Multi-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 24

Journal:
Today was a much needed juice day. I was almost in shock when I saw how much my weight went up in one day. 8 lbs! The thing is, I’m not totally surprised. The food I ate yesterday does not digest as well as plain fruit does. It takes much longer to go through the system. The food yesterday also contained salt which causes water retention. I also ate a lot of fat which I try to avoid. I also know that I ate an incredible amount of calories yesterday of which my body is not used to consuming yet. So a lot of factors have played into those 8 lbs. But like I mentioned on Saturday, a juice feast is the perfect way to help your body start flushing things out. I felt much better juice feasting today.

From morning to lunch, I finished drinking the half litre I had left of grape juice from last time. After lunch and until supper time, I drank about a litre of pineapple juice with the pulp mixed in. My tastebuds were handling the juice a lot better today which is somewhat surprising. The only guess I have is that all the food from yesterday dulled my tastebuds a little bit so things aren’t so sweet today. Or, my other thought is that after my lack of sweet things yesterday, my body was appreciating the sweetness of fruit today. Both ideas seem to make sense to me but since I’m not a doctor, I cannot truly be sure.

Work went by fairly well. It wasn’t the greatest day, but it also wasn’t the worst. Again, I always hope for tomorrow to be a better day.

After work, I actually was very productive. I had a HUGE to-do list and knocked off quite a few things. Though I didn’t get everything done, it certainly felt good to see about half of that list disappear. I’m hoping to conquer the rest tomorrow.

I did drink 1.75 L of apple juice throughout the rest of the evening. Honestly, juice feasting is easy. I’m feeling good. I went to the gym and did 5 ab exercises followed with a half hour of cycling. It felt good. But I am totally done in for the night. I officially have one more juice day to go and then I enter smoothie land!

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same.
-Energy is good.
-Hair is greasy… thank you high fat, cooked foods…
-Elimination is great.

Weight at the end of the day = 176.6 lbs (down 6 lbs from yesterday, thank you to good digestion!)

Total Calories = 1908 (97% carbs, 0% fat, 3% protein)

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!)

Multi-Juice Feasting – Healing Journey Day 22

Journal:
I was kind of torn about today. I was excited to have something other than just one fruit per day, and yet I remember how sweet and unpleasant my last juice fasting experience became. Regardless, there is one extra component that made me excited about this second juice feasting and it was this: I do not have to stick to one type of juice, so long as the juices are only made from fruit. Woohoo! My first freedom in mixing food sources. Here we go!

So today was an overall lazy day. I had gotten up and was getting ready to go to a church I had been invited to, only to look up the directions and realize that church service was going to be finished when I would arrive there and Sabbath School would be beginning. This is a newer church plant and they have decided to reverse the schedule which is actually intriguing. But it meant that I didn’t make it to church today. So instead, I rested, which I won’t complain about. My body was still feeling the stress.

Towards the evening, I started unpacking more of my stuff. It’s so nice to actually have clothes in my closet, though I’ve really come to realize that I can easily live with the same outfits repeated all of the time. It meant that I was doing laundry twice a week, but at least I had no debates over what clothes I would wear each day. It actually saved time! I’m telling ya’ll, minimalism is something you should look into! It’s so much better than it sounds.

So in preparation for this juice feast, I had bought a juice that I used to LOVE drinking. It was an organic, orange-mango juice. Oh my… so delicious. Though I did thoroughly enjoy it, I didn’t quite enjoy it to the maximum like I used to. However, it didn’t lessen the fact that I enjoyed it much more than the juices I had before. I actually consumed the most calories I have had yet on this journey because of it. And when I ran out of it, I went back to the juices left over from the last juice feasting as I had clearly bought more than I actually drank. I selected a grape juice to finish the day.

Now, the grape juice was good, but I couldn’t hardly drink any of it. I ended up drinking close to half a litre, but honestly could not fathom drinking more. My tongue hasn’t quite been coated as heavily white as last time I was drinking juice, but my whole mouth is coated with a thicker saliva that is off-putting and it’s ruining the purity of everything. Not to mention, that sensitivity to sweetness is still in effect which has me thinking this might be a long juice feast, even though I’m only doing it for 3 days. I really can’t wait to be able to have both fruit and veggies. It’s so nice to have different flavours especially when I’m not in the best fruit season at all. I can’t wait to have more options.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same… going to really start watching how often I touch my face to see if that makes a difference.
-Elimination is FANTASTIC! If you ever need a cleansing day, do a day of juicing. It works wonderfully.
-Hair is not as greasy as it would be by this point. So awesome. I will write more about this later.
-Energy is fine, though still recovering from too much stress lately.
-Overbearing sweetness tastebuds are still around!

Weight at the end of the day = 174.6 lbs (still the same, even after the most calories to date!)

Total Calories = 2188 (99% carbs, 0% fat, 1% protein)

 

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)

The Flop – Healing Journey Day 19

Journal:
I don’t even really want to write this post today. I’m exhausted; drained. Not getting home before 6:30 at the earliest (8:30 at the latest) each and every work day is wearing me out. Not to mention, that does not include getting everything I need done, done. I’m behind on almost everything that I should have done by now as a teacher. But it is because I have had such a difficult start to the year… and I thought last year was bad! Oh how little did I know back then…

So in the entirety of an insane day, I ate 2 bananas. That’s it. By the time I finally got home (around 7:00 pm or shortly after), not only was I exhausted, but I was also extremely hungry. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling after today’s after-school meeting. A decision was made that I was honestly sitting on the fence about. It either meant I was going to have a much easier rest of the year, or that I had to prepare for what could be a very difficult and exhausting year in its entirety. My heart was being optimistic, but my head was being realistic. And though the decision was to press forward and though my heart was prepared, my head was left wondering what I may be preparing to put myself through. I was a slight emotional disaster. Needless to say, it was not a good situation.

So what did I do? I gave in. The thought of bananas almost sickened me and I went out. It was late; the skies were dark. I was emotional, exhausted, drained, and hungry. I was reaching for comfort which is something I rarely do. In fact, I normally don’t eat when I’m stressed or upset. So whether the chips from yesterday had something to do with the immense desire for something else or not, I’m not 100% sure but I would assume that it did. The interesting part is that I did not want my usual comfort foods. My usual Mexican place did not entice me. I didn’t want the heavy feeling of beans and rice in my stomach (something I normally would have jumped on right away before I started this journey). I didn’t want a huge, cooked, gourmet meal from a sit-down restaurant. I wanted a pita (not  even the type of bread I normally want as I usually want fluffy bread) filled with fresh veggies. What a craving. If all I had ever craved in my life was a flat, pocket pita bread with fresh veggies in it, weight would never have been an issue. But either way, I decided I needed to listen to my body today after all the punishment it’s been through and I went off.

I went to Extreme Pita and ordered a regular falafel on white. I added lightly sautéed veggies (green pepper, onions and mushrooms sautéed in water not oil), pineapple, tabouleh, pickles, lettuce, tomato, a tablespoon of beans and chickpeas (decided to see how I would react to so little), and topped it with about a tablespoon of hummus and some sweet chilli sauce.

The first few bites were pretty good. It felt so good to just get out, sit down, stop stressing about the one thing my mind has been on lately since a decision was finally made, and just enjoy some free time for the first time in weeks. I say “free time”, but even while I was eating I was responding to work e-mails and catching up on work-related things that I should have done before but never had the time to. However, if I am truly honest, about half-way through the pita, it wasn’t tasting as good as it had. It’s not that anything had changed, but I simply realized it didn’t taste as good to me as it once had. My body has changed throughout this challenge. I don’t crave the heavy feeling in my stomach anymore. Cooked food does not taste as good to me as it once did. Yes, I am realizing that I don’t crave sweetness all of the time anymore, especially since I have been craving the taste of veggies to get a break from the fruit for quite awhile. But my body is not the same as it was before. And though I had the biggest fear of starving all the time when I started this challenge, I have not experienced even close to the amount of weakness and feelings of death as I thought I would have been. It’s quite incredible to say the least.

So after eating, I drove to the gym. I had full intentions of going in and doing something. But as I paused to sit in my car for just a few moments to finish letting the day sink in, I realized that this was the furthest thing from what my body wanted today. It wasn’t a day where I had to go to something because I was so stressed. It was a day where all the stress led to this decision and now that the decision was made, that is one stress that is gone. My body wanted to rest. It didn’t want to keep giving output when it finally had a chance to take a breath. Once I realized this, I left and drove home. Three and a half weeks of stress, of never taking a break while things were happening every single day, of not sleeping enough, and of meetings every single work day, it was time to just say no. It honestly was the best thing I could have done. Sometimes we simply need to listen to our bodies.

When I got home, I noticed those oatmeal bars that I had received the other day. I decided since I had already blown my banana day by eating a pita, I might as well try the squares. Don’t let yourself get into this mindset. It’s not worth it. I ended up eating a piece of a square only to taste flour. Oh my word. It took me back to being a child when you think the flour should taste good just because cookie dough tastes good. And when you take a big bite of flour, you sadly realize how wrong you were. Though this clearly wasn’t all flour, that’s the biggest flavour I had in my mouth. Now, if I had not been doing this cleanse, I guarantee it would have tasted different to me. But because of this cleanse, because my body has changed so much and flavours are so noticeable to me, that’s what I could taste and I had no motivation to continue eating them.

I relaxed for awhile, then went to sleep. Tomorrow is hopefully a brighter day.

Review of Symptoms:
-Exhausted.
-Stressed.
-Hungry after eating only 2 bananas all day.
-Taste buds are SUPER sensitive.
-Acne is the same.
-Despite eating a little, energy is still there.

Weight at the end of the day = 174.6 lbs (same as yesterday)

Total Calories = approx. 861 (68% carbs, 22% fat, 10% protein… a little high in fat)