Listening to my inner voice

I am happy to announce that I have successfully completed my first three weeks of detox.  Before going to the naturopath last week, I felt like I was being summoned to the principal's office.  Was I going to get a good grade or maybe reprimanded for having a sliver of avocado on shabbat?  My anxiety was unfounded as anxiety usually is.  We allow things to lose proportion in our minds, and in reality it is usually not as terrible as we anticipated.  Besides, my naturopath is a really nice person.

So I passed with flying colors.  As a matter of fact I did so well that she wants me to continue.  I told her I was having food hallucinations so she compromised and said I could have  fish twice a week. This is a reward that just a few weeks ago would have manifested itself as a piece of cheesecake or pint of ice cream (or both!).

I feel like I am paying attention to what is going into my body and appreciating it.  So often when eating something (pre-detox), I ate it so fast without savoring the taste that often I didn't even remember eating it or how it tasted shortly after ingesting it. 

Get ready here comes an insight:  I always related to dieting as trying to not think about food--to stop the eternal inner dialogue about what to eat, how much to eat, etc.  I was always telling myself to stop relating to food.  But now, my inner dialogue is changing.  I want to talk to myself about what I am eating--telling myself to appreciate and savor what I am eating. (There is a lot of talking going on in my head).  By acknowledging and appreciating good food at the appropriate times I am significantly less obsessed with the topic of food.
This is good, because now all the time I was obsessing has been freed up and I can use that time for my schoolwork.

At Curves the other day I noticed that my exercise tunic is no longer tight fitting.  I am making it to exercise 2-3 times a week.  I am trying to get to a consistent 3 times a week to maximize the  benefits.  I just need to figure out how to get all the many things I do done while going to school and working.  Curves, here I come.

Oops, forgot to mention...I am down more than 6 kilos!

Routines and food fantasies

End of week two.  Detox has become routine.  The key to my success in sticking to the routine is preparation and planning--not an earth shattering insight, but the truth.  On the days in which I prepared my food the night before it was easier to follow the program and I spent less time that day thinking about what I was going to eat.

The problem is that the routine is, in a word, boring.  Although I am not hungry, and don't feel temptation at every turn (literally since we live in a country where every second storefront seems to be selling felafel, sushi, burgers, or ice cream), I am bored.  There are only so many ways that one can make whole basmati rice and black rice noodles interesting.

So I have been fantasizing.  Not about ice cream, but about a nice piece of broiled salmon. Or a salad with a vegetable of color (sounds like a new minority group). I'm not even fantasizng about bread, but about some gluten free alternatives. 

I am looking forward to my meeting with the naturopath on Thursday when she will instruct me on the next phase of reintroducing various foods into my detoxed and purified digestive system.

In the meantime, I will continue my exercise program which I started at Curves this week.  I managed to go the recommended 3 times and was pleased that I finally got myself started in an exercise program.  During the intake I was told that my body fat was problematic, but I think I already knew that.  A busy week ahead, but I will make sure to work it into the schedule at least 3 times.  It felt good to sweat due to something other than a heat flash.

Not that I am counting--oh, who am I kidding, of course I am--I have lost 5 Kilos!!!

Hemp oil, cornflakes and the wedding blues....

Conclusion of week one of detox:  Not as difficult as I expected.  It took a lot of planning, and I got alot of strange looks, and this being Israel, I got alot of unsolicited advice...but I did it.

More difficult than limiting the foods I ingest during these 3 weeks is the lack of condiments and spices that give many foods their flavors. I love vegetables and I like the basmati rice, but rice without salt and oil is, well, just rice.  So I sent an emergency sms to the naturopath asking 2 important questions:  can I please use a small amount of salt, and are sushi/seaweed papers allowed?  Thankfully the answer to both was yes.  Cooking creatively has made the restricted diet easier, and the basmati sushi was yummy. The only thing I must swallow which I would happily do without is my daily dose of hemp oil.  It tastes like you are drinking a burlap bag.  And, there is no positive effects from its' cannibis origin.

Surprisingly I was not hungry most of the time. Surprisingly I didn't have a terrible caffeine withdrawal save one nasty headache on the 3rd morning.  Surprisingly, I didn't cheat.
What I did almost do several times is put food into my mouth mindlessly.  It made me realize how many times a day we eat stuff without even realizing that it entered our bodies.  It might be tasting as we cook, licking a spoon, or as I did, put a few cornflakes in my mouth as I was transferring them from the cardboard box to the tupperware.  Fortunately I caught myself and spit them out.  Yay me!!

Tuesday night I had a wedding to go to. Often we think of eating at a wedding is like going out for a nice dinner.  You get a full course meal, and in exchange you give a nice gift to the bride and groom to get them started in life.  The bigger the gift, the more you eat to make it and even exchange.  By that method the couple would have gotten nothing from me, because I only drank the water.  Not to worry, they still received a generous gift.

I didn't feel deprived.  I felt proud.  I put my goals ahead of the temporary  temptations.  And those temptations are always there, be it a cake in the teachers' room, a birthday celebration, or whatever.  I could still celebrate without the food.  It would, however, be easier if 30 Jewish mothers weren't standing around me saying "just a bite, a small taste won't hurt" or other variations of that mantra.

Shabbat, the final frontier (of this week).  To taste the challah or not to taste the challah, that is the question along with a bunch of others.  I opted to forgo the challah during these 3 weeks.  Perhaps not the best halachic choice, but the one I needed to make to be true to myself.  I know me.  If I were to take just a small bite at this point, it would open the door to other small leniencies and I don't want to take that chance.  So, thankfully I made it through shabbat with ease, preparing my shakes and other foods ahead of time.

Goals for the coming week:
Exercise.  Now that my body has adjusted to the initial change, I feel I am ready to exert myself.  I will be returning this week to Curves for tri-weekly (that is 3x/week, not every 3 weeks!) workouts. 
Consistency:  Stay on the path and stick with the plan, even the hemp oil (yuk).

Oh, and by the way, I dropped 3 kilos (6.6 lbs.) in the first week.  Again, yay me!!