Juice = Liquid Love

I feel soooo energized and refreshed after the many glasses of both fresh OJ and pasteurized carrot juice/OJ I had today. I'm definitely in a better mood too and didn't have to sleep 10 hours. No nap for me!!! Yay! I dropped 7.6 pounds total during the fast. We'll see if I gain a little back or not. My pH hasn't changed since I last reported but hopefully 811 will help me become less ACIDIC.

For now I'm just running on a juice high which I hope won't crash until about 2:30 am when I'm home from work and ready to crawl into bed. I also made some apple sauce with cinnamon (unfortunately cinnamon is an 811 no no) with the big bag of apples I bought yesterday and I had a teeny tiny little bowl (about a cup total). The book says not to have anything but OJ for 2 days but I couldn't resist & I feel fine. I thinned it with water so it wasn't much more than juice. I'm ready for one more day of juice and then real food! I plan to eat pretty light through the weekend and then start the 811 sample menus on Monday. I'm going to a (non-raw) dinner party on Friday night to which I plan to bring a big fancy salad which I will eat as a main course and others can have as a side. I also might make some coconut date balls or something.

MC Day Niiiiiiinnnne!!!

Today I felt very weak and tired. Bloating and cramping pains have been minimal. I'm definitely ready to start in on some juice!

MC Day 6: 4.4 down & .4 up

I don't remember the specifics of my detox symptoms during my first MC but mannn, I feel like I'm moodier and sleepier than I've evvvveeerrr been. It might be because I have a lot of added stresses from school that we're there when I did my summer cleanse. Last night I was seriously considering cutting the cleanse short and starting juice today but I'm a stubborn little girl and I don't give up easily. It's hard to go against what your body's telling you but I know that it's not the cleanse that's doing this to me but the effect of the toxins on their way OUT. I pH tested and weighed in this morning and I've lost 4.4 pounds and my pH has gone up .4 towards alkalinity, yay!

Another thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is PRIORITIZING. I'm making my health a priority because I want to live my life with optimal energy and health. I want to live life in a body that I am comfortable with. I want to love myself. I want to be giving, loving and accepting of others. I want to nurture my gifts and peruse my passions. I want to experience life and all it has to offer me. I want to travel the world. I want to learn new things and share (not impose) that knowledge with others. I want to meet interesting people and hear their stories. I want to build relationships with people on a deeper level and maintain strong relationships with the friends I have as well as with my family. I want to utilize my time to it's fullest potential and BE HAPPY :)

MC Update

The idea of maple syrup was making me nauseous all day so I decided that one day of water (with a little bit of lemon) fasting won't kill me. I slept a kind of ridiculous amount today but I see it as all part of the healing and detoxifying process. I don't know if it's 100% necessary and I'm sure the fact that I'm not taking in enough calories though the drinks has a lot to do with the sleepy factor but my body doesn't want maple syrup concoction, it wants long nap on the couch. I'm sure whether or not that's the best thing is highly debatable but hey, I'm doing the best I can to listen to my body and in this topsy turvy world, what else can we rely on?

MC Day 4

D A Y F O U R

Last night I started to feel detox symptoms a little while at work but some deep breathing and you know, using the restroom while on break helped a lot. Nothing too major there. I had to get up and go to the bathroom a lot last night...ugh, irritating! Then I finally had to just get up at 6 am cuz the stomach pain was pretty bad and I was tired of getting up over and over. I took a two hour bath/nap in the tub and then got out at 8. I didn't feel too bad until about the last 5 minutes of this lecture thing I went to for my Chicano History class. I had to excuse myself for fear that I was going to maple syrup in my pants if you know what i mean, haha. Then I went home and took a 20 minute power nap before heading off to the accoustic school for my voice coaching and the farm to pick up my CSA basket (which my roommates will be enjoying this week). The stomach pain has pretty mild off and on throughout the day but nothing TOO terrible yet. I have been feeling pretty sleepy though. Well see how my 10 pm- 2 am shift goes tonight, geez. Thankfully my lovely roommate is coming to sit with me and keep me entertained while I work the desk. Thats it for now, 4 days down and 6 to go!

MC Day 2

Two days of cleansing down, 8 to go! (Plus 4 of juice probably). So far nothing too bad as far as detox symptoms go. I'm sleepy but I'm not sure if that's real or just me taking advantage of this opprotunity to be a bum and catch some extra Zs.

Beans, beans the poisonous fruit.

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I've been about 90% raw for the past 3 months since my last cleanse. The number of cooked things I've eaten has obviously been pretty minimal, some whole grain sprouted cereal here, lentil soup here etc etc. So last night, after my big salad, I decided to have a TIIINNNNY little bowl of boiled organic pinto beans that my roommate made with some of her delicious (raw) guacamole. Like I said in my blog last night, I had a bit of a tummy ache after eating them and finally went to sleep around 3 am feeling just slightly ill. I woke up around 7:30 this morning feeling a lot more than slightly ill. I was burping up that terrible acidy taste and when I went to the bathroom I got horrible chills and started vomiting all over the floor...mmm, cute. "Is my body becoming hyper sensitive to cooked foods?", I wondered. "Was it the acid that made me so sick?". Then I found this online:

Beans (legumes) cause gas because they contain a sugar, oligosaccharide, that the human body can not break down. Oligosaccharides are large molecules and are not broken down and absorbed by the lining of the small intestine as other sugars are. This is because the human body does not produce the enzyme that breaks down oligosaccharides.

Very interesting....hmmmm, no more beans for me. I guess when I was on the SAD, my body just wasn't as sensitive to these things because it was numbed with all the other processed junk? I also think I'm getting better at listening to my body and it's needs. I still have a long way to go though. As far as other cooked foods go, we'll see. I really want to start reading 80/10/10 while I'm cleansing and see if I can hop on that after the cleanse is over. The book is like 30 bucks though which I'm sure it's completely worth but at the moment I'm completely broke and living off credit cards and a loan from my roommate until my student loans are disbursed in mid October. I might just have to bite the bullet and get it now though. As for M. Cleanse day one...I've actually only had one glass of lemonade and didn't even start off the day with the lax tea today because of the abrupt way in which my day started plus some lovely other circumstances (our upstairs tub leaking through the roof in our garage). My roommate and I handled that and then I took a nice nap on our living room floor to compensate for the lack of sleep I got last night and on Friday. Tonight I'll definitely be taking the tea though and hopefully I'll feel better in the morning. My stomach is still a little queasy.

Recipes, Plans & Count Down to Cleanse Time!

First things first, here are two recipes for ya...

1. Hemp Pesto!

5 cups of basil
1 cup hemp oil
3 TBSP Hemp Seeds
1 TBSP garlic powered or one-two clove(s) of fresh pressed garlic (preferred)
1 TBSP Brewer's yeast (I used raw Parmesan from Eat in the Raw)
Celtic Salt to Taste

2. Easy Avo Dressing

1 avocado
2-3 TBSP lime juice
1 tomatillo
1 pressed garlic clove
Celtic salt to taste

Now onto some exciting things, I'm about to start Master Cleanse #2 on Sunday!!! I think I mentioned that in a recent post. One of my roommates is going to do it with me. The other one was but is a little worried because she already has a really stressful ahead of her and doesn't wanna add another thing. Anyways, I'm pretty excited to go on another cleanse. We'll see how my detox symptoms compare to last time, should be interesting. Right now I'm putting together a plan to use all of the fresh produce in my fridge without buying any more groceries in the next three days. Here's what I have in mind...

TOMORROW:

Breakie- Green Smoothie
Lunch- Shredded squash with tomatoes, sesame oil & spices
Dinner- Some Version of Garlicky Yummyliciousness . I'll try the REAL recipe when I have more of the ingredients in 2 weeks but for now it's gonna be more like eggplant with EVOO, salt, garlic & dried herbs. We'll see how it goes...

FRIDAY-

Breakie- Green Smoothie
Lunch- Gazpacho with avocado
Dinner- More Garlicky stuff??

SATURDAY-

Breakie- Another Green Smoothie :-))
Lunch-Squash noodles with some type of pesto that I can scrounge up, haha.
Dinner- Salad with whatever is left in my fridge, haha. Hopefully there's SOMETHIN' in there :-)

Okay, I'm officially tuckered out now. GOODNIGHT!!! :-)

Blah blah blog

Lately I have a lot of spare time on my hands which has given me plenty of time to think. Therefore, I'm completely over analyzing things again. I've almost completed a week on the cleanse and though that feels great, I'm also having some mixed emotions. For one thing, this fast has caused me to loose a little bit of weight which is pushing me back into the "when I loose X amount of pounds..." mindset. I don't currently have my scale in my house to prevent me from weighing myself and obsessing about my weight but there's still this urge to weigh myself and see how much I've lost, ugh. I've been avoiding the scale for exactly this reason but then I just snapped and weighed myself. I didn't weigh myself at the beginning of the fast and since this time I weighed myself mid-day and with clothes on, the read's not completely accurate but I'm still down about 12 pounds from the last time I weighed myself...don't remember exactly when that was. Is this healthy? Is it okay to weigh myself every once in a while or should I just avoid scales for the rest of my life to stop from getting into the toxic state of thinking? UGHHHh...this is what too much time alone does to you I think. I just get so intense and wrapped up in my own little world sometimes. I just need to take a chill pill and do something fun with my friends. I've been stressing myself out a lot lately because of all this plus money issues so I definitely find that to be a contributing factor. Anyways...that's all for now. I'll post the day-by-day entries I've been taking since I started the cleanse later.

No Internet = No Blogging

I moved into my new place a few weeks ago and our WiFi is broke so that's why I haven't posted in a while. Here's what's new...

I've started No-Pooing which is actually going pretty well. They say your hair is greasy for the first 2 weeks and then gets better but I haven't noticed too big of a change yet. The apple sauce does leave little chunks in your hair until it dries which is kinda gross. Other than that, so far so good.

Tomorrow starts the MASTER CLEANSE...we'll see how it goes but I'm very excited. Wish I could blog as I go but it might not happen considering I don't know when my internet will be fixed. Maybe I'll just type out some entries to be posted at a later date.

I've been experimenting with raw pasta and have come up with an AMMMAAZZZINNG recipe to be posted later. (including pictures). Okay, well I think that's just about it for now.

PS. Isn't this picture trippy? It's really old, like maybe 4 years but I like it :)

Groceries & Smoothies

Here is a picture of all the wonderful things I got at Chico Natural Foods yesterday. The bad news is, they're not hiring :( but it's always fun to shop there so I still left happy. So far today I've already made two amazing smoothies. The first is a simple blend of spinach and bananas which is a recipe from Green For Life. The second was a mix of 9 little apriums, 1 banana, a tsp of MSM and some agave. Both were super refreshing and satisfying.


Cheers to Ten Fingers!
I didn't use finger bananas this time but that's where this recipe got it's name.



Te presento Aprium-nanna Smoothie



Not Pictured: 2 bananas, 11 oz of coconut water & a heaping, lovin' spoonful of cacao

(To be eaten for dinner)

In other news, I'm planning to start a master cleanse on June 25th which I'm very excited about. There is another member of Give It To Me Raw who wants to start the cleanse on the same day so it will be good to have someone to share the experience with. I believe it's her first time too.

I've been looking at a lot of raw recipes and I want to try so many new things including hummus, chocolate mousse, ice-cream and a sandwich with Love Force bread (which I've yet to try), some type of nut butter, bananas and honey. That would be a take on one of my favorite cooked foods...yum.

After reading Raw Faith's Blog I've been thinking about the idea of "heavy raw foods". When I first started exploring raw foodism just over 6 months ago, my raw diet was very heavy in nuts and seeds. Now I feel like that just weighs me down. I also have a tendency to binge on these dense foods. I'd prefer to fill my diet with light, refreshing, satisfying foods and pretty much cut out nuts and seeds for the most part. I will still throw them in a recipe ocasionally but don't want to make them a focus. I still need my fats and proteins but oils are a good source of fats and I will look into more protein sources. Of course dark leafy greens are great but I need something more concentrated...maybe spirulina.