Thursday, January 31, 2013

Day 16 – Ladies and Gentlemen… Start Your Lemons


Today was the beginning of the actual body cleanse.  So far we have just been getting our bodies ready for this point in the program.  The good thing about the next three days is that the food is very easy to prepare.  The bad thing is the food is actually a drink mixture, which includes: Freshly squeezed lemon juice and real (no sugar added) maple syrup mixed with distilled water… It sounds very refreshing and satisfying doesn’t it?

I had a very good day overall.  I was a little sluggish this morning, but by this afternoon I had a lot of energy (amazing that you can feel this way drinking only the homemade lemonade concoction).  I know this generally happens during the cleanse, but I was surprised it seems to have happened so quickly for me—makes me afraid of what may lie ahead of my tomorrow.  My poor wife was not so lucky today; she got really sick or she is going through a healing crisis, we are not sure which one.

She woke up this morning feeling a little warm, but we couldn’t be sure because we didn’t take her temperature.  She did go to work and then talked about feeling worse throughout the day.  After I finally did get her home—which was a chore I’ll talk about in a minute—we did take her temperature and it was 101.8!  The reason we believe this could be a healing crisis is that about 12 years ago she got ecoli really bad while serving as a missionary in Argentina—which she said made her VERY VERY sick.  If it is not a healing crisis it may be the flu; we’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow holds.

The ride home was as interesting as a few weeks ago, the roads were really icy and we were trying to make it up the back way—seemed to go fine, we didn’t really slip at all, until the main hill before getting to our street.  As we climbed we stopped dead in our tracks.  I thought it would be a good idea to keep the car in drive to help slow us down as we went down the hill… unfortunately this turned out to be a poor decision and we ended up in a snow-bank and were very very stuck.

I decided to visit a home and ask for a shovel—the home owner seemed happy to help and gave me one.  In the mean time another car drove past our van and got stuck; for a minute it looked as if he was about the make the same mistake we had just made.  Lucky for us his wife had just done the same thing a little farther down the hill, so he waited there.  About 4 guys pushed our van—as I gunned it—out of our predicament.  We went the long way around home—similar to a few weeks ago—and then stopped at the top of a little hill right before our home.

I had to move some garbage cans from our driveway so we could get in.  As soon as I opened the door and took a step on the road I slid on 2 feet about 30 feet down the hill and then smacked right into the snow bank in our front yard—thank goodness a neighbor helped me clear some of the ice into our driveway and we made it home.  My poor wife is now asleep trying to rest.  We have heard that hot tubs are good for colds and flus so we are going to pay ours a little visit tomorrow.

Awesome day for me!  Even more going on with my sinuses and ears—hopefully relief from the ringing is coming soon!!  I can only hope my wife’s sickness right now—for her sake—is a healing crisis and not anything more serious (I guess—for selfish reasons—I hope it for my sake as well because I don’t want to get sick).

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Day 15 "What's up Doc!"


Carrots!  They may be the bane of my existence right now.  There are many sites on the internet that say they are OK to eat on a candida program and they are allowed with the MLis program I am doing.  However; today, it donned on me that some of the regression I have had in the last few days may have been from the carrots added to my diet.  My wife found this great carrot cake recipe that we have loved (and is Candida Diet friendly), so we have had that twice this last week.  I have also been adding carrots in our vegetable medleys when our parents have come to eat.

We don't want to be the people that are completely crazy and the house that nobody wants to go to because of how off the wall we are.  I have had some sort of carrots every day for the last 5 or 6 days.  I also found out that the sugar in carrots is made worse when they are cooked.  I have been so careful to even keep them out of our green drinks in the morning, but have added them a bit the last few days because of how many carrots we have in our house.  It didn't dawn on me until this morning—or at least didn't obviously occur to me—that they may be the issue.

I cut carrots out of my diet for the whole day today and my sinuses have begun to do their thing again—feeling almost like tiny worms or a little animal is moving around in there—I hope whatever the feeling is that their the eviction crew  I realized today that I had regressed a bit and that some of the symptoms seemed to start to return—I thought it was due to the essential oil change I made—turns out it may have been the addition of a waskly wabbit’s food (CARROTS!).  I hope it is needless to say that I am going to stay away from carrots as well as other pretty sweet vegetables: i.e.; beets, peas and maybe even bell peppers—I'll have to decide on those.

It turned out to be a great day—a little tired in the morning, but picked up this afternoon.  Food was fine today—green drink this morning; since we are trying to get rid of a lot of our vegetables I used A LOT of kale and spinach, but also had romaine lettuce, cucumber, celery, ginger and a little bit of water—BUT NO CARROTS!  Lunch came in two stages—I made lunch so that I could take to my wife for dinner at work, since she is taking a class on Wednesday nights.  Again a TON of kale and spinach but I did add green onions and red/yellow/orange bell peppers sautéed in olive oil and garlic with salt, basil and oregano sprinkled all over—then put it all over a big spring mix salad (best dressing ever).

I actually had the same thing for dinner, just warmed it a bit.  My energy and feeling of progress was back in full swing by about 5:00pm, it's past 11:00pm now and still going strong.  Tonight was our final favorite dessert for a while since we are suppose to start on our juice cleanse tomorrow.  Imagine how this sounds for 3 days… Distilled water mixed with straight lemon juice and some pure maple syrup with no added sugar.  I'm not sure how the maple syrup fits in to this equation but evidently it works great!  Please don't be jealous of the days ahead of us.

A quick note about my mother-in-law.  She had her best day on the cleanse yesterday, but while she was making her green drink this morning she finished hers and then added apple juice for her husbands.  When she went to drink she took a big drink of his instead of hers—really freaked out because she was so worried and in her moment of craziness she went to grab something on the counter and ended up knocking her green drink on the floor (carpet).  I have yet to have the experience of getting dark green juice out of carpet but evidently it is a pain in the butt!

Day 14 – Kids say the darndest things



Sorry, as I was going to post tonight I noticed that I didn't post for yesterday--it only showed up as a draft, so here is yesterdays post


2 weeks down and only 6 more to go (or I guess more?!?).  My son had a Doctors appointment this morning about 22-30 miles away so we had to get out the door by 7:15am.  This is no easy task—for as long as I can remember I have been a night person.  In high school I would put off a big art assignment or report until the last night before it was due and then stay up all night barely getting 1-2 hours of sleep.  This even carried over into college (at least undergrad) where I remember one semester writing 90 pages worth of papers in about 4-5 days, but it was also the semester I got a 4.0… go figure.

In law school I read an article about procrastinators and learned something interesting, but I don’t remember the source (sorry).  There are those who are procrastinators—which I have long believed I am the worst kind—and then there are those who are incubators.  The difference is a procrastinator puts something off and then turns in or finishes crappy work.  An incubator on the other hand is somebody who constantly thinks about what they are trying to do and—although they put off completing it until the last minute—then turn in good work or good product.  It totally explains me… and all this time I thought the obsessive thinking and worrying about something was just being paranoid or some sort of OCD… who knew?

Breakfast had to be quick—we had our standard steel cut oats and green lemonade: celery, cucumber, romaine (which by the way is the most roughage feeling (tasting) romaine I have ever had), lime, carrot (just a little bit).  The doctors visit was interesting.  While there the doctor asked me a question about whether I had some of the same symptoms as a child as my 8 year old son does.  I told him I did to which my 8 year old quickly replied: “it must be genetic.”  The doctor took a pause and replied to my son: “how do you know what genetics are?”

My son is amazing—the other day he asked me if there was a way to store in “infinite amount of items in a space.”  I thought for a minute and replied: “yes… it’s called the universe.”  He laughed and said: “DAD?!?!?... you know what I mean!”  I asked what he wanted to store and he told me “cars.”  A discussions about black holes ensued, and how they would store a lot, but it may be hard to retrieve them.  A few minutes later I could still see him thinking when he whispered to himself: “I wonder how small a black hole can get.”  This is of course the same child that once asked where God lived before the universe was created… you’ve got to love him and all his questions—I hope he never stops asking them!

My son also had a dentist appointment today to check on a chipped tooth from a few days ago—he was so excited to get his Otis Spunkmeyer cookie at the end of the session.  Not sure if our dentist is just being polite or if he is ensuring continued business?  The assistant asked if I wanted one, when I refused she pushed a little and said: “sure you do.”  I assured her that I would LOVE one, but that I can’t right now—she didn’t press further.  However, it was very difficult to have both my boys eating cookies.  I held my 4 year olds cookie while he got in his seat belt—after I gave it back I gave my hands a good sniff to take it all in.  I couldn’t help but wonder what an outside observer would have thought if the only thing they saw me do was sniff my fingers… “WHAT A FREAK!”

I have also had a major headache most of the day and I don’t know why—I suspect it has something to do with not getting enough water, but I can’t be sure.  I would say it could be the no meat in the diet, but it was just last night when we had meat and I’ve gone much longer without meat before and am sure I’ve gone at least that long during this cleanse.  I’m now getting ready to go to bed and while the headache has diminished it is still there and very annoying.  It feels like I am weaning off of caffeine or some other medicine, but I have not taken ANY medicine since one week ago today—only the herbs that are provided by Mlis.

Lunch was just leftovers from last night minus the meat put over quinoa.  Dinner was spaghetti mixed in the blend tec with spinach and kale—it turned the sauce green which about scared our kids away from trying it, but once they did they were OK (it still tasted great), we just had to give it a good name.  I guess my 8 year old pictures methane gas as green so he wanted to call it methane spaghetti.

My 8 year old also received his bobcat award in cub-scouts tonight—we are so proud of him for working hard and earning his first award as quickly as he did.  We decided to sit in the sauna tonight—something we have not done for a few nights, but something that seems to help dramatically.  Hopefully this headache will be gone tomorrow!