

And of course, here are my meals for the day:

Meal 1

I had to cook this one a little more at home. I like my meat well done. This is a potato mash with egg whites, steak and a tomato.

Meal 2

I ate this one before I could get a picture last time. Homemade hummus with carrots, celery and rice crackers.

Meal 3

A tuna salad wrap with apples. Absolutely yummy!

Meal 4

So apparently I ate this one before a picture was taken. Sorry! It was cottage cheese with cinnamon and a very fine chop of honeydew and cantaloupe.

Meal 5

I didn’t take a picture of this one because you saw it yesterday. But since I don’t eat pork, the other option was to have the same chicken salad I had yesterday. I was so happy to eat it again. Yum!