Days 2 and 3 Recap

Day Two of the No Food experiment was lackluster for the most part.  I woke up feeling great and energetic.  But by noon I was sinking deeper and deeper into the couch wondering what happened to all that energy I had such a short time ago. 

It was about that time that I decided that I had to do something, anything, to keep from falling asleep midday.  So we went “That Time We Cannot Mention Yet” clothes shopping.  My boys have banned me from saying “back to school” in any conversation – even if it means they are getting new stuff.  Truth be told, I am wondering where the summer went, but at the same time wondering how these boys eat so much food.  I am quickly getting more and more ready for them to head back to school for only one reason: they could use some class time to stop eating for a second or two.

I digress; that is an entirely different post.  I am talking about my food, or lack thereof.  The afternoon was okay because I did two things: I got up and made myself do something and I oiled up to promote higher energy levels.

But then the headache hit.  It was one of those weird headaches that you don’t feel constantly, only when you turn your head a certain way or laugh, or move around.  When I was still I could not feel the pain.  Weird.  I spent the evening trying to stay as still as possible.  When I went to bed I filled the diffuser with lavender and cedarwood and waited for relief.  I slept soundly and woke with no headache. 

There are some strange things that happened in the first couple of days of the no food fast/cleanse.  Small amounts of juice made me feel abnormally full.  I’m talking only 8 ounces.  Not a lot of juice by my usual standards.  But I did get hungry fairly quickly, especially around lunch time.  And then I would experience nausea that would just appear out of nowhere.  It did not seem to be associated with a juice because it would be more than an hour after drinking a juice that it would start.  And then, just as suddenly, it would stop and I would feel fine. 

I have been at times a little cranky and the boys have been given permission to ask whether it is the lack of food or if I am actually frustrated with what they are doing.  Warning them ahead of time about the probability of crankiness was genius because they saw it coming and reacted appropriately when they started to hear that growl in my voice. 

Day Three has been mostly more of the same.  I knew going in that the first three days were the hardest so my hopes are high for tomorrow and the days that follow.  I will say that when you aren’t eating food you realize just how many of those recipe videos get posted to Facebook every day.  That may be part of the reason why I have stayed mostly off the computer for the three days I have been doing this.  Everything from banana pudding to empanadas seem to be mocking me from the screen, daring me to just take one bite of food; to just chew something. 

It is almost 9 pm on day three and I can say that I accomplished more today than in the first two days and no headache all day.  

I have stayed strong.  I have had a lot of juice.  I have had to restock my fruits and veggies already because I greatly underestimated how much food actually goes into making several juices a day.  I am looking forward to tomorrow.  Tomorrow I will weigh and see if anything really is being cleaned out.  And I’m still counting on that day four burst of energy!

Day One of the Awakening: A Recap

If you read the previous post you know that I am on a mission to change the way my family eats.  More than that, I am on a mission to change our view of food.  Here is the plan for how we are going to do that. 

First of all, I know from experience that grand, sweeping changes are likely to fail.  I’m not interested in that.  So we are going to start small and go from there. 

And I am treating myself differently from my boys.  My choices will be more drastic than theirs because they do not have 40+ years of damage in their bodies. 

I am starting with a food restriction cleanse.  What that means is that for the next 7 days I will eat no food.  No chewing of anything.  I will get plenty of high quality nutrients through the following:

Juice – Not the stuff you buy in the store – the stuff that comes from the juicer when you put fresh fruits and vegetables in it and turn it on.

Ningxia Red – This powerhouse infusion drink will also help to supply massive amounts of nutritional value to my system.  This one is non-negotiable.  It is delicious and incredibly beneficial to every cell in my body and I will not remove it from my diet.  Ever.

Pure Protein Complete – This is a shake mix from Young Living that is delicious and also loaded with goodness.  I will mix it with either water or almond milk.

Water – Some serious cleansing is going to happen with food restriction so I will stay hydrated in order to help flush out all that bad.

Again, I will eat no FOOD for the first 7 days.  Following the initial cleansing I will add in plant foods.

NO SODA – This is a biggie for me.  Even when I cut down on Diet Dr. Pepper I still drink one a day.  So this will be the hardest part for me. 

No Coffee – Easy, peasy.  I rarely drink coffee anyway.

The thing I was most concerned about going in was hunger and crankiness.  And headaches; as a migraine sufferer I was concerned about headaches.  I am at the end of Day One and I have been able to combat all three with essential oils.  I am using Joy, Frankincense, and Peppermint to help keep my mood even.  I am using citrus oils like lemon, lime, and grapefruit to flavor my juices with citrus without adding the acidity of the actual fruit’s juices.  I am using Digize, Peppermint and Lemon in a capsule to support my digestive system.  And I am using Lavender, Peppermint, and Frankincense to support my desire to be headache-free.

There were times throughout the day when I felt very sleepy and lethargic.  There were times when I was hungry.  And there were times when I was cranky.  But overall Day One wasn’t difficult and nothing that happened or that I felt today leaves me feeling like I am on the wrong path.  In fact I can already see how this cleanse is going to be a great benefit.  I also think that because my body needed a food restriction in order to have time to cleanse it is reacting properly overall.  And I am being mindful to support my physical systems as well as my mental and emotional needs with essential oils, which I know to work effectively.

Another test will be later when I go to bed.  I am hoping for sound sleep so that my body and my digestive system in particular will have the time it needs to really work on cleaning out the evidence of my past diet choices. 

Today’s intake included 3 green juices with lemon essential oil, 2 ounces of Ningxia Red, and 1 Pure Protein Complete shake made with almond milk.  I also drank 2.5 liters of water.  And no soda! 

The boys each added one freshly juiced apple juice to their day.  And actually they used it as a replacement for breakfast.  One 8 oz serving of fresh apple juice kept them full longer than even I expected.  They all agree that it is far better tasting than what we usually call apple juice.  They are not entirely sold on the idea of green juices yet but we will get there. 

Tomorrow I am going to journal how I feel as the day goes on. 

Until then.  Have a great night!

An Awakening: Food as Fuel.....The Beginning

It started simple enough: get rid of cable.  The reasons were sound: We didn’t frequently watch television; it was more often background noise than intentional entertainment, it costs way too much for the quality of programming, and it costs too much for a single mom raising four boys.  So I called the cable company and had them remove cable from my cable/phone/internet bundle.  Saved myself $65.00 per month.  Fast forward past the anger I felt at having spent an extra $65.00 per month on crappy cable.  I’m mostly over that now and just thankful that I get to keep that extra money in my pocket next month.

Then a funny thing happened.  I wanted to watch TV.  I just wanted to chill out on the couch while the boys were gone and just watch some TV.  No cable.  Hmmmmm. 

No worries.  Netflix to the rescue.   I loaded up Netflix and watched a documentary called “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”.  That is when things started happening in my brain.  Things I was not expecting.  See, I have been dipping my toes in the healthier lifestyle waters for several months now.  I got started using Young Living essential oils.  I am systematically replacing all of the toxic cleaners, soaps, toothpaste, face creams, shampoo, etc. in our home with non-toxic solutions.  I feel pretty darn good and the sick day that my oldest son had in early February – before I started using essential oils – was the final sick day of the school year.  None of my four boys missed school due to illness for the remainder of February, or all of March, April or May.  We do not take prescription or over-the-counter medications anymore.  Ever.   We are building a healthier lifestyle one small change at a time.

BUT, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that while all that was happening we were still eating mostly the same way we had been: microwaveable crap, put it in a bowl and pour some milk over it crap, shockingly orange cheese mix in a box of noodles crap.  You get the idea.  I will even admit to eating cheese flavored crackers straight out of the box for dinner on more than one occasion.

So, small changes were happening.  And they were all important.  Toxins in the form of chemical cleaners for our home and body were being phased out and toxins in the form of medications were gone.  But as I Netflixed that day, I realized that there is so much more toxicity in our lives that I had failed to consciously recognize; I was awakened to what I already knew to be true but had been hiding from myself.  Processed and convenient food are turning us into addicts (sugar), increasing our risks for every single disease known to man (especially the ones I call man-made diseases; you know, those conditions that didn’t even exist in our parents’ generation), influencing our behavior choices on a regular basis, and making us overall feel just good enough to make it grudgingly through each day.  Small changes were helping, definitely; but I wasn’t addressing our entire lifestyle, just the parts that were convenient.

I don’t want that.  I don’t want it for myself and I certainly don’t want it for my children.  And I don’t want it for you either.  So over the next several days I continued to watch various documentaries with the consistent theme being food, the food industry, and what is happening in our cultures to food and what food once meant to people.  I armed myself with knowledge.  I got online and did some research.  If you have ever researched anything online you know that there are multiple views on every facet of every subject and it can be difficult to find truth in much of what is published.  So I used my own intellect, my own experiences, and my own gut feelings as a compass while sorting through all of this contradictory information. 

What I came up with in the end is this:  I am the mother of four children.  I want to see them graduate college, get married, have babies, be successful in life.  I want to be there to help them put the pieces back together when it all falls apart.  Because it will - It does for everyone.  I want to live and be all of the things that I should be as their mom.  And at this moment, their health is almost entirely dependent on me.  If I buy the donuts at the grocery store, they will eat them.  If I buy apples and carrots at the grocery store, they will eat those.  I am the adult.  I am responsible.  And it is about time I started taking the responsibility seriously.  I can’t look myself in the mirror and rationalize cereal for dinner because I felt tired that day anymore.  I can’t use the balm of a busy day to make me feel better about “cooking” dinner for my family by boiling some noodles and dropping death-by-chemical-orange cheese on them and serving it up hot.  I just can’t.

So it is time to be intentional about food.  It is time to respect it for what it is: necessary fuel to keep our bodies running optimally.  It is time to quit pretending it is some sort of emotional salve for the busy days, the sad times, the laziness, and the empty feelings that we all have some days.  It is time to be real and to put real food in this house for my real family.

So, things are changing.  I am taking information I have learned from multiple sources, including my own common sense and experiences with what works, and shifting the food paradigm around here.  This program I’m piecing together doesn’t yet have a name.  But it does have a purpose: clean out our systems, our pantry, our refrigerator, and most importantly our thinking; and replace it all with knowledge, positive changes in behavior, and good, real fuel. 

This is not a box set that someone created in a lab, put in a pretty box and sold to me to “change my life for only $5 a day!”  No, this is me and my family using what God gave us to live the way God intended: healthy and abundant.  Our bodies are an intelligent, self-healing design and only our own personal choices can cause their breakdown. 

I will be recording the process in two places: here on my blog and in a Facebook group, which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/655371001286024/

Or you can search An Awakening: Food as Fuel on Facebook and join the group to see all the posts, trials, errors, and progress of this journey.  Perhaps we can even start a dialogue there and trade ideas and stories. 

Care to go on a journey with the boys and me and see what we can accomplish? 

This will be fun!