Thursday, December 29, 2011

Days 17 - 20 Almost There!

This may be difficult for some of you reading this to believe, but the hardest thing about this whole detoxifying cleanse has been blogging about it and trying to keep it interesting.  

I realize that I have gone down a few rabbit trails dealing with things that on the face of it, may seem to have nothing to do with my 3 week cleanse. (bike rides for instance) but the point is that this whole process has not been disruptive to my life at all!  (aside from stuff like destroying my old blender, totally redoing what I thought was a healthy pantry to begin with and monitoring my BG and insulin intake a lot more closely) Melissa and I even ate at some friends house this week and forced them to blend their dinner plans to our will :)

So 20 days down and only 24 hours to go.  I am officially done at 6am tomorrow morning.  I must say that I am anxious to find out if I will need to make more long term adjustments to my basal insulin dosage once I go back to eating 2-3 solid meals per day again, but Dr Junger was certainly right when he commented that this cleanse would change the way that I want to eat.  Simply from a psychological standpoint, I feel better about myself knowing that every mouthful of food I eat is good for me (I will admit that this feeling is amplified when the taste is delicious too :)

So as I prepare to drink my 21rst smoothie in 21 days here are some hurdles that I have faced and overcome during the last 3 weeks.
  1. The first comment that I got on a regular basis was that I had certainly picked the wrong time of year to do a cleanse.  I realize why most people would think this, we live in a culture where the last 5-6 weeks of the year are centered around 2 things, eating and shopping. (doing both to excess)  It all starts the morning after eating way more than you are comfortable day with the traditional, get up early and trample or be trampled by other shoppers day.  Frankly non of this has been an issue for me.  I still feel that this was the best time for me to do this.  My family and friends have been very supportive and not pressured Melissa or myself towards giving up our cleanse so that we could join them in traditional fare.  (more food for them :)) My opinion, great time to start this as I was not tempted (not unbearably anyway) to eat a bunch of stuff that I would normally have indulged in on at least a limited basis and I feel better for it.  Plus I have positioned myself for better health heading into 2012
  2. The next hurdle was getting the start date going.  I had to change my pantry over to maximize it for detoxifying action.  As I mentioned it was pretty healthy to begin with but we had a number of perishable items that needed to be used before we could start, so the target got pushed back from Dec 1 to Dec 9.  I fully intended to have this finished before Christmas but I have to say that it did not hurt to ease into it. We actually started doing the pre-cleanse elimination diet on Thanksgiving day. Once we figured out what we could and could not have, it has been pretty smooth sailing.
  3. Then I overloaded and smoked our blender.  The timing was bad and messed with our breakfast smoothie one day, but the bright side is that we now have a fantastic Ninja blender.
  4. Of course, figuring out how to manage my BGs was a challenge, more so than a hickup, but in the process I had to do some things that we not part of the cleanse. Such as having a juice in the middle of the night and breaking my 12 hour fast up, eating first GU and then honey packs at other times to manage BG dips due to exercise.
  5. Sunday I figured out that my protein portion of my Reliv is soy based. (should have read the label sooner but oh well)  So this was not the cleanest cleanse, but there will be another and this only gives me something to shoot for next time around.
So not to bad.  My younger brother came over on Christmas day and we established a new traditional Schwab household Christmas feast of hummus, tabbouleh, marinated kale and cabbage.  We were all pleasantly full from when this sumptuous repast was concluded and not ready for a nap.  It is so nice to have so much energy.  We had planned to watch a redbox DVD after our meal, but the DVD player decided that this was the day that it was no longer going to function properly, so we changed our plans and watched a movie on Netflix instead.  We appropriately chose "Forks over Knives" .  I have watched a number of food documentaries over the years extolling evils and virtues of how what we eat effects us, but this was not only the most believable, but the best as well.  I highly recommend this movie if you are interested in spending your time in this world with a high quality of life. (not that the movie will provide that, but the ideas just might)
I will save the net results for my next post, but just to end today with a couple of positive things that have happened as a result of embarking on this journey.  I finally got set up with Green Bean Delivery. I like using this service for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I get healthy groceries delivered to my door and I don't have to take time out of my schedule to do something that I hate to do anyway, which is shop.  The food is organic, I don't make impulse purchases and I get to support a lot of local businesses.  BTW you can get a lot more than just produce from them. Things like bison, fresh eggs, chicken, flour, granola, cereal, etc..... Check them out, after 2 weeks I give them 5 stars.

Another positive that has come from the last 3 weeks is that I am firmly on track to getting my life more organized. A very cleansing thing for my mental well being and clarity of thought, also something that will prove helpful in my coaching business as well.

OK so that's it for now, tomorrow I will post the results of my final weigh in plus a recap of all the changes and positives that I have experienced to close out 2011 a good year for me.

Michael

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