Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Day 1 - Isn't fruit good for you?


This was the easy day—other than the way I have felt.  Today we just quit all dairy, red meat, fruit, sugars, yeast products as well as some other ‘DO NOTS.”  However; my wife and I had started this year off by doing a 4 day juice cleanse so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad.  I was a little wrong.  The juice cleanse we did at the very beginning of this year—while healthy—still contained plenty of fruits which, evidently, the little problem we are trying to clear—candida—in the body just LOVE, so while it was helping my health it was not doing enough quick enough to notice a difference.

Now the fruits and all the other good stuff are not necessarily off my diet for good, but need to be off so they can stop the growth of the candida and bring them back to normal levels.  Now, for those of you—and I was one of ‘those of you’ for a long time—that don’t know much or anything about candida let me fill you in the best and quickest I can.  You should have an easy enough time googling anything you want better explanation on, I apologize in advance for anything I don’t get right in this little synopsis.

All our bodies have all sorts of organisms in them including yeast—this is what I really misunderstood about yeast, I thought only women deal with yeast, but evidently men deal with it on a different scale as well.  Well I guess these little yeast (candida) generally stay in the stomach to wreak havoc on the food or some other thing; in what I read it seems scientists are not completely sure what they do or why they are there, but they are.  Anyhow… there are some individuals whose candida yeast decide to multiply and replenish the whole body (although I’m sure replenish is not part of it, which is what happened in my case).

Once the candidas break out of their normal levels they can wreak havoc on the whole bodies in a myriad of ways—many of them I’ve experienced which I explain in greater detail in different posts.  Needless to say the effects of the candida are AWFUL and can be with a person for years on end.  The worst part about this is that candida does not seem to be something floating around the mainstream medical community.  I happened upon a book about it and by chance read about candida (despite the fact that the book looked like it was only for women) where I found out that it is something men could have to.

So back to the day, for breakfast my wife and I had steel cut oats with almond milk (zero sugar of coarse) sprinkled with just cinnamon and of course our lovely cucumber, celery, ginger, lemon juice—mmm mmm mmm… good times.  Actually it wasn’t really that bad, after all I have been getting use to more vegetables in my diet for a number of years.  And yes my wife is doing this with me and has found out that she may have the candida yeast issue as well, but I’m pretty sure she would have supported me regardless… right?  After all she did tell a co-worker that she was helping me and when the co-worker said if it were her husband she would eat a cheeseburger and laugh in his face to which she defended her position—you go sweetheart!
Lunch was a HUGE salad, which would typically feed my entire family at a social gathering, including all seven brothers and sisters plus me as well as their spouses and children which add up to a whole load of people (30 to 40 or more).  I sprinkled it with a little bit of lemon juice and enjoyed.  Now historically I have never been one who could enjoy a salad without using equal parts of salad and salad dressing—preferably ranch—mixed with plenty of meat as well as perhaps some sautéed onions and peppers (mmmm, now that’s a salad!).  I was actually eating a salad similar to the one I just mentioned while going to law school and was asked what I had for lunch, when I mentioned a salad my friend who had gone with me corrected me that it WAS NOT A SALAD!  Lunch was great!

For dinner we decided to have a little bit of chicken—now we actually have not had any meats for the first 8 or so days of this year so we were excited to have some again.  Lemon Herb Chicken—perhaps the best lemon herb chicken I had every had.  We took fresh lemon and squeezed it on to the chicken and then seasoned with oregano, basil and some sea salt, then used a dash of olive oil (probably too much actually, we found out later that when you use olive oil it needs to be sparingly, so we are going to be more careful).  Anyway… dinner was great.

The hardest thing about today was the complete lack of energy I felt throughout.  I did notice at times my sinuses doing something which I think is a good thing—I can breath more out of my nose than I ever remember being able to.  Who knew that people could breath this good—do all people breath this good?  Maybe there is something to this whole candida cleanse thing?!?  

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