Posts tagged ‘cleanse’
Reintegrating After the Cleanse
Try a new variety of winter squash this season.
Three days after the end of my cleanse, I have slowly integrated some of the food items I gave up for two weeks. I started with cow’s dairy and measured my body’s response to it. As I suspected, no change in energy levels or digestion. Then, just a teeny amount of sugar in the form of one Hershey’s Kiss on Monday and another on Tuesday, plus about 1/4 oz of chocolate chips after dinner both days. Last night was wine, which was nice to reincorporate. This morning it was my black tea, which tasted great.
I also just found out that it’s Celiac Awareness Month from Rudi’s Breads. They make a few gluten-free breads and are celebrating this month with the “31 days of Glorious Gluten-free Giveaways” on their Facebook page. There are Celiac awareness games as well as free loaves of bread, t-shirts and even GF toasters! Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/rudisglutenfreebakery. Their breads are lighter than most whole-grain breads that have wheat as a base, but tasty!
I’m not planning to go back to eating any wheat products until the end of the month, and probably sparingly at that point, but we’ll see. In addition to Rudi’s, both Udi’s and the Canyon Bakehouse make pretty good GF breads, so removing gluten from my diet turned out to be much easier than I thought, even though I’ve done it before.
I will also stay away from most sugary snacks and processed foods for a good long time, maybe until Thanksgiving. The afternoon sugar crash that occurs is just not worth it and I’d rather have really high-quality desserts, like fondue at a restaurant in Vancouver for which we bought a Groupon, rather than donuts and grocery-store cookies every day.
The best part is the season. I have been making soups for the past week out of yams, winter squash, potatoes, garlic, onion, leeks and all of the fall and winter produce. I’ve also been eating a salad almost every day, which is so satisfying and a nice foil for the warmth of the soups.
The End of the Cleanse
My body feels lighter, and is actually 2-3 pounds lighter, after two weeks of being very mindful of what I am giving it. Don’t get me wrong, I ate plenty and it was tasty! I just did away with those “foods” that don’t really serve me personally like sugar, and also took a break from other foods that are known to give a body pause, such as wheat and gluten.
It’s not that I had a terrible diet to begin with. It’s just that I was surrounded by and succumbing to temptation on a very regular basis. In my profession, I’m constantly meeting people for a “drink” (coffee, wine, whatever) and surrounded by people bringing in sugary snacks as a thank you. When I get tired, which usually happens at the end of the summer, the emotional deliciousness of having a restaurant do the cooking and cleaning is stronger than I want to fight against. So, the cleanse really helps me reset.
By the end of two weeks, sugary treats lose their appeal. My garden-fresh veggies and fruits (around four hundred pounds this season and still harvesting!) taste sweeter and more satisfying than before. Whole grains, with their chewy, nutty, creamy goodness fill me in a way that a “white bread” pizza never did.
What it also does is put me on a path to continue to eat this way. It’s a great path to follow right before the holiday season when you will literally be surrounded by unhealthy choices. Your body will thank you and hopefully you can really have fun with the foods you do choose to eat.
While I’m probably going to continue much of what I started through the end of the month, I’m really looking forward to getting back to my morning black tea, cheese, and eventually a nice glass of wine. Cheers!
The Cleanse Ah-Ha!
When you’re doing a cleanse like I am, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint the food-related problems that might arise, if your mind is functioning. I started thinking about why I might be having gut issues and what I had incorporated that was different than when I was just eating whatever I wanted. The one thing that stood out, when I finally got there, was the granola!
Granola is such a simple, wonderfully healthy snack with no gluten, dairy, or processed sugar in it. So I made a couple of batches to satisfy my sweet tooth with something natural. Today, I went without and, lo and behold, my gut has had no problems.
Now, there’s no way to tell which ingredients are causing the issue, but I’m guessing it’s either the nuts or the oatmeal. If I really want to know, I will go off all nuts and oatmeal for two weeks, then add them back in, one at a time, to see how my system reacts. If it’s a specific nut, I’ll know. If it’s the “raw” oatmeal, I’ll be able to tell that as well.
On the good side, I haven’t had problems in the past, so if I follow a rotation diet and eat each thing no more than every three days, that will help cause less stress to my system than if I ate them every day. Whoo-hoo to good health!
Days 7 through 10
Never does it become more apparent that there are foods your system has issues with than when you are doing a cleanse.
I should feel great by now, but something has not been working to make that happen. I mull and mull and cannot figure it out. Finally, directly after yoga tonight (a class that was all about focusing on what is going on with you right at this moment), it occurs to me: Aha! I made granola and have been using that as a sweet snack. It’s got nuts (something that my mom and grandpa don’t tolerate well) oats (not cooked, just toasted and therefore the phytic acid has not been mitigated); and even though I used a reduced amount of honey and maple syrup instead of processed sugar, it’s possible that there is just too much of it.
So, tomorrow I choose fresh and/or dried fruit to quell the need for a little something sweet. I just dried a bunch of apples, peaches and yellow pear tomatoes, all of which provide an amazingly sweet blast of chewy goodness. Summer may be over, but between my dehydrator and my freezer, I can still visit it from time to time.
Cleanse is going well and I’m feeling more and more like I can do this for a week longer than the initial two that I set for myself.
The Cleanse: Days Three and Four…
I didn’t immediately sit down and write about day three because it was a bad day. I woke up exhausted and everything seemed difficult. While I am certain that I was feeling detox emotions, when you are in it, it’s hard to remember that it will go away.
As it always happens, the day moves forward, turns into night, you get some sleep and with that, another chance to make the most of your life. Day four, on the other hand, was much better. Having friends over for dinner helped because I got to play in the kitchen and come up with a delicious meal that worked for my current diet.
I had forgotten how easy it is to make ice cream. I was recently given some goat milk, so I started by making goat milk ice cream flavored with honey. It was so simple and all from Colorado, mostly all sourced within a few miles of my home – the milk, egg yolks, honey and the last of the fresh peaches from the Western Slope.
I then proceeded to caramelize garden onions and cook a batch of quinoa. Later in the day, I sauteed up yellow squash with chipotle chiles, grated a little manchego cheese and tossed it all together. Then I stuffed this mixture into beautiful red bell pepper halves that I had lightly steamed. With it’s aluminum hat, I put it in the oven for about twenty minutes, then sprinkled a little more manchego on top to melt it and dinner was served.
The amazing, clean, healthy food tasted so good and sharing it with friends made it, and my life, all the better.
Two Days In…
I technically started eliminating most of the foods I intended on Sunday, but not quite everything. Sunday was my last day to revel in wheat-based bread, one of my favorite things, for at least two weeks, but up to six.
Three days in, the only thing I have yet to give up is cow’s dairy. With cottage cheese and yogurt open, I decided to finish what was there and then switch to lower dairy and goat or sheep’s milk options. Part of my decision about dairy is that I’ve already given it up once and I’m pretty darn sure, from that experiment, that dairy does not give me problems. Actually, being vegetarian, the last time I gave up dairy I experienced a complete lack of energy and brain-fog, leading me to believe that I need the fat and protein.
You may wonder how easy or difficult it is to do a cleanse. I’ve done them before, even including a short fast and, so far, this has been the easiest yet. Maybe my body was just ready, I know my mind was, but I have had no withdrawal symptoms. In the past I experienced headaches due to caffeine withdrawal and cravings for the things I was emotionally addicted to such as sugar and wine.
The upside to all of this is that I am already sleeping better, which means that I have more energy throughout the day to accomplish what I want! My moods have almost instantly evened out. I still got annoyed with the broken dishwasher and the cost to repair it today, but if that’s the extent of my angst in a day, I’ll take it!
I’m also loving the fresh food. In 45 minutes I put together polenta, roasted acorn squash and a side salad. Yesterday was corn chips with cheese melted on them and a bigger salad. Tomorrow, after yoga, something simple will be in order…maybe another salad (can you sense a theme), but with lots of ingredients – olives, nuts, tons of different garden-fresh veggies.
Then the weather changes, gets colder, so it will be time to start roasting potatoes, parsnips and carrots or making mashed potatoes. Keep watching and see what comes next. I’ll try to post regularly.
Cultivate Health LLC 