As you know, this weekend, I threw out my back. While one night's sleep did it some good, it's still incredibly sore and making walking and bending down really difficult. After a long day of work and a United Way fundraiser that I hosted, I left work, full or sugary carbs and caffeine, sore and unhappy with yet another food lapse of judgement and weakness of character. I changed into sweat pants, got out our furry white blanket, and tried to find a position that didn't hurt on the bed to shut my eyes for the 20 minutes before C would come home. I managed to sleep for a little bit and then my husband came in from work and sat beside me on the bed so we could exchange the daily interests and happenings. "What did you eat today?" he asked. "Complete garbage" I unhappily and discouragingly replied. "Me three" he answered. "I want to try doing a detox diet" I ventured, not thinking he would find this an appealing idea. "I'd do that with you" he replied. "Really? I'd like to do it right away." I said, unsure. "Ok, how about tomorrow, we could get the food we need tonight. I can come with you." This was not the response I was expected and I was tired and sore and not really in the mood for extensive health food grocery shopping. However, hubs took the dog for a jaunt around the block, I laid in bed while he tried to tire out the beast, and when he returned home, I conceded.
We are embarking on Dr. Gillian McKeith's Detox Day Diet from her book "You Are What You Eat" which a very good friend of mine and her husband got me as a gift one year. The day is really intense with a lot of juices and raw foods and superfoods, but we were already committed.
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| our detox diet guide |
"You know" I said, before we left for Superstore, "I've read that it's best to start a detox with a fast. I think that we should fast from now until tomorrow morning when we start this regime". It was 6:00pm. "Ok..." replied C, without any enthusiasm. "I just have to go to the washroom them we can leave" I said. After a quicker trip than C expected, I walked into the kitchen and saw him cheeks filled up like a chipmunk's and white frosting on his lips. "Mrrhhff!" he said, surprise. "You'd better not have just eaten all the leftover carrot cake and frosting!" I exclaimed. I flung open the fridge door, grabbed the bowl of frosting which had practically been scrapped clean in that 1 minute span, and threw it in the sink and sprayed water on it. Thinking again, I put hand soap in it too for good measure. Satisfied that he wasn't that desperate, I went back into the fridge, grabbed all the sweet carbs I saw and dumped those into the freezer under bags of frozen fruit. "Now, let's go to the store, you nut!" We were both laughing hysterically.
The detox involved us buying a large amount of fresh veggies and also some other "health" items like echineatia tea, flaxseed oil, superfood raw veggie powder (more on this disgusting smelling expensive fish food later) and organic flax seeds. Our juicer would be the star of the next 2.5 hours at home. We needed to juice practically everything... 2 bags of carrots, beets, celery, basil, mint, parsley, apples, cucumber, avocados...basically, we're doing a raw food and juice diet for 24 hours. Deep sigh.
I'm going to run through each step of the day's food so I can explain the preparation and so you understand exactly what we get to eat.
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| our week's plan |
Detox day, as mentioned, was going to be a very long intensive detox. Heavily structured, we planned to follow Gillian's plan as best as we could. The morning started with hot water with lemon juice upon rising. Half an hour later, 2 tsp of flaxseed with water, then half an hour later 2 cups of veggie juice. A bit later, we get to have some tea, then a fruit juice as a snack. Lunch would be a raw veggie salad. Later, we got tea, juice, more tea, and then some solid sunflower seeds, unsalted of course. Yet another veggie/fruit smoothie for an afternoon snack, then home for dinner, same as lunch. An hour after, we get the treat of a potassium broth (which would be homemade as well). We end the day as we started it, with hot lemon water. To help encourage the blood flow to rid our bodies of more toxins, stuck in our fat cells, we are to dry brush our skin from the feet up. A warm bath follows this treatment, and then an early bedtime.
First things first, we need to make all of these smoothies/juices for the day. Breakfast. We actually had the choice between room temperature fruit, miso soup, or vegetable juice. We opted for the juice which included: 1 cucumber, 1/4 piece ginger, 4 celery stalks, 100g of alfalfa sprouts, 3 parsley sprigs and 1 carrot. We prepped these ingredients by washing and/or peeling them and pressing them through the juicer.
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| ingredients for smoothie #1 |
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| ingredients ready for smoothie #1 |
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| tea 3 times per day |
While we were prepping the juice, I also took out packs of tea and wrote on them what time of day we were supposed to drink them at. I took masking tape and wrote out time of day instructions for each smoothie and snack that we prepared so we had a schedule.
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| breakfast veggie juice done |
superfood powder. This smelled like fish food and certainly wasn't going to make the shake taste any better. In it went and we packaged up 2 cups of this swill for each of us. Juice number 1, done!
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| ingredients for juice |
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| 8am breakfast |
10:00am called for a Fruit Juice Break. Gillian gives a bunch of different options for this snack and we decided to go with Lemon Essence since we had most of the ingredients already: 8 carrots, 1 apple, juice of 1 lemon, and a slice of ginger root. We didn't include the lemon because I felt like I was having enough of it already, so we included some mint instead.
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| 10am snack |
2:30pm we get to down yet another Veggie Detox Juice. Gillian again gives many options and we opted for Beetroot Blast: 1/2 beet, 2 carrots, 1 celery stalk, 1/2 small cucumber. All cleaned, peeled and stuffed into a juicer.
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| fresh veggies for the drink |
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| Beetroot Blast |
Finally, the last veggie drink of the day: Gillian's Delectable Veggie Smoothie. 6 carrots, 1 soft avocado, 10 basil leaves, 1 apple, and 1 lemon slice. The carrots and apple get juiced then put into a blender with the avocado and basil. The final product is a thick, puke-green smoothie. Yum?
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| 4:00 smoothie |
While Caleb was manning the juicer, I started making the Potassium Broth for after dinner. At 5:30pm we get a raw salad and then an hour later at 6:30pm, we get to drink the potassium broth. All that needs to be done for this is to put 2 large potatoes, 2 carrots, 4 celery stalks with leaves, 1 cup parsley all into a pot then cover with water. I had veggie trimmings that I'd been saving in the freezer so I dumped all of those into a pot along with some potatoes. I let this come to a boil, then simmered the liquid for a few hours. The smell from this was fantastic! Warm, comforting, homey.
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| potassium broth cooking |
So, while it seems like all we're doing is drinking juice, we do in fact get a small amount of solid food! 12:30 lunch is one of those special occasions. Our options were raw salad with sprouts, raw mint cucumber soup (more liquid? no thanks!), raw sauerkraut (um, ew), or an ancient grain (we opted against this since we are eliminating grains for 2 days). So, we went with the raw salad. I used a whole cut up zucchini, sprouts, and shredded carrot. We decided that instead of swallowing our flax seed oil pills, we would break them open and squeeze them onto the salad with the fresh lemon.
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| raw salad for lunch |
What is the aftermath of juicing, you ask? An entire bag weighing about 10 lbs of perfect compost material. Except we don't have a compost. This is all the raw fibre that the juicer left behind. Basically all the nutrients are out so there is no point in saving this pulp.
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| giant bag of pulp |
In the end, after our very long evening of prep work, we were left with what you see below. A variable timetable of juices, seeds, raw vegetables and tea, all carefully marked for the next day. We were both apprehensive although I was a little excited too since I had never done a detox before and this wasn't some sort of drinking apple cider for 3 weeks plan.
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| morning |
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| afternoon |
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| my day's worth of food until 4:00pm, at work |
* * * * *
C and I wake up later than we should and struggle to get to work. My back is still killing me and I am so tired after getting to bed past midnight with all the food prep and regular evening rituals. C leaves before me so he would be ahead of me on the cleanse for the day since we both would have our cup of warm water with lemon upon rising. I nuked my water for a minute after letting the dog out of her kennel and squeezed in half a lemon. I am not a big fan of lemon water. It was slightly refreshing but more medicinal. I sipped it while putting on my makeup. Out the door and off to work!
As soon as I got to work, I ate my Tbsp of flaxseeds and washed it down with water, not bad actually. The taste is very rich and oily. Somehow, the taste can make me picture the benefits of this seed, making my hair shinier.
Next on the list is 8am breakfast: the green vegetable juice. Following that is my tea break. Unfortunately, my job today is not allowing me to follow this strict timeline. I have a number of items to write up paperwork for and get to shipping as well as a bunch of showroom issues that I need to deal with myself. This takes me away from my desk most of the morning and I am only able to start looking after my emails around 10:30am, meaning, this is when I get to have breakfast. I can't say I was sorry I had to wait however. Drink number one is less than appetizing. I BBM (Blackberry Messenger) C and ask him if he found the drink as disgusting as I am finding it. We commiserate together. I literally pound back as much of the liquid as I can....chug chug chug swallow, repeat. My eyes are actually starting to water from the lack of oxygen and intake of spicy spouts and celery flavor. I've still only made a dent in about half of my bottle. I would never win a drinking contest. Deep breath, a silent pep talk/prayer and another chug chug chug swallow, gasp. Nope, I wasn't mistaken, it was no better the second time. I leave my desk to brew the tea. Let's hope Echinechias taste better. They do and at least the aftertaste of spicy celery and sprouts is out of my mouth. The problem with drinking nutrients is that while the body might be absorbing them faster and more efficiently and the calorie consumption is still adequate to power me for the day, not having solid food to chew, swallow, and feel in my belly sends a signal to my brain telling me I am still hungry. Liquid vs solid food, even if the same caloric intake, does not affect the brain's ability to sent satiated signals to the stomach in the same way. We feel fuller eating vs drinking. This is going to be a long day...
Since my breakfast was very late, my next 10am snack of my fruit juice would have to come a little later, but no too late so I got off track. About 30 minutes later I drank the Lemon Essence, which was mostly carrots and an apple with ginger and mint. What made this unappetizing was the whole living green superfood powder that we added to it. Because Gillian recommended eating certain superfoods along with our cleanse, we followed her advice. The whole living green powder contained many of the other superfoods she recommended, so we figured it was the most economical choice. At $30 from Superstore for a 1 cup jar, it contained Spirulina, Chlorella, and Wheatgrass, among other things. Two generous teaspoons is what she recommended for the day so we decided to do 1/2 a heaping teaspoon in each of the liquid drinks. Let me tell you, this may be the healthiest powder you could ingest, but it smelled like fishfood and tasted strong, green and bitter. It made everything it was added to taste bitter as well. Based on that discovery, drink number two's mint help disguise the taste, but not enough.
By about 11:30am, I am starving! By this time on a "normal" clean eating day, I would have had an apple, a homemade fruit smoothie, 1/2 cup of oatmeal, cooked, and likely a mid morning snack of maybe an egg. This drink business just wasn't cutting it. The 3:30pm snack of 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds didn't stand a chance. Yes, I would likely regret this rash decision this afternoon, but to hell with it. I was hungry NOW and running off juice that I wasn't enjoying.
Lunch was coming up and I decided to have it at the recommended time of 12:30 instead of my normal 1:00/1:30pm. The ladies that I normally ate lunch with were all busy with their month end reports so I decided I would just eat at my desk and work through the lunch hour. At least I could maybe get home a little earlier then since dinner was at 5:30pm and we have been in the bad habit of not eating until about 9:30pm. I hadn't been looking forward to the raw zucchini, shredded carrot and sprouts with lemon. I saved my flax oil capsules from the morning and punctured a small hole in the end with the pointiest teeth and squeezed out everything I would from them onto the salad. I squeezed out all of the juice of the lemon wedge that I could onto the greens then mixed everything up with my plastic fork from the lunchroom. Sigh. After one bite, this was the best thing I had tasted all day! The surprise was rewarding and I savored every crisp, fresh, acidic bite. The thing with a cleanse, I was finding, was that my pallet was becoming more sensitive. I was beginning to taste more subtleties in the foods that I was ingesting.
My afternoon was once again very hectic so I missed my 2pm tea time. I also didn't get to my 2:30pm Veggie Detox Juice until about 3:30pm, an hour late. Beetroot blast was up next and based on the first 2 juices, I was wary but optimistic since I love beets. The beets would have been great but the superfood trumped any sweetness they once contained. Fail. I definitely didn't want to keep adding that powder to anymore smoothies or juices. Having already eaten my 3:30pm snack ages ago, there were no more solids waiting for me until dinner. Surprisingly though, I had the veggie smoothie left but I just wasn't hungry. I decided to just go home, no gym, and wait on dinner.
Dinner was a hearty raw salad so I took the liberty of making something a little more "robust". A huge plate of sprouts with shredded carrots, a whole zucchini each, and tonight, a real treat: creamy, bright avocado. I added some cilantro to the mix as well and drizzle another 2 capsules of flax seed oil on top, followed by a healthy squeeze of fresh lemon. Dinner was filling enough for us and satisfying but didn't leave us feeling heavy or bloated. That was one of the biggest things I noticed all day was my stomach feeling flatter. Now, all yesterday evening, the potassium broth was bubbling and simmering in a large pot on the stove, its warm and comforting scent wafting through the house, a promise of real comfort food. We had put the pot back on the stove to reheat for dinner and were anticipating our 6:30pm allowance of a few cups of it. Disappointing would describe my first sip. I had hoped that this broth would taste salty, since this was one flavour that we didn't have all day. The broth had flavour but felt thin and weak. Still, we drank our share and then ran a tub. We should have opted for the miso soup, but I hadn't noticed that this was an option until too late. More on miso soup coming up in a future post.
Our treat for the evening was supposed to be a mineral bath and dry skin brush. Since we had neither the dry skin brush or liquid minerals, we opted for a hot bath and I brushed down my skin with these exfoliating gloves that my friend bought me for my birthday. They are GREAT! I could feel my circulation improving and my body relaxing. Both C and I were pretty tired from our detox day and since we were required to go to bed early, we took that advice.
Day one, done.
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| Dinner salad |
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