The lion eschews the fattier wildebeest, or so I'm told

Ye gods, I haven’t really done a proper journal entry here since…July? July is when I remember everything ramping up and then tumbling over like a big ol’ snowball at the top of a mountain, rolling and gaining momentum and size. Pretty much all of it has been good—some of it’s been great—but being busy means stuff seems to fall by the wayside, and that’s bad.

So I’m just going to pick a topic and ramble about it, and hope for the best.  :-)  Let’s go with health.

Towards the end of August, I did a three-week nutritional cleanse through my chiropractor’s office (they’re also licensed nutritionists). Basically, this involved two protein shakes a day, plus food (week one was largely a raw foods diets, week two added steamed veggies/soup, and week three I got to have fish, nuts, and seeds). The goal was to clean out my liver and colon and basically detox my body from the years of processed crap I’ve been shoveling into it. As a side benefit, I wanted to lose a little weight—this wasn’t about losing weight per se, but about getting healthy, but I know that when I start any sort of healthy eating/exercise program, if I don’t see near-immediate results, I get discouraged. Stupid, yes, but it’s how my brain works. So I wanted to do this as a jump-start to being a healthier person.

Was it a success? Overall, yes. I had some setbacks, such as having to rescue Ken from Gila Bend, AZ, just as week two was about to start, which meant not really being able to have shakes and raw foods while driving 7 hours each way towing a bike trailer (because if I were following the plan, I would’ve had to stopped at least once an hour to pee, and when you’re towing a trailer through the desert, finding places you can (a) park in such a way that you don’t have to back up and (b) find an actual place to pee are few and far between). Also…how can I put this delicately? My colon really needed to cleanse, and that made it difficult to exercise every day (where exercise =  more than running to the bathroom on a regular basis).

The hardest part for me was timing. People…food prep takes a hell of a lot of time. I felt like I was spending all my time prepping food, eating food, and doing dishes. (I wasn’t creating a lot of dishes, especially in the beginning, because I wasn’t “cooking,” but I was using the same dishes over and over again, necessitating they be clean for the next session).

But I have to admit, if somewhat reluctantly because it would be nice to go back to throwing a frozen dinner into the microwave for breakfast every morning, I feel better. Dammit, I do.

Now, I need to get on my wee little soapbox here for a moment. I have a problem with the word “diet” in terms of how it’s usually used nowadays. “Diet” is supposed to mean “what you eat.” It does not mean “what you don’t eat.” As in, “the diet of the lion on the Serengeti is gazelle,” not “the lion eschews the fattier wildebeest.” “Diet” is not something you do for a specific span of time to lose weight (which is why I don’t refer to the cleanse as a “diet”). “Diet” is what you eat.

::climbs down off soapbox::  I do realize and acknowledge that when you’re discussing what you eat, you really can’t not discuss what you don’t eat—because sometimes it’s easier. Whether for your brain or for discussion purposes, sometimes you have to say “I don’t eat X.” My point is that I’m not on a diet. I’ve changed my eating habits, and my goal is to have changed them permanently.

To that end, I’m continuing to focus on making veggies and fruit the staples of my diet, with lean meat and other protein included as desired. (I’m also continuing to do one shake a day.) We were never much for eating tons of beef anyway (we use ground turkey for pretty much anything calling for ground beef), so that’s fine on occasion, as is whatever other meat I want. I have no desire to go vegetarian, so I’m-a gonna eat my chicken and fish and enjoy it very much. I’m keeping an eye on dairy—I missed it during the cleanse, but now and again it’s a quite fine thing indeed. Ditto refined sugar—a lemon wafer or a square of dark chocolate really does satisfy me. However, white bread, white pasta, potatoes are right out. Good thing I love brown rice and multigrain pasta, and I’m kinda looking forward to trying out other grains.

And that, my peeps, is about all I’m going to say about the matter. No soapboxes about how awful processed food or refined sugar is. This is my choice, my life. I don’t proselytize about what you should eat or not eat, and I’ll do my best to not be the difficult-to-feed person everyone hates to invite over. If you have questions, groovy, and I’m delighted to answer them; but otherwise, I’m off to make some of that incredibly awesome Thai coconut soup I’ve learned how to make. Omnomnom!